Avoiding Survey Fatigue: How to Filter Your Existing Customer Data

We all know the age-old comparison “like looking for a needle in a haystack” and we’ve all had experiences that make that saying relevant. While searching for your car keys may feel like looking for a needle in a haystack, sorting through your customer data shouldn’t.

You spend time and resources collecting customer data in order to gain the type of insights that can guide your business decisions, but sometimes the path from point A to point B can feel unclear. When you have a multitude of data from multiple channels, insights on one specific topic can seem hard to find. In fact, the task of picking through masses of data for one specific thing can seem so tedious and daunting that you may be tempted to just send a one-off survey out to your customers on a specific topic.

While this technique may be fine every once-in-a-while, using surveys as your main data collection method puts your customers at risk of one terrible CX pitfall: survey fatigue. If their inbox is flooded with surveys every few days, your customers are more likely to be irritable and less likely to give you the valuable feedback you need.

So what do you do? Do you look for the needle in the data haystack or do you risk survey fatigue? Luckily, there is an alternative option that gets you the answers you need in a timely manner: data filtering and prioritization.

Today’s most effective CX software features tools that will allow you to sort through the data you already have to find the information you need to create premium customer experiences. Tools such as Explore™ allow you to slice-and-dice data in multiple ways for multiple insights. To give you an idea of what this looks like, I will discuss three of these filters and how they can be effective problem solvers.

1. Location

Sorting through data by location is endlessly useful. Let’s say you want to see how a new product is doing in specific regions. You simply specify the region on your platform overview and search the product. Your CX platform will automatically sort through existing data to bring up product relevant customer feedback for that area. In filtering your data by location, you have an understanding of that area so you can make decisions that make good business sense and satisfy your customers.

2. Negative Score and Sentiment

Closing the loop with customer complaints is one of the ultimate goals of customer experience. In fact, 70% of the time a person will become a repeat customer when a complaint is resolved in that customer’s favor. The benefits of solving customer complaints are obvious, but it is time-consuming to try to solve every problem as it comes in. To resolve effectively, you need a strategy. Filtering your data by negative score and sentiment can give you that strategy. Simply sort, see what customers are saying, and come up with a way to address the issue. Then you can contact customers to let them know how you are resolving the issues. You’ve saved time and your customers feel heard: It’s a definite win-win!

3. Time

Sorting data by time has two major benefits. Firstly, it allows you to spot trends over time. For instance, you can identify which products are more popular at which time of the year and make decisions to reflect that insight. Secondly, you can put out fires before they start. When you sort your data by time, you can see the feedback that has come in most recently, identify anomalies, and address them before they become a greater problem.

Filtering data not only saves you time, but it also gives you the actionable insights you need to make your customers feel heard.