• Twitter
  • Linkedin
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • email
Sensei MarketingSensei MarketingSensei MarketingSensei Marketing
  • HOME
  • SERVICES
    • Influence Marketing
    • Web Design & Development
    • Loyalty & Rewards Programs
    • Advocacy & Community Programs
    • Pay Per Click
    • Conversion Rate Optimization
    • Content Marketing
    • Customer Analysis Report
    • Email Marketing
    • Social Media
  • BONDAI PLATFORM
  • OUR WORK
  • BLOG
  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT

The Consumer Survey Is Dead?

By Sam Fiorella | Customer Development | 0 comment | 12 January, 2013 | 1

Digital ConversationSerious question: is the customer survey dead?  Outside of linear data collection, I argue that there’s more insight to be gained from what customers say about you to others than what they say about you to you.

Collecting survey data is like counting the number of followers a business has on Facebook or Twitter. You’ll add more numbers to your pile of data but have you really learned anything?

As a basis for strategic planning, surveys are notoriously fallible because they can be easily skewed to dictate an outcome; surveys rarely include context or external situational factors that more accurately indicate the customer’s opinion and attitude.

To even attempt to glean some insights from customer surveys, marketers must consider the data collection method, visual layout,  respondent effort requested, question wording, question order, format, structure, behaviors to be measured, etc. Even with all that information, one must accept a margin of error based on the sample size, accuracy of data input, etc.

Influencing the Conversation

Marketers are waking up to the fact that they don’t control the online brand dialogue, which creates (or re-creates) the brand’s public perception and persona, so they’re forced to sway the conversation instead of controlling it. Influencing the overall message – or the voice of specific people within the conversation – requires more insight than that which surveys provide.

To have an impact on brand dialogue or brand sentiment among a business’ audience, marketers must use text analytics to understand the undertone of conversations and what’s truly driving them. Surveys may provide indications of current trends but that same data also prevents analysts from reading the trend currents.

Further, proper use of text analytics in social conversation monitoring provides better direction on how a business brand may insert itself into the online dialogue. Without real-time sentiment analysis, brand missteps are too common an occurrence as witnessed in the recent Starbucks Twitter debacle. Public relations firms and PR professionals using analytics tools must take a more active role in the marketing process by inserting the audience’s intent and sentiment into pre-campaign planning.

Conversation Analytics in Sales & Marketing

PR and marketing teams must begin to lean heavily on tools such as Mantis’ PulseAnalytics™ to build more convertible lead funnels.  Visualizing what is driving the sentiment and tone of conversations among prospects will enable businesses to better nurture those prospects in the sales funnel and increase sales conversion ratios. Further, the growing popularity of the Social CRM practice and software requires more than the collection of prospects’ social profiles; Social CRM methodologies must include textual and contextual analysis of the conversations among those being monitored to become an actionable sales and marketing tactic.

For marketing and customer-service professionals, segmenting and analyzing the conversations of existing customers provides true insights into the real customer experience and customer intent. Surveys may report the share of wallet received from a customer or their stated intent to re-purchase in the future; however, those results cannot be relied upon as accurate indications of a customer’s future action.  Sentiment analysis is a more accurate indication of a customer’s true satisfaction and loyalty.

Happy customers are not automatically brand advocates; loyal customers are not brand advocates by default. Customer advocates have an emotional connection created by their overall experiences with the brand, the product and the employees they’ve engaged with. Surveys may help identify those customer sub-sets but text analysis of their online conversations will aid marketing and customer-service teams to more effectively drive them from “satisfied customer” to “brand advocate”.

Be it for customer acquisition or customer development strategies, surveys have become dinosaurs in the marketing world.  Text analysis, not customer surveying should now be the standard operating procedure for customer insight, market research and product development,

Do you agree? Is the survey as a marketing analysis tool dead? Join the debate in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Customer Development, Customer Experience, Marketing

Sam Fiorella

Sam Fiorella is a Partner here at Sensei Marketing, a consulting and technology firm focused on aiding global companies grow their business value through improved customer experiences. Professionally, Sam has also co-authored: Influence Marketing: How To Create, Manage and Measure Brand Advocates and is a Professor of Marketing at Seneca College and an Adjunct Professor at Rutgers Center for Management Development. Sam is also the co-founder of YellowIsForHello, a not-for-profit corporation that seeks to decrease the rate of suicide among students through peer-to-peer connections.

More posts by Sam Fiorella

Related Post

  • Stop Pandering to Loyalty Programs – A Rant

    By Sam Fiorella | 0 comment

    Got points? Perks? Discounts? Of course you do. We all do. Is your 11th coffee free?  Do you get a 15% discount on a $7.99 shirt cleaning bill after you’ve invested $100 in the dry-cleaner’sRead more

  • Refocusing Loyalty Programs on the Customer

    By Sam Fiorella | 0 comment

    Customer loyalty programs first launched with great marketing hype surrounding their intention to thank and reward the business’ most loyal customers.  Truth be told, they were conceived as part of a customer acquisition strategy andRead more

  • CEOs – The Blind Leading the Socially Connected

    By Sam Fiorella | 0 comment

    A report released by Domo and CEO.com this week highlights the dichotomy of online engagement: the American population has increased their adoption of social chatter in their daily activity yet the concept is barely aRead more

  • Marketing on Tap Ep 14

    Marketing on Tap Episode 14: Airlines from Hell, Customer Experience, and Employee Influencers

    By Danny Brown | 0 comment

    Week after week, it seems we’re bombarded with poor customer experience examples when it comes to airline companies. From dragging passengers off planes to charging to change the flight of a family whose 3 yearRead more

  • Technology and Business Intelligence – Not Always Good Partners

    By Sam Fiorella | 2 comments

    There’s no question that the Internet, social media, and digital technologies have changed the business landscape and the manner in which it operates. From the way business communicates with – and advertises to – consumersRead more

0 comment

Leave a Comment

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Home
Services
BONDAI Platform
Our Work
Blog
About
Contact
100 University Avenue
Suite 500
Toronto ON
Canada
M5J 1V6
Phone: 1.416.484.1400
  • HOME
  • SERVICES
    • Influence Marketing
    • Web Design & Development
    • Loyalty & Rewards Programs
    • Advocacy & Community Programs
    • Pay Per Click
    • Conversion Rate Optimization
    • Content Marketing
    • Customer Analysis Report
    • Email Marketing
    • Social Media
  • BONDAI PLATFORM
  • OUR WORK
  • BLOG
  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT
Sensei Marketing