Is the concept of the customer survey as outdated as the gold watch presented to a career company employee upon retirement?
The history of Maritz is rooted in both traditions, and also savvy marketing. Once a maker of jewelry and engraved watches, Maritz made the legendary gold watch, and other employee incentives, de rigueur in corporate culture. From there, Maritz transitioned to the research business and data collection.
A gold standard for customer satisfaction surveys, the 2019 New Vehicle Customer Study (NVCS), will be released by MaritzCX for its 50th year by the Utah-based research firm. According to president and CEO Mike Sinoway, this automotive survey of the entire industry evolved from Maritz’s relationship with General Motors in the ‘70s. Today, the report is the de facto choice in automotive, pooling together data from car makers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and regional and individual dealers. Participants share their proprietary data in exchange for access to the resulting survey of the entire industry.
And how has the survey evolved in half a century? Paper-based mail surveys have ceded to electronic feedback in 95 percent of the research. Other offline methods, including phone interviews, are used depending on mobile and computer usage in a particular region of the world. Perhaps more crucial to MaritzCX’s business, customer attitudes toward surveys have also evolved.
“The whole customer survey industry continues to morph very quickly,” Sinoway said. “Most customers don’t really want to take surveys. They are inundated and saturated, from being asked about the last flight they were on to their most recent retail transaction, and so the survey itself as a feedback mechanism needs to go away and be replaced by other feedback channels.”
If customers are dissatisfied with taking surveys, what are customer satisfaction researchers left to do?
This apparent problem has already solved itself by advances in tech, specifically “predictive understanding of consumer behavior,” Sinoway explained. “Predictive models allow a comprehensive view of all customers, based on actual behavior versus asking them about their level of satisfaction.” He cautions, however, that “the level of accuracy in predictive models varies greatly, depending on the validity of the algorithms.” He says he doesn’t see surveys going away just yet.
In Sinoway’s estimation, consumers’ awareness of the data they share produces a higher expectation that companies will automatically know what a customer needs, instead of having to ask. Because so many common objects have chips in them, “every aspect of consumer behavior can be tracked,” he added.
“The transition in the [customer satisfaction] industry is less about asking and more about knowing how they feel, being proactive to respond to those situations,” Sinoway stated. “The CX industry is less about measurement and more about what companies do based on the customer situation.”
In this realm, MaritzCX makes recommendations, but the responsibility is on the company to respond. Sinoway sees an increased use of geofencing and geotargeting to zero in on a particular customer situation. But the business has to be up front about this knowledge, to avoid being caught in “the creepy zone.” Part of the conversation in CX, through chatbots and personalized questions, has to include how the company knows what they know, in order to appear transparent and trustworthy to customers.
“The other trend I see,” said Sinoway, “is companies responding not just to dissatisfied customers, but to all customers. Because surveys have reached a saturation point, customers are tired of them and tired of seeing no change after providing feedback. As the industry determines how to make the input more valuable, they need to show acknowledgement of how it was part of the decision-making process. We can’t just collect survey data and not get back to the customer at all.”
