By
Mark Friedman
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Date Published: March 10, 2014 - Last Updated August 22, 2018
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Comments
For years companies have relied on Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and other customer satisfaction surveys to gauge their operational, product, and service effectiveness. A tenet of customer service says each customer who has a positive experience with your company tells two-to-three people, while a customer who has a negative experience tells 10 people. Ahh… wouldn’t our jobs be a lot easier if the reverse of this was true!
Like just about everything else that it touches, mobile has transformed this important measure of the customer experience. And with social media and review sites, the reach of satisfied and unsatisfied customers is a wider playing field than ever before.
Mobile provides many tools to increase survey response and completion rates as it inherently is the ultimate in convergent communications devices. Whatever the consumer’s preference – whether it be voice, web, e-mail, or SMS – the smartphone has it. Importantly, we’re seeing SMS as a breakthrough channel for NPS and other CSAT measure. The succinctness, relative purity of the channel (compared to e-mail), and convenience (compared to voice) are providing many of our clients with startling results. Net-net, SMS needs to be included in your CSAT strategy and tactics. We are sending millions of customer surveys every week on behalf of our clients and approximately 80% of our surveys are sent via SMS. Check out these tips to increase survey results via text messaging.
Over half of consumers who grew up with mobile technology said that they prefer texting people rather than talking to them. Customers today are often screening voice calls, and e-mails get lost in inboxes, but over 90% of SMS messages are opened. The traditional single question NPS survey of, “Would you recommend this product or service,” takes seconds to respond this survey via SMS, and can be done easily from any location.
A multiple question survey is also successful via SMS. A two-way or interactive text survey can be automated for responses, or can involve an agent if the customer responses, “HELP” or “CALL ME”. Another option to increase mobile response is to include in the message a link to mobile web page to take survey.
Now that you have gathered the feedback from customers, now what? As customers reply to the survey, it’s key that organizations segment respondents into groups based on satisfaction levels and provide personalized treatments based on this grouping. Real-time decisions, need to, and can be made and implemented by your solutions provider. For example, if the customer’s NPS responses are rated as a Promoter then no further action needs to immediately be taken. However, if the customer is a Detractor than an agent can reach out – via voice or SMS – to the customer on a real-time basis to understand and resolve the issue. Compared to the black hole that swallows most feedback, closing the loop with respondents reduces churn, increases loyalty, and adds value to their overall customer experience.
We have had great success with a top U.S. mobile carrier increasing response rates of their five question interactive NPS survey via free-to-end-user (FTEU) text messaging and SMS with a link to a mobile website, and closing the loop with calls as needed. Customer response rates increased enormously over their traditional voice-only solution, with 97% of responses occurring within 24-hours. Agent closed the loop with 55% of Detractors with a voice call to address their issues. And we have actually had customers thanking agents for the timely follow-up to talk about their problem!
Businesses should utilize SMS messages for surveys not only increase responses, but because it creates real-time, interactive multi-channel engagement that enables prompt follow-up, ongoing engagement, and future revenue opportunities. Contact us today to learn more about adding SMS messaging to your customer surveys.
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