The Richest Source of Customer Feedback Isn’t Another Survey – It’s Your Call Center

Leaders are investing more than ever in understanding the perspective, interests, and needs of their customers. The popularity of the Net Promoter Score and Voice of the Customer surveys have certainly increased awareness of, and interest in, customer experience. This is a great thing. But surveys of any sort still leave a tremendous amount of customer feedback lingering and untapped on the table. 

Surveys, whether they are a single question or 30+ questions are limited in value because they:

• Require solicitation: A customer must decide that they have the interest and time to provide feedback to the organization. 
• Are retrospective: If a customer chooses to respond, they are recollecting their experience. They may leave out some insights that are only discovered when observing “in the moment” customer interactions with your business.
• Are dependent upon response rates: While a single question survey may achieve 30-40% response rate (a terrific feat compared to multi-question surveys), dependency on survey responses to know how customers feel leaves a huge gap in understanding.

Given the limitations of surveys, how can organizations harvest deeper insights from a broader segment of their customer base? 

Too often, organizations overlook their call center as the richest source of customer data.

Sure, call centers may record and monitor calls for key compliance or quality criteria.  But the value of those conversations is much more expansive than call center efficiency and quality. The data that resides within those recorded calls will unlock mysteries to questions like:

•  What does our customer really need and want?
• Are we fulfilling our brand promises and reflecting our corporate values?
• What would it take to increase our sales?
• How should I improve my product/service?
• What do customers think of our website and other digital assets?

Customer feedback provided via a call center provides a different perspective than surveys because there is no need for insights to be solicited or recollected. What’s more, businesses have access to 100% of these customer interactions.

The best part of this wellspring of customer feedback is that most mid-size to large companies already own it. The investment required is not about generating a database, but rather listening for what is there.