People Hate Surveys but Love Being Listened to. Future Tech Says There’s a Better Way.

Let’s face it: Surveys are struggling to do what we need. Whatever interaction you have as a customer, you’ll likely get NPS’ed. In particular, B2B response rates are dismal, despite the considerable vested interest both parties have in the relationship. The honest truth is that, in most cases, online surveys are more about a company’s numbers than truly listening.

Most would agree that providing feedback is a good thing and that, if done well, feedback should benefit the customer as well as the company. When we think of B2B relationships, it should be a no-brainer to listen to someone with whom you are meant to maintain a valuable long-term relationship. And what’s more, if you yourself went along to listen, more often than not, the customer would be happy to give you their time. That’s because people hate surveys but love being listened to.

Of course, few companies have the resources necessary to send people out into the field to provide personal listening sessions, and so we need to ask ourselves if there’s a better way, particularly as cutting edge technology provide us with new opportunities to break through and innovate.

We think the problem can be attacked in several ways:

 

1. Online surveys are old tech. Make surveys more human!

Keyboards are old tech. Similarly, PCs are nothing new. So what does the future hold? For one, today we’re witnessing the rise of digital humans. For example, have a look at this website for digital human company UneeQ and chat with a digital clone of Albert Einstein below:

We think digital roles have a role to play in future survey channels. Talking to one of these digital humans, whilst not yet on par with a real human, seems much more personal and engaging than a traditional survey. No two-finger typing is required, and when people start talking, they share more. An initial study we conducted with a leading Australian media company showed a 2.5x increase in depth of content, and in a shorter time, than when using a digital human.

It’s the ultimate win: Easy and engaging for the customer and you, the listener, gain a whole lot more without deploying an army of humans. We humans are limited because we are expensive, take holidays, get sick, must sleep, unconsciously introduce interviewer bias, and, frankly, are generally pretty unreliable. Sure, it’s new technology (and it’s not for everyone!), but other studies we’ve conducted showed that 70% of customers loved the experience.

Has anyone said they love online surveys in the last ten years? When we’re told that the majority of people in the United States talk more to Siri than they do to their own partner, our industry should be paying attention to how customers want to engage.

 

2. Active listening: Become a skilled listener

We’d argue that being serious about listening compels you to do what skilled active listeners do. In the B2B space, the best account managers don’t talk much (have you heard that adage that you can tell the quality of a person not by what they say, but by the questions they ask?), and they remember what was previously said and use it in the conversation. That’s a part of the way people feel listened to.

The underlying challenge is that we researchers are cross-sectional by training (blame Statistics 101), but our opportunity to do better lies in data that is relational, joined up, longitudinal. If you’re dedicated to building deep and enduring relationships, then the feedback you need isn’t a snapshot, it’s a movie – a story that anyone can see. Just like an artist on Spotify or a friend on Facebook or a company on LinkedIn, you need to be following them.

That means you can remember what they’ve said and any relevant history, and invoke that to show that you are actually listening. Some of this feedback you’ll already have. We’d argue that it just needs a bit of reorganising in and around your CRM.

 

3. Truly get to action (truly!)

The phrase “actionable insights” falls with ease from the lips of a researcher. Every feedback management platform features the phrase “close the loop”, but we’d question whether the functionality or intent is truly there to show you are listening by taking the appropriate actions in response to what you have been told. In the world of B2B, this is an utterly crucial means of signaling you are listening, especially managing expectations and promises made by you, your team, and the business.

While assessing one New Zealand company, we found that the root cause of 50% of the dissatisfaction voiced in feedback was not things going wrong, but rather the poor management of expectations and promises. So before leaping into action, we’d counsel stepping back and thinking about what improvements don’t need to be made (and yes, we know this may sound counterintuitive, as we managers are trained and paid to get stuff done)!

Our functionality wishlist for a top-line B2B “close the loop” would be:

• Keeps track of what was done in response to feedback
• Records promises made
• Records quick wins from closing the loop (generally each round of feedback pays for itself many times over, it’s just that we don’t record it)
• Allows teams to collaborate on what needs improvement versus what requires customer training or expectations setting
• Tests whether the customer thinks their issue has been resolved (you and your customer may well diverge on that), and what impact that had down the line on customer sentiment towards the customer’s relationship/partnership with you

 

Conclusion

Constant evolution in technology means that bringing these capabilities together is now a whole lot more possible than it ever has been. Imagine presenting a hyper-realistic digital human, dressed to represent your company, capable of reaching out to relationship customers you normally don’t have the resources to talk to. Imagine if this was on mobile and customers could talk – not type – anytime, any language, and anywhere. Imagine if the digital human could draw from its digital memory to recall previous interactions and use that, in real time, to inform such a chat. Imagine the use of intelligent probing as a tool to drill down and listen.

Imagine if a digital human could (again, in real-time) direct an action item to the correct person or team. Imagine if you redeployed so that fewer of your team members spent the time necessary to reach out and instead more were responding (stretched reps usually end up spending much of their time putting out fires anyway). Imagine if the digital human was human enough to tell a good joke. And why not deploy the digital human to communicate what your business has done as a consequence of that conversation?

Digital humans are not here to replace real humans. They’re here to lighten the load, strengthening the relationship between your customers and your business. Together we could bring honour back to the word feedback and consign online surveys to where they deserve to be: Alongside paper surveys, the landline, VHS, fax, and underarm bowling.