Your Customers Don't Have Time For Your Surveys

So Why Aren’t Surveys Being Completed?

The simple answer is that people simply do not have the time to fill out surveys at the place they’re using the product. For example in a cafe or in a store, they’re focussed on enjoying their drink or selecting their goods. Your survey is a distraction and the longer it is, the more likely they are to ignore it. And let’s not forget, the real immediate benefit of the survey is to you, not to your customer. That’s a polite way of saying that the survey is irrelevant to them.

Why are ‘Real Time’ surveys important?

The biggest issue with surveys in today’s commercial world is that they are not conducted in ‘real time’. To explain what we mean, think of yourself as the customer. The survey is not conducted during the time you are consuming a service. In the case of some big companies like Marks and Spencer or Starbucks, they are sent to you within 24 hours or a similar time frame in an email format. Smaller companies might have some feedback forms for you to take away and return at a later date.

The problem is that most people will disregard the survey because they assume it will take too long. They have better things to do! And the minority of people that do go ahead and complete your survey are no longer in the process of consuming your service. The fact they aren’t being filled out during or immediately after the moment of purchase means that the feedback isn’t, therefore, useful. At best you’re getting someone’s afterthoughts on the matter, and not an accurate representation of how they feel there and then during the use of the service.

What Does This Mean For the Survey World?

Sadly, this means that there will most likely be a continued decrease in response rates and validity of the surveys that companies ask their customers to fill out. As a result of this, the traditional methods of surveying are slowly losing popularity and becoming less and less useful as a means for gathering information as time goes by.

A Way Forward

You need a new way of polling customers for their opinions, very quickly, and without inconveniencing them.

That’s where Ombea Insights fits in. We won’t go into the details here but Ombea Insights is a platform that helps you measure, understand, and act on real-time feedback from people as they pass by. It’s simple enough that they won’t even break their stride while they tell you what they think!

Learn more at www.ombea.com.

About Ombea

Ombea provides leading solutions for capturing and analyzing real-time feedback. Governments, Fortune 100 corporations and top-rated universities across the globe use our solutions to visualize feedback, generate insight, and make evidence-based decisions. This helps them make their students smarter, their customers happier and their employees more engaged. Please visit ombea.com for more information.