Is Your Brand Losing Customers to Survey Fatigue?

Your company’s quest for customer feedback can backfirgueste when customers feel badgered by too many surveys and survey reminders.

On a call with my wireless carrier about a billing issue last week, the customer service rep asked if I could answer a short survey before getting off the phone. I told her that I was busy and didn’t have time, since I was working.

“I’m not allowed to end the call if you don’t take the survey,” she told me. So, I answered her questions reluctantly, feeling slightly annoyed at being force-fed a survey to keep the customer service rep from apparently spending  the rest of her life unable to take a new call. Then the agent asked if I could stay on the line after the call to complete yet another survey.

I told her no, and we ended the call. But the pushiness of this brand left me with a bad impression, since the company obviously has a practice of ignoring customer boundaries when it comes to its surveys.

I had to take that first survey whether I liked it or not. But then they wanted even more feedback. I like my wireless company, so they didn’t lose my business over this. But I ended the call with another annoying experience on top of the one I called about. So, if they mess up the billing again or I have another issue, this brand will be in three-strike territory.

Some people don’t mind taking one survey or maybe even two surveys. But survey overkill can drive other customers away.

What is survey fatigue?

Survey fatigue is the term for when your audience “becomes bored or disinterested” in completing customer surveys and its’ typically linked with two causes, according to customer experience software provider Qualtrics:

• Customers are so overwhelmed by the high volume of surveys they receive that they decide they don’t want to fill out even one more survey.
• Customers grow frustrated with taking the survey, stopping midway due to too many questions and open text fields or speed through the survey just to get it over with, which can result in inaccurate data.

“Believe it or not, customers don’t love surveys quite as much as you do,” says Qualtrics.

“Yes, they’re happy to respond and give their feedback, but it’s important to remember that every time you request feedback, you’re asking them to put in effort. And the more effort you ask a customer to put in, the less likely they’re going to want to do it.”

Read on for four tips on how to avoid turning customers off with survey fatigue.

1. Ask direct questions

“If respondents don’t understand what you want from them, they have to think harder about their answers,” says Qualtrics. “So, keep your questions direct and unambiguous.”

2. Pay attention to survey organization

Asking customers to complete a poorly designed survey that contains too many open-ended questions or “questions that serve no immediate purpose” opens the door to survey fatigue, according to hospitality and customer experience software provider Opinionator.

3. Don’t ask questions within a question

It’s easy to make the mistake of cramming two questions into one, causing the customer to lose focus and think too much, making them likely to dump the survey before it’s finished, says Qualtrics:

“For example, ‘What is the most stylish and affordable clothing brand?’ contains two questions. It’s better to ask two separate questions, ‘What is the most stylish clothing brand?’ followed by ‘What is the most affordable clothing brand?’”

4. Keep open text fields to a minimum.

Most people don’t get excited about explaining their reasons for choosing a certain option such as rating their call center experience “excellent,” “good” or “poor.” That’s just more effort they must put into completing your brand’s survey.

“If you’re using open text questions as a follow up to another question, say, for example, to find out more about why someone chose a particular option in the previous question, you can use display logic to present it only to those respondents it’s most relevant to. So, think carefully about your intention with a question,” says Qualtrics.

For example, if your customer service team relies on open text responses to follow up with unhappy customers, Qualtrics recommends requesting an open text answer for more detail only from customers who give a score showing their dissatisfaction such as “somewhat” or “extremely dissatisfied.”