Overcoming Survey Fatigue: How to Be Smarter and More Effective in Gathering Customer Feedback

By Nicole Hauptman, VP Experience Management Design at Material

It’s impossible to be a customer-centric brand without asking for customer feedback, and post-engagement surveys are a tried-and-true method for doing it efficiently. But they’ve become so heavily relied upon, especially in the past few years, that the market is oversaturated and engagement is on the decline.

After an online purchase. At the checkout in the store. In your email inbox. In your text messages. In the branded app. Interrupting YouTube videos. Prompted on social media. Consumers are being bombarded with requests to take surveys at seemingly every turn, and now, they’re tuning most of them out.

If brands want to continue inviting and incorporating customer feedback into their decision-making, as they should, they need to rethink how they approach and deploy customer surveys in a way that actually gets responses and drives results.

The Rise – and Oversaturation– of Customer Surveys

Since its introduction in 2003, net promoter score (NPS) has been seen as a standard for customer experience measurement. It’s a single, end-all-be-all question – “How likely would you be to recommend…?” – accompanied by an open-ended “Why?” prompt. Its simplicity and single-integer score make it straightforward, easy to collect and easy to understand.

CX surveys saw a big boom around 2014 and 2015, as more and more brands saw the value in NPS and word-of-mouth. According to Fortune, by 2020 NPS was being used in some fashion by two-thirds of the Fortune 100.

With this rise in NPS adoption came a parallel surge in the number of surveys consumers were being asked to complete, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were many reasons for this marked increase:

• With the development of new technology, there were more channels for survey development available to brands, enabling them to be more sophisticated in how they collected customer feedback.

• Brands are continuously trying to collect more and more data to fuel their databases and inform their marketing efforts for greater personalization.

• Many brands bought into the NPS trend and went all-in on surveys because they felt it was necessary to stay competitive.

Consumers are Becoming More Selective – and Data Quality is Suffering

As you might expect, with the sharp rise in the number of surveys in the market, consumer response rates have shown a decline. We can connect this trend to several factors, from shifting consumer attitudes about privacy and what information to share with companies, to simply being overwhelmed by the sheer number of brand touchpoints they encounter every day. But consumers are becoming more predisposed to not engage with surveys and just tune out requests to share feedback.

Upon receiving a survey, another common knee-jerk reaction is what’s in it for me? Many consumers assume their feedback won’t be acknowledged, taken seriously or acted upon by the brand.

On the flip side, some consumers are hesitant to share their feedback when they feel like the survey is tied to the employment prospects of a frontline worker – what experts are calling “survey guilt.” When they do share their feedback, then, it’s inherently skewed, as respondents don’t want to leave an honest review for fear of harming someone – the results will be either all positive or all negative, without an accurate representation of the breadth of customer experience and sentiment.

For all these reasons, brands are seeing a drop both in response rates and data quality across the board.

4 Key Strategies to Improve Customer Feedback Outcomes

The bottom line is you can’t just ask for customer feedback for feedback’s sake.

Implement these four strategies to overcome consumer survey fatigue and gather feedback that’s illuminating and actionable.

1.      Make it Relevant and Seamless

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes: they have busy lives, with a million places to be and a million things to do. They’re not likely to respond to your survey if it’s not relevant to them.

Be mindful not only of when you collect customer feedback but also of how. Use their preferred method of communication (e.g., via your branded app, SMS or email) to make the survey request, and don’t overwhelm them with notifications in more than one channel. Also, don’t ask them questions you should already know the answer to. Make sure, with each survey request, interaction or touchpoint, you build the relationship with your customers in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive or presumptuous. Meet them where they are and be mindful of how you interject into their busy lives.

2.      Empower Frontline Employees to Collect and Share Consumer Feedback

There is often no formal channel for employees on the frontlines – cashiers, customer service representatives and associates – to share customer feedback with corporate decision-makers where it can factor into high-level strategy and tactical execution.

Yet, these employees have the most contact with your customers of anyone in your organization and are the closest to the source. They hear from customers organically and get a clear picture of how customers feel after engaging directly with your brand. And they are the most human and approachable face to ask customers to take surveys in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive. There’s a clear correlation between employee experience and customer experience. Make sure your employees are empowered to share what they’re hearing – and that they are heard, acknowledged and appreciated when they do.

3.      Complement Survey Results with Other Metrics and Indicators

No one metric can paint a comprehensive CX picture on its own. The NPS question – “How likely would you be to recommend this brand/product, and why?” – can’t be the only lens through which you collect and analyze customer feedback. Nor can customer lifetime value; though it might point to other important brand health elements retention and loyalty, it doesn’t necessarily capture how the customer feels when they interact with your brand or illuminate their motivations and underlying behavior behind the interactions.

Often in CX measurement, brands overlook the trove of data they’ve already collected. Pair your survey results with existing customer data that is already available. By building robust data from multiple sources and analyzing them as pieces of a puzzle that fit together, you can see a fuller, more accurate picture of how your CX efforts are doing and what to do to further delight your customers.

4.      Act Upon Feedback in a Meaningful Way

A survey isn’t just a survey; it’s part of the experience. It’s a reflection of your brand. Every aspect of it – from how it’s created to how it’s shared to how its results are used – is a reflection and signal to the customer of your brand. Just as you can see positive benefits in your relationships with your customers if you do it right, failing to live up to that brand promise can have negative consequences

It’s not enough to just collect customer feedback; your customers need to trust and see that it is being incorporated into continuously improving your brand’s CX. When customers can draw a line between the survey they took and tangible actions you take, it’s clear to them you’re following through on your promise to value their feedback when they offer it. Which, in turn, will encourage greater engagement with surveys in the future.

A Robust, Modern Approach to Customer Feedback

To overcome survey fatigue, you need to be strategic and intentional about when and how you collect and incorporate customer feedback. At Material, our experience measurement programs combine relationship tracking, journey and interaction feedback and always-on listening to produce actionable insights and support your CX decision-making. We guide improvements that drive results for your brand loyalty, market share and reputation.

Want to learn more about how Material can help you overcome survey fatigue and collect feedback in a way that builds relationships with your customers? Reach out today.