Volunteer Surveys as a Customer Satisfaction Measurement

The Question: Are there downsides to using feedback gathered by volunteer surveys as an indicator of customer satisfaction?
The Question: Are there downsides to using feedback gathered by volunteer surveys as an indicator of customer satisfaction?
 
Answer: Volunteer surveys provide companies with direct insight about the services they are delivering to their customers. By tracking customer comments on written surveys via mail or email or what they say in IVR surveys, organizations learn about practices and policies that cause customers distress. [A note: The methodology of volunteer surveys is varied – on-site comment cards or kiosks, mailed questionnaires, Web surveys, automated IVR calls. All have in common the fact that participation is totally up to the customer, i.e., whether to fill out the comment card, mail back the questionnaire, click the Web survey link or accept or dial-in for the IVR call. This self-selection process contrasts with outbound, live telephone surveys where interviewers entice participation from a randomly selected group of customers.]
 
Used purely as a measurement system – i.e., comparing one group to another -- volunteer surveys provide managers with a reasonable scorecard assuming adequate participation. Wide discrepancies in participation rates among groups impact the ability to make good comparisons, for example. And very low participation rates can cause scores to be extremely volatile resulting in margins of error that make it difficult to make valid comparisons.
 
The real issue is how the information gathered by customer surveys is used. If survey data is used in making decisions about business practices, there are some inherent problems with volunteer surveys. 
 
First, dissatisfied customers typically participate in volunteer surveys in greater proportions than satisfied customers. It is not unusual to get rather bi-polar results – with very satisfied customers on one end of the spectrum and very dissatisfied on the other. The majority of customers – those in the middle of the pack in terms of satisfaction -- are not well represented, while dissatisfied customers tend to be over-represented in the survey results. The averages derived from most volunteer surveys do not accurately reflect the “real” levels of service companies are providing. For some managers, the fact of lower scores is reason enough to consider alternatives.
 
The more serious issue is that focusing on the comments of dissatisfied customers can lead companies to allocate resources for things like training, systems upgrades, refund or replacement policies and staffing inappropriately.  Building a service or product to satisfy the dissatisfied can be an expensive – not to mention ineffective – proposition. The “squeaky wheel” theory may work for disappointed customers, but it is a poor strategy for a business.
 
What’s the solution? Random sampling to achieve a statistically valid number of responses allows companies to make solid inferences about its entire customer population based on survey results.  And the number of surveys required to get this level of certainty is surprisingly small -- usually between 200 and 350 surveys per group per reporting period. Dialer systems randomly select participants from the entire customer population using formulas that assure there is no bias in the selection process. The bonus is having survey results with a small margin of error that managers and associates alike can buy into.

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