Positioning and messaging on Voice of the Customer programs to drive high response rates

Sam Quirke

G'day All! New member and first poster here.

I'm driving my organisation's VOC program. We've started with a Phase 1 Net Promoter System to gain a baseline NPS Score and feedback. This worked quite well (Hubspot into Salesforce, segmented data and a Close-Loop process).

I am developing Phase 2 now with a different platform and looking back at Phase 1, the main issue was with response rate. About 16% overall and only responses from a bit less than half of our accounts. Given that we hadn't surveyed before, we sent out a pre-emptive communication from our MD to clients giving them a heads up and why we were doing it. Still, not a great response and definitely a focus for improving in the second Phase of the program.

My questions for discussion:

• What are some strategies for positioning a VOC program with customers?
• How are people explaining their program to customers?
• What are you communicating to customers?
• What have you seen work well, and not work well?

This is in the context of medium to high touch SaaS, but would love to hear all perspectives!

 

Thanks,

Sam

Anita Toth

Congrats @Sam Quirke on the new VOC. My question is what the 'why' given in the preemptive communication?

Was it truly customer focused or was it more the typical "helps us help you'?

Low response rates to NPS and surveys tend to happen because

1) fatigue -- customers are seeing surveys everywhere
2) they don't get immediate value from answering them

Customers have to see a 'why' besides that it will improve services for them.

Make your VOC more personal to them.

This might mean asking questions on calls, in meetings and then -- most importantly CLOSE THE LOOP. ?

Here's a blog post on GGR on how to close the loop at scale as well as with individual customers.

Hope it helps.

https://www.gaingrowretain.com/blogs/anita-toth1/2020/12/03/closing-the-loop-to-increase-retention-churn-part-5?CommunityKey=1261a423-6343-48a3-a722-6c04f19eacc8&tab=recentcommunityblogsdashboard

G'day All! New member and first poster here.

I'm driving my organisation's VOC program. We've started with a Phase 1 Net Promoter System to gain a baseline NPS Score and feedback. This worked quite well (Hubspot into Salesforce, segmented data and a Close-Loop process).

I am developing Phase 2 now with a different platform and looking back at Phase 1, the main issue was with response rate. About 16% overall and only responses from a bit less than half of our accounts. Given that we hadn't surveyed before, we sent out a pre-emptive communication from our MD to clients giving them a heads up and why we were doing it. Still, not a great response and definitely a focus for improving in the second Phase of the program.

My questions for discussion:

• What are some strategies for positioning a VOC program with customers?
• How are people explaining their program to customers?
• What are you communicating to customers?
• What have you seen work well, and not work well?

This is in the context of medium to high touch SaaS, but would love to hear all perspectives!

 

Thanks,

Sam

David Ellin

Hi @Sam Quirke, welcome to the community. Great info from @Anita Toth, as always, and I'll add to it.

The low response can also come from a survey that's simply too long. How long was your survey - both in terms of # of questions and time to response (minutes)? Typically, you want to keep surveys to 7 or fewer questions with the ability to respond in less than 3 minutes. Telling the customer the survey can be answered in less than 2-3 minutes should also help the response rate. I'd also suggest sending a 'thank you' note after receiving their response. That should be an automation feature depending on which platform you're using.

Next, are you surveying the right people? Make sure the survey is targeted to people who know enough to provide feedback.

In terms of what to tell customers, I've found that it's great to let them know you're starting a survey program because you care about their feedback, want to know what they have to say, WILL ACT ON THEIR FEEDBACK, and will share actions taken based on their feedback.

Plenty more to share here but I'll touch on one more thing - non-respondents. It's important to follow up with non-respondents because they may be telling you something by not responding. Circle back with them.

Anita Toth

@David Ellin -- Your answer is the one I wrote in my head. ?

Great stuff. And I agree -- there's a lot to unpack around why response rates are low and how to raise them.

The great thing is that low response rates are easily fixable.

Happy to DM with you @Sam Quirke about how to get your response rates up. 

David Ellin

@Sam Quirke, @Andrew Marks from SuccessHACKER is hosting a Customer Success Leadership Roundtable panel discussion on Voice of the Customer programs on Wednesday, March 17 at 2:00 pm ET. You can register at https://lnkd.in/eiK58QW.

Sam Quirke

Hi Anita, thanks so much for your response! 

On fatique, we'll be moving forward with 6mth rate to avoid that. Your second point is definitely something for us to think about, especially when closing the loop. I think it'll also be important to highlight where customer feedback collected through our VOC program has input to product and the wider company, so customers know that the time they're taking to give feedback will have an impact on their experience. 

Thanks for the blog post, I'll have a read!

Cheers, Sam

Sam Quirke

Hi David, thanks for the welcome! 

Survey was 2 questions, Reccomend Score or Primary Reason open text. I'm very concious of survey length as our VOC program matures and we add to this and further surveys (post implementation survey for example). 

Good point on the right people - we're going to be reviewing our comms list to ensure the right people are on it for surveying, not just all contacts on the account. 

Agree totally with letting them know, we did this in Phase 1 with an email to all clients, but we realise that wasn't enough. This time we'll be having the conversation in meetings/calls prior to Phase 2 kicking off. I'm expecting this to be a key driver in an improved response rate so it'll be important to get the messaging right. We'll step back and think about the WHY again, and talk about how we communicate that to our clients. 

Thanks, Sam

Sam Quirke

Thanks @David Ellin, would love to join but 4am my time is a bit of a stretch! Are these disussions recorded? Fortunatly my manager has got us all on SuccessHACKER now so looking forward to learning alot through those courses.

Thanks,
Sam

CC: @Andrew Marks

Andrew Marks

@Sam Quirke, all of our webinars are published to our site within a week, along with a transcript.