At some point as your business grows, it’s necessary to gather feedback from your customers so that you can better understand their wants, needs, and pain points, along with evaluating their experience interacting with your company. Some companies choose to hire a professional market research firm while others think it best to conduct their own DIY customer research.
Let’s take a look at the pitfalls of a DIY customer research approach.
We worked with a B2B company for several years conducting an annual in-depth customer experience survey. Our goal was to evaluate their interactions and experiences with the company and identify opportunities for improvement. As part of the project, the expectation was to follow up directly with customers that had issues or complaints so that specific action plans could be put in place to track, resolve and rectify problems.
One particular year, the company wanted to save money and decided to conduct the survey themselves using internal resources vs. hiring our organization, as they had in the past. As a result, they were on their own to set up the survey, manage the data collection process and analyze and evaluate the results.
We followed up with them after the project was completed to see how it all went. What we learned was somewhat surprising. Turns out that during the set-up of the survey, they completely missed including all customer contact information in the data file they were using. They were able to gather feedback from over 400 customers, but because of this error, they did not know which customer said what. There was no way for them to connect the responses to the customer that provided that feedback so no form of action or follow up could be taken with any customer that had an issue for resolution. Chalk this up to a rookie mistake.
This error was a big eye opener for our customer. While it was good to gather feedback, it was doubly detrimental because they couldn’t do anything with it and those customers that did have issues likely were not happy that they didn’t get the follow up that they were expecting probably frustrating them further.
While it may seem like a good idea to save money and try your own hand at conducting research, you could end up losing a lot more than you think or not truly getting the value you are expecting. Working with a professional market research firm that conducts these projects day in and day out will ensure that not only will the project be managed and executed successfully but also that you will receive valuable insights that you can use to improve and strategically grow your company.
Consider these Customer Acceleration tips that will help you make more money from your customers and make them happier in the process! Also watch my video on this topic, Risky Results with a DIY Survey Approach.
