Which is better one-time or continuous customer feedback?

Have you ever wondered how you can collect customer feedback with less time and administrative effort and still increase customer satisfaction? Today we would like to give you an answer to this question and, in this context, show you what effects one-time as well as ongoing customer surveys have on your company’s success. In the process, it quickly becomes clear what advantages result from continuous feedback.

Are one-off customer surveys sufficient?

You have probably already carried out random one-off surveys, for example by means of telephone surveys or handwritten questionnaires. For some of you, this form of opinion polling may be sufficient to ascertain the status quo of your products or services. Others will complain that the insights gained are only a snapshot and that certain factors for answering the questions may have changed.

Whether one-time surveys or repeat surveys make more sense should be made dependent on determining current changes, such as opinions on newly introduced products or services, and whether they should be compared with each other.

The best one-time survey is of little use to you if it only maps opinions from a certain number of customers from a period in the past. Products and services can change over time for a variety of reasons. A one-time customer survey is often not sufficient for this purpose, because only by means of second or further surveys can you find out whether the measures that resulted from the results of a previous survey also delivered the desired changes. Evaluating feedback collected over a defined period of time also generally takes longer and is more prone to errors than recurring feedback received in real-time due to potentially large sample data.

What are the advantages of continuous customer feedback?

If you attach more importance to a continuous dialog with your customers, you can better invest the time you need for a one-time survey in implementing a system that allows you to have an uncomplicated and flexible dialog with your customers and thus regularly recurring feedback. Continuous customer feedback, which can be delivered using smartphones, tablets, or terminals, allows you to respond immediately to individual feedback, react to changes in individual customer satisfaction and initiate appropriate measures. You automatically measure the effectiveness of the initiated measures through the constantly incoming feedback, and not only at the next one-time survey on customer loyalty or satisfaction.

The evaluation effort is also reduced and, in the best case, eliminated altogether, namely if customer feedback or ratings are directly incorporated into the corresponding statistics and the evaluation is available at the push of a button if required. If the running costs for such a system cause you a headache, first ask yourself how much-satisfied customers are worth to you.

Remember, keeping satisfied customers is less expensive than gaining new ones.

A one-time survey can also be at the same price level as an ongoing survey, or even more expensive and time-consuming. The fact that many problems can be eliminated at an early stage and processes optimized also leads to cost savings and, within your company, to an improved working atmosphere, thus increasing employee satisfaction and motivation. These factors in turn have a beneficial effect on employee productivity.

If your point is that responding to customer feedback on a regular basis represents a time-consuming extra effort, weigh up whether it doesn’t make more sense to respond to a relatively small amount of feedback on an ongoing basis than to be confronted with a huge number of feedbacks once.

Conclusion

Regular customer feedback can have an enormous positive impact on the transparency and quality of your relationship with your customers. It enables you to have a continuous process of improvement and mutual exchange, where customers feel that they are taken seriously and that they are in good hands with your service. The growing trust in you prevents them from leaving for your competitors. As a result, you increase customer loyalty and satisfaction, which in turn gives you a competitive edge over your rivals.