Customer surveys in the age of Corona: Yes or No?

The clear answer is: Yes! Current studies show that customers appreciate being asked for feedback even in this crisis. This also applies to employee surveys: 86% of the employees surveyed said they thought it was appropriate for their employer to ask them based on the current situation.

This sentence hits the nail on the head: at the moment, not only companies but also their customers are facing major challenges. A Corona customer survey, therefore, makes sense. It is now even more important to know the needs of customers. Companies that do without a customer survey may miss out on new developments among their customers and then not be able to react to them in time.

How do you adapt your customer surveys to the current Corona crisis?

1. Communication

1. What you communicate, your customers remember even after the crisis. Dave John assumes that the way a company deals with employees, customers, and the public during a crisis will leave lasting memories even after the crisis. Therefore, adapt the invitation, announcements about the survey, and the questionnaire to the current situation. Then you will remain authentic.

Here is a sample text for the invitation to the customer survey in the Corona crisis (suitable for B2C and B2B):

“Dear Customer,

We hope that you, your colleagues, and your family are safe and healthy. It’s important to us to be there for you during these special times and to make ourselves better for you. That’s why we continue to collect feedback at [Company].

We realize that this email may not be your top priority. We would still appreciate it if you could take 3 minutes to provide us with brief feedback.”

2. Consider whether you have enough resources to respond to customer feedback as you have in the past. For example, if you currently lack resources for closed-loop, you could first send an automated thank you email to customers and in a second step, schedule closed loop calls to discuss the feedback.

2. Revise surveys

1. Revise your survey to include questions about Covid-19 and the current situation.

2. Remove questions that your customers may find unnecessary. These include:

• Questions that signal to your customers that you don’t know them (an example for B2B is “Which of our products do you use?”) are unnecessary in most cases. You can find this information in your ERP or CRM system. You should also use it for the survey.
• Remove questions that are highly correlated or relatively similar. This will keep your questionnaire short and clear.

3. Digitize customer experience activities

• Most people are spending a lot of time online right now. Therefore, publish the link to your survey additionally on your website and social media. Use features like web sliders and web popups to reach more customers.
• Customer feedback is great but it only makes a difference if you implement improvements based on it. Therefore, use a customer experience management software (CEM system) to keep track of all information related to your customer feedback. With it, you not only manage your questionnaires, but also map the closed loop, distribute feedback throughout the company and trigger workflows for improvements.
• To digitize repetitive tasks, you can use Robotic Process Automation. There are RPA software providers that offer a free trial before installation and set up the solution for you.

4. Evaluation of your survey in Corona times.

• Create Word Clouds from your free text responses. This allows you to quickly see which words your customers use most often. This helps you discover new topics that are important to your customers now.
• Automatic topic discovery: Use your analytics software to automatically filter out new topics from your customer feedback.

5. Automatic notifications about your surveys.

Consider setting up notification alerts based on keywords like “virus” to notify teams who want to be notified of such feedback.

6. Closed loop

Calling customers after feedback to learn more? Great! Build an indicator to Covid-19 into your Closed Loop workflow. This will allow you to count exactly how many customers provide feedback related to Corona. You can then prioritize which crisis actions are truly urgent and important to your customers, and better respond to the current situation.

HeyForm support

You would like to survey your customers or employees, but do not have the time due to the current situation? HeyForm offer consulting on customer surveys and, if desired, surveys as a complete package at a fixed price including questionnaire design, shipping and evaluation!