Ask the Expert

This article originally appeared in the Nov. 2012 issue of CUSTOMER

Post call IVR surveying and customer feedback management has been making its way into the customer experience process now for a few years. At latest count, roughly 6.5 percent of all contact centers globally have adopted the technology. And while an industry-wide ROI benchmark has yet to be established, it’s safe to say a majority of centers that have implemented post call survey practices thus far have benefitted by way of customer satisfaction improvement.

For these early adopters, the aim now is to generate even more value from their surveying investment — and taking eight basic steps can help. (These steps are a follow-up to those outlined in the white paper “Top 10 Customer Satisfaction Best Practices” previously published by CFI Group in conjunction with Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert).)

Whether completed individually or collectively, the following steps can increase the value of post call surveys and the customer feedback they provide.

1. Integrate survey data with contact center operational metrics. Minus the operational context in which survey scores are gathered, scores alone are best considered “data” and not the true customer feedback “information” needed to improve service levels. Integrating the metrics collected from your contact center platform with those of the post call survey can help resolve this issue. Among the more informational contact center metrics to consider are Call Reason, Hold Time, Answered Call Volume, Time of Day, and Number of Transfers.

2. Integrate scores with enterprise business metrics. Engage sales and marketing operations to track the ongoing value of customers via their contact center experience. It’s often possible to show a direct link between customer support levels and continued loyalty as measured by actual purchases, not just stated intent. Such insights can then contribute to an ROI analysis to determine the payback in altering survey processes, and in making additional investments in the customer service function over time.

3. Keep the survey current. Remember, the purpose of your post call survey program is gathering information, not data. Constantly review whether survey questions are relevant to your business and the issues to be resolved. (An IVR tool should be flexible enough to make survey changes with relative ease.) Be cautious, too, about continuing questions once they’ve reached an acceptable score.

4. Bust the myth that surveys can be only 2 to 3 questions! Evaluate your survey length, which coincides with keeping the survey current. While IVR surveys need to be shorter than other feedback collection methods, it doesn’t mean they must stop at 2 or 3 questions. In our experience at CFI Group, IVR survey completion rates don’t begin to drop off until 8 to 10 questions — or as high as 12 to 14 questions in certain situations. Another consideration is the way your survey phrases questions. For example, compare these two approaches.

Common approach

1. On a scale of 1-9, with 1 being poor and 9 being great, tell us how knowledgeable our agent was.
2. On a scale of 1-9, with 1 being poor and 9 being great, tell us how friendly our agent was.
3. On a scale of 1-9, with 1 being poor and 9 being great, tell us how sincere our agent was.

Better approach

On a scale of 1-9, with 1 being poor and 9 being great, please rate our agent on the following:

1. Knowledge
2. Friendliness
3. Sincerity