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Q & A with David Andrews, CustomerSat Director of Marketing
Q: David, what is multi-channel feedback and why is it important?
DA: Multi-channel feedback means collecting
information through customers' preferred channels. Customers'
channels preferences depend on where they are and what they
are doing. For instance, immediately after a customer makes
a purchase on the web, an online questionnaire may be the
best way to gather feedback. After the customer calls your
800-number for customer service, speech-enabled IVR may be
the best channel. If the customer has just checked out of
a hotel, or is waiting in line at the airport, an online survey
on a kiosk or a wireless PDA may be most convenient and effective.
Multi-channel feedback addresses these requirements by integrating
phone, email, in-person and web channels from survey deployment
to feedback collection and analysis.
Q: Why not just pick one channel and leverage it?
DA: While each channel has its own advantages,
sample integrity, response rates and respondent convenience
can all be improved through multiple channels. For instance,
if a customer interacts with you through multiple channels
or different customer segments have different channel preferences,
then limiting a response to one particular channel not only
affect your sample integrity, potentially biasing it, but
it also may also negatively affect your response rate.
Q. How do the new channels fit in, and what are their advantages?
DA: In-person, phone and mail were the
first feedback channels. These channels often involved a person
to collect and process the feedback. And, in the case of in-person
and phone, a human-driven customer interview was also required.
IVR and optical scanning reduced some of the time and work
involved, but the survey and analysis process still required
a fair amount of manual work. Then the Internet came along.
The Internet’s self-service paradigm helped reduce input error
as well as collection and processing expense. Now, we are
seeing offshoots that leverage technology to reduce the cost
to deploy the survey and the time it takes to collect and
analyze the information. Wireless Internet, deployed on a
PDA or cell phone, speeds data collection for exit interviews
and mall intercept-style surveys, and supports self-service
surveys. Speech-enabled IVR provides a new spin on the phone
survey. This technology removes both the expense of an interviewer
and the possibility of bias from the survey process. And,
it allows users to take surveys whenever they want instead
of just when the business is open.
Q: Do the limitations of particular channels affect the
types of surveys that you can deploy?
DA: Longer surveys are most easily deployed
over channels where there is no time constraint. So, for instance,
a relationship survey that contains 50 to 100 questions may
be best deployed on the web as Internet technology allows
users to complete a portion of the survey at a time, perhaps
over the course of a few days. A similar survey over the phone
would be too long, even if automation were used. Transactional
surveys are shorter. As a result, there is much greater channel
flexibility that can be driven by customer needs, usage, and
cost and time constraints. And, of course, newer technologies
are limited by their adoption curve and how many people use
them. So, one would not expect senior citizens to respond
to a PDA-based survey, however, a group of business users
or early adopters might be a good fit.
Q: How does a multi-channel approach affect your ability
to analyze the feedback?
DA: Multi-channel feedback can provide you
with more comprehensive data, with faster access to data,
and more comprehensive analytics than disparate systems that
are siloed by channel. It does so by integrating the data
collection across channels and systems of record, and the
data analysis. This is important, because even if you were
to leverage a multi-channel deployment, siloed systems could
keep you from seeing the full picture. The net result of the
integrated approach is a more complete look at your customer-base
than any single channel or system can provide. It is important
to note that results vary by channel. As a result, you should
look at mean scores and other statistics by channel to ensure
that there are not statistically significant difference by
channel. For instance, the presence or absence of an interviewer
can affect scores.
Q: You talked about an “integrated” multi-channel approach.
What does that mean?
DA: Integration means that multiple, disparate
channels appear as a single virtual channel, both from the
standpoint of the customer and the user of the data. An integrated
multi-channel approach not only allows you to deploy the surveys
across multiple channels, but then to collect the resultant
feedback and to analyze it in a single place. This allows
you to avoid missing parts of your audience and missing insights
that may not cross the silos. For example:
- Customer survey invitations are coordinated across channels,
so the same customer is not invited to respond through several
different channels at the same time
- Customers are initially invited to respond via the channel
of their choice, if specified
- Non-responding customers can be automatically escalated
from one channel to another, when necessary
- Results are consolidated into a single set of online reports,
with ability to separate out by channel, if desired.
At the end of the day, the integrated approach increases
the quality of the data and improves the customer experience.
And, it increases your ability to turn information into success.
Q. What financial impact does a multi-channel approach have?
DA: While the set-up involved in designing
a survey is fairly consistent across the channels, it is clear
that a self-service approach lowers the cost of deploying
a survey and collecting feedback. Online or IVR save costs
by:
- Providing user-driven survey access: With online, an interviewer
does not need to be available to give the survey or receive
the answers. Thus companies can make their surveys more
available to their targets 24-hours, and over a longer period
of time, without incurring the personnel costs associated
with expanded hours of operation.
- Reducing errors: Online methods allow you to enforce best
practices through pull down choices and field checking,
just to name two, to reduce the potential for errors. Also,
by removing the interviewer from the equation the potential
for errors is further reduced, by reducing another layer
in the process. As a result, a larger sample size is not
needed to compensate for errors resulting in invalid surveys.
- Reducing collection effort: Online surveys collect more
easily and efficiently information because information is
immediately digitized, saving data reentry fees; and because
users can be prompted to respond via email or automated
phone reminders at little cost, increasing the response
rate and decreasing personnel time.
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