YES! You (and your colleagues) have decided to conduct research to gain new insights into customers and/or employees. The desire is often there, as is the motivation to get started. Ideally, you would like to start working with the respondents' answers tomorrow to further build on an even better experience. However, it sometimes takes weeks before the research actually starts, and valuable time is lost. Why does it sometimes take longer than expected to start a research project? And more importantly, how can you prevent this?
1. Not knowing what questions to ask
A good survey goes beyond simply measuring a few statements. We often receive requests to ask the NPS question anyway, because the organization feels it has to do so because everyone else is doing it. The question is, of course, why would this be useful for you... The NPS provides good insight, but sometimes it doesn't. Together with your colleagues, choose which KPIs will really help you move forward. The NPS does not always win; sometimes the Customer Effort Score (CES) or general satisfaction question (CSAT) is much stronger and better. For example, the CES provides much more concrete insight into what is not going well in your customer service processes.
Think carefully about what insights are needed to offer customers a better experience tomorrow. Simply looking for scores is not enough. You want to know why people give a certain score. It is therefore important to ask questions at the right moments. For example, about the customer values that are most important to your organization, such as accessibility, peace of mind, or proactivity. Quite a few organizations do not know their customer and/or core values well enough. Make sure you have a clear understanding of this together before creating the questionnaire.
How to avoid it: Spend enough time choosing the right KPIs for the survey. Decide what you need to be able to help customers better. Also, make sure this is supported across the organization, so that your colleagues will also support the results and be able to use them.
Think carefully about what insights are needed to offer customers a better experience tomorrow. Simply looking for scores is not enough. You want to know why people give a certain score. It is therefore important to ask questions at the right moments. For example, about the customer values that are most important to your organization, such as accessibility, peace of mind, or proactivity. Quite a few organizations do not know their customer and/or core values well enough. Make sure you have a clear understanding of this together before creating the questionnaire.
How to avoid it: Spend enough time choosing the right KPIs for the survey. Decide what you need to be able to help customers better. Also, make sure this is supported across the organization, so that your colleagues will also support the results and be able to use them.
2. Customer data difficult to collect
The customer's name is often easy to find. The email address is also no problem. But other valuable customer information is sometimes not so easy to find at the touch of a button. And that is often very important in research. How valuable is it to be able to further analyze customer feedback based on order dates, ages, regions, and other characteristics? Make it a priority within the organization to consistently collect this data and make it relatively easy to use for research, for example.
Ideally, customers should be approached automatically at a specific moment in the customer journey. For example, after an appointment or a telephone contact moment. Without having to have a colleague manually prepare a time-consuming Excel printout every week. But 'just' an API or (S)FTP connection ensures that customers are asked the right questions at the right time.
How to avoid this: ensure that customer data is collected correctly and stored in the right place. Preferably all together and not scattered across multiple systems. This can be a huge challenge, but take the first step and work consistently towards the correct collection of customer data.
Ideally, customers should be approached automatically at a specific moment in the customer journey. For example, after an appointment or a telephone contact moment. Without having to have a colleague manually prepare a time-consuming Excel printout every week. But 'just' an API or (S)FTP connection ensures that customers are asked the right questions at the right time.
How to avoid this: ensure that customer data is collected correctly and stored in the right place. Preferably all together and not scattered across multiple systems. This can be a huge challenge, but take the first step and work consistently towards the correct collection of customer data.
3. Overloaded schedules
"Can you conduct the research next week?" A question we get asked almost every day. Our answer is always "yes, we can, but you probably can't." An unpleasant but honest answer based on more than 20 years of experience. As a research agency, we help our clients step by step with the successful design and implementation of the research. But we don't do everything. To ensure that the research really delivers the right insights, multiple departments need to be involved. Ideally, multiple departments observe, provide input, and give feedback. On the one hand, this ensures that the research helps as many colleagues as possible, but on the other hand, it also creates support from the outset. If research results are simply thrown over the fence to the rest of the organization out of the blue, there is a very good chance that nothing will be done with them. By involving the right stakeholders in advance, people become enthusiastic, understand the importance better, and can really do something with the results.
And this coordination takes time. Busy schedules, vacations, deadlines: it always takes a while before everyone is on board. But you really won't regret this effort. The broader the support for the research, the better the results will be used for real growth in (customer) experience!
How to avoid this: don't see the research as a report with scores, but as a project. A project that starts with an extensive kick-off and, for example, internal interviews with different departments to find out what insights they need. Involve colleagues in the importance and purpose of the project from day one. Get management on board too. They may have to approve certain changes or modifications later on. Let them give time and priority to customer feedback, because a good example is worth following!
And this coordination takes time. Busy schedules, vacations, deadlines: it always takes a while before everyone is on board. But you really won't regret this effort. The broader the support for the research, the better the results will be used for real growth in (customer) experience!
How to avoid this: don't see the research as a report with scores, but as a project. A project that starts with an extensive kick-off and, for example, internal interviews with different departments to find out what insights they need. Involve colleagues in the importance and purpose of the project from day one. Get management on board too. They may have to approve certain changes or modifications later on. Let them give time and priority to customer feedback, because a good example is worth following!