The Ultimate Answer: Defeating Fred Reichheld's Objections to Online Surveys
As those who follow this blog know, iPerceptions has been a disruptive force in market research over the past few years, challenging long-established norms and agitating for the voice of the customer in the context of real online experiences. Our growing list of Fortune 1000 clients and the increasing preeminence of the iPSI as the gold standard for VOC research both attest to the fact that our way of doing things has powerful traction in the market. Without a doubt, the webValidator and the iPSI have opened up the hearts and minds of real website visitors and placed mountains of insights at the fingertips of our clients.
Currently, we do business in a space where the leading minds are propounding the importance of having a multiplicity of streams of insight at your disposal to drive meaningful action. Yet Fred Reichheld argues for an opposite, monochromatic approach; he would have you believe that a net promoter score alone is the magic bullet for gauging customer satisfaction and brand success. He belittles the effectiveness of online surveys and questions whether they should even have a place in a CRM platform.
We’ve put forward a white paper, which meets Reichheld’s objections and then goes further, putting forward the ultimate answer to anyone questioning the merit of online customer satisfaction surveys. We’ve outlined ten reasons why our surveys absolutely do not fail:
#10: Online surveys are getting more and more unobtrusive
#9: Listening to the right people helps unearth the most actionable insight
#8: With good data, employees are empowered to take action
#7: Surveys establish objective industry standards
#6: Customer satisfaction links to long-term sustainability
#5: Targeted solutions bring immense value to companies
#4: The iPSI is the emerging standard for knowing customer satisfaction
#3: Understanding the totality of the web experience is key
#2: Online surveys provide a safe forum for expression
#1: Respect for the customer improves communication within a company
Reichheld is a pioneer, no doubt. His mode of thinking, however, is very much informed by the realities of an analogue ecosystem, when customer behavior fit easily into a very simple and predictable taxonomy. But the rules of the game are different now.
Can a net promoter score fully summarize a technology like Facebook, with its myriad layers of interaction? Of course not. Only the survey-powered iPSI is powerful enough to fully account for the totality of the visitor experience in this brave new world of Web 2.0.
To download a copy of the white paper, please click here.
