Why are your customer survey initiatives failing? — Part 5

Most companies regularly undertake customer surveys; however often find it difficult to realise value from them. Here’s our take on some of the big reasons why these initiatives can fail and some practical tips on what you could do about them:

1. Culture

2. Lack of executive buy-in

3. Organisational misalignment

4. Not asking the right questions

5. Analysis paralysis (focus of this story)

6. Undertaking surveys manually

Big data used to be scary (still is for a lot of businesses). Then came business intelligence tools, easy visualisation of data and lots and lots of analytical dashboards. It was meant to become easier to make data driven business decisions to solve customer issues. However, we’ve become increasingly inundated with more and more information such that ‘analysis paralysis’ inevitably takes over.

In the quest for that perfect, risk free, completely optimised solution that will give the executives the highest return on the investment; we’re diving deeper and deeper, overthinking and as a result no actions or decisions are being taken —while, the customer continues to struggle…

Here are a few tips to help you escape the ‘analysis paralysis’ cycle and to help you do something for your customers.

Why can’t we escape?

Analysis paralysis can occur due to a number of reasons, that could be influenced by both personal traits and circumstances as well as the organisational culture:

1. You’re afraid of making the ‘wrong’ choice. Unless you’re working at a very entrepreneurial organisation, there’s a very high chance that you’re not going to be rewarded or even tolerated for making a mistake. Your fear of failure keeps you from making any decisions and this is why many corporates have elaborate and complicated decision making matrices.
2. You actually don’t have clear insights into the data you’re examining and as a result, the results are inconclusive and it becomes very difficult to make a decision. At this point, you need to ask yourself why you’re not getting the right insights from your data. Is the data flawed? Are you collecting data from the ‘wrong’ customers? Are you collecting data in the ‘wrong’ way?
3. You have good insights and there are multiple options available to solve the customer’s issue. However, you’re unable to logically narrow down to a solution.
4. You’re a perfectionist; and this means you’re keep on collecting data and undertaking more analysis until you’re 100% sure of making a decision.

Take a small step!

Every feedback received from a customer is an opportunity for you to interact with them. Listen to the customer and figure out how you can solve their particular issue and then follow up with them both before and after you’ve initiated action. Doing this incrementally could solve the experience for a larger customer segment and could also help you to better understand the root causes of issues to make a bigger and bolder decision.

Similarly, if you’re getting feedback for issues across the customer journey — start by addressing issues incrementally rather than thinking about how you could make major changes to influence the full journey.

Don’t attempt a BHAG to early!

Most management and executives are risk averse when it comes to implementing big changes. High risk of failures, high time and cost investment, business cases that do not justify ROI, etc.

So instead, why not focus on quick wins? These are initiatives that are quick and relatively cheaper (and usually don’t need a lot of escalations and approvals) to implement and can bring early improvement for both the customer and the company.

If you’re able to show delivery on a number of quick wins, it will be easier for you to move on to that BHAG. Read our related article on how you can get executive support for your customer experience initiatives more easily.

Two heads are better than one!

Sounds pretty straight forward, but we’re still amazed at how difficult it is to collaborate in certain organisations. Get people within your company (doesn’t have to be in the same team or even the same department) to sense check your rationale and help you make those scary decisions.

The other thing to bear in mind is that ‘perfect’ decisions and near impossible to make and at times you just have to trust your gut as long as you’ve got a reasonable amount of insights (70–80%) to back up your decision.

Measure impact and correct!

Once you’ve kicked off your initiatives, make sure you actively monitor them to ensure that they are having the desired outcomes. If they aren’t go back to understand why not and take corrective action.

Your initial data collected, that you’ve used to get to the decision, should act as your reference/baseline against which improvements and changes can be noted.

Talk to us! We’re keen to hear your thoughts. Is analysis paralysis an issue you’ve faced or are currently facing? What’s worked for you and what hasn’t? Do you have any other good practices to share?