Ask Abby Nicely: How Often Should I Be Surveying My Clients?
Dear Abby,
How often should I be sending out surveys? Does survey frequency make a difference?
Survey Frequency Depends on Your Customer Journey
I often get asked, what is the best cadence to survey customers? The quick answer to survey frequency is: it depends, but we generally recommend you touch every customer at the moments of truth in their customer journey.
Moments of Truth
What exactly is a “moment of truth?” For some companies that might include 'after onboarding' or 'first invoice'. For others that may include ‘30 days before customer's renewal date’. Still others may trigger a survey 'after a call to the call center' or 'after a service call'. These are just a few of the possible moments of truth to measure, and yours will be based on your specific customer journey.But what if your moments of truth are few and far between? You can still survey your customers on a more regular cadence, but we do recommend no more than once every 90 days for each customer.
Why Survey Frequency Matters
Think about it like this, everyone has probably found themselves in group texts. At first, you’re engaged and paying attention, but soon, you just ignore the messages and suddenly you have 87 text notifications. Maybe you even leave the group text! We’ve all been there. I’m in a text group at least once a week, especially with holidays approaching. That’s why I’m a big fan of a personal text versus a group one.NPS can be approached with the same mentality. By surveying your clients no more than every 90 days, you avoid survey fatigue and still touch each customer once a quarter.
A Trickle not a Blast
Another best practice is sending out these surveys in a trickle, instead of blast.What do I mean by trickle? Let’s say someone has 450 customers. If we want to reach out to everyone once a quarter, you can split the list into 90 surveys a day. By sending out your surveys slowly but surely in a drip campaign, you’re able to take real-time action on the feedback provided. Taking the next best action after receiving feedback is the fuel for your customer experience success. Why after each comment? Chances are that a pain point for one customer is likely affecting others, so acting on this is likely to improve your customer sentiment overall.In short, you should survey your customers slowly and steadily at the moments of truth in their journey and no more than every 90 days. Don’t forget the most important part — action that feedback.Want to learn more about NPS Best Practices? Download our white paper on The New NPS Best Practices.Have any questions about how to set any of these suggestions up? Don’t hesitate to send me an email!
