Surveys Aren't Enough

When surveys fall flat, the real story still lives in customer conversations, behaviors, and signals. In this episode, we explore how to move from survey programs to real feedback strategies—ones that capture those signals, connect them to outcomes, and drive action leaders can feel.

You’ll hear how to combine quick, purposeful interviews, observational studies, and analytics for a full picture of what customers think, feel, and do. We also unpack where AI fits in—how NLP, speech analytics, and social listening reveal patterns at scale, while humans still guide the questions and actions.

From frontline insights to early warnings of silent churn, we cover practical ways to detect issues, act fast, and close the loop. You’ll leave with five essentials for building a connected feedback ecosystem and turning listening into lasting improvement.

Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com
Experience Investigators Website -- https://experienceinvestigators.com

Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/)

Episode Transcript

Jeannie Walters (00:00):
Are you finding that surveys are still useful,
but not necessarily giving youthe full story?
Then listen in to this episodeof Experience Action.

Listener Question (00:10):
Hi, Jeannie.
Uh quick question for you.
Surveys don't really work forus.
Our clients rarely respond, andwhen they do, it's often vague
or too late to act on.
What are some better ways wecan listen to what our customers
are really going through?
Thank you.

Jeannie Walters (00:30):
All right, this is such a rich question and
something that I know a lot ofcustomer experience leaders are
dealing with.
So let's dive in.
Here's what I want you to thinkabout.
First of all, instead ofthinking about a survey program,
I want you to think aboutbuilding a true feedback
strategy.
Now you hear me talk aboutstrategy a lot because in

(00:53):
customer experience, for somereason, we skip it sometimes.
We go straight to the tactics,we go straight to measurement.
What I want you to do is firstof all understand what your
feedback strategy is.
We want a listening map.
We want to really understandwhere those conversations are
happening and go there insteadof totally relying on the

(01:15):
feedback that customers arebeing asked for specifically to
provide to us.
So this means we want to diveinto things like interviews,
observational work, socialchannels, service channels,
forums, all the places thatcustomers are actually sharing
feedback based on their trueexperience.

(01:36):
And now we can optimize this byleveraging the power of
artificial intelligence tosurface the silent customer
issues and scale theme detectionso we know where to prioritize
our efforts around improving thecustomer experience, innovating
that experience, and makingsure that we are delivering

(01:58):
those business results that areincredibly important to our
organization.
So we want to make sure we arethe humans who are guiding the
AI throughout this.
Let's talk about a fewspecifics.
First of all, consider doingsome quick customer interviews.
Now, I will say this does nothave to be scientifically

(02:21):
significant all the time becausesometimes, and I know my data
people, I know you're hearing megoing, wait, stop.
But sometimes a few interviewsare enough to really surface
those emotional responses tohelp us pull some really
powerful quotes from customers.
That's what moves things,that's what moves our leaders to

(02:43):
actually want to invest in theresources we need.
So instead of just looking atsurvey results, we are actually
sharing with them.
I saw this in the face of theperson I was interviewing, and
they shared this incrediblequote.
Now, if you do several ofthese, AI can be really helpful
in helping you pull from thetranscript those quotes, those

(03:03):
themes, and even recommendedfollow-ups so that you can both
close the loop, as that's soimportant to do with customers,
but also we want to getemotional context at scale.
So that's the first thing Iwould consider.
The next thing we want toobserve, we want to make sure
that we are going where thecustomer goes, how they actually

(03:24):
use our products and services.
Things like follow me studiesor mystery shopping can reveal
behavior and uh even emotionthat customers are not
necessarily going to share on asurvey.
So we can validate some of thisby just observing customers.
We do a lot of this work atExperience Investigators.

(03:47):
Whenever we do journey mappingwith our clients, we also
include observational work wherewe go and actually see how is
this working for customerstoday?
What are they doing?
Timing how long it takes forpeople to stand in line,
watching how they use the app,all of those things.
Now, observation can also beused with analytics.

(04:07):
So the way people are behavingthrough your digital channels
can tell you a lot about howthey're actually experiencing
your products and services andtheir customer journey.
Another thing to do is reallymind that unstructured feedback
that we get.
We often have in surveysopen-ended text.

(04:28):
We have verbatim directly fromcustomers.
So we might already have somehigh-level sentiment analysis.
I would say if you can, takethis one step further with uh
natural language processing,NLP, and speech analytics.
A lot of the tools out thereavailable today have resources
like this.
So think about things like whatdoes voice to text calls, what

(04:53):
are they telling us?
What are the chats telling us?
What are the service ticketstelling us and reviews to find
those recurring pain points andearly warning signals that we
can use to prioritize theimprovements we want to make.
And of course, we want tolisten on social.
Customers often will share withone another or with their peer

(05:14):
groups before they sharedirectly with the brand.
So social listening isincredibly important.
We want to make sure that weare tapping into what they are
saying about us out in themarketplace when they don't
necessarily think that they'retalking directly to us.
Again, AI tools can help usspot those spikes and unmet

(05:34):
needs through social and reallylooking for what could be viral
complaints and competitorcomparisons are also incredibly
helpful here.
So if they're talking aboutyour competitor, you want to pay
attention to that as wellbecause they're either saying,
wow, this is great, somethingthat maybe you don't offer yet,
or they're telling you things towatch out for by their

(05:57):
complaints about yourcompetitors, too.
We also want to empower ourfrontline staff so that they
have a way to share feedbackwith the right channels in the
right moment.
And what I mean by this is alot of times we have folks like
cashiers and customer servicepeople and salespeople, and they
don't have a way to share thefeedback that they're hearing

(06:19):
directly from customers.
We want to we want to reallyempower them to do that.
And of course, we want to makesure that we are bringing the
quiet customers into view.
These are the people who arenever going to respond to a
survey.
They might never complain.
That's just not who they are orwhat they do.
They're just going to quietlywalk away.

(06:39):
So this is where we want tothink about things like can we
look at things like churn risk?
What are those behaviors thathappen or don't happen that tell
us somebody's not going torenew this contract?
Somebody is quietly, you know,competitively looking around,
shopping, comparison shopping.
Somebody is really talking toour competitors already, but

(07:03):
they're not telling us that.
They're all smiles and rainbowswhen they talk to us.
So we want to look for signalsspecifically that indicate churn
risk and then use that toreally make sure we get
proactive there and improve theexperience to help them move
through it.
This is really where when weare listening to customers in

(07:25):
the right way, we can not onlyhave a bunch of quick wins, but
we can also really see thelong-term future.
We can say if we do thesethings and improve in this way,
we think customers will respondin this way based on all of
these signals that we'vegathered, not just from surveys,
but from all these otherlistening points.
You want to make sure you havea true feedback strategy.

(07:49):
And so there are fiveessentials to this.
One, you have to have yourgoals tied to your customer
experience mission.
You've heard me say this foralmost everything.
It makes everything elseeasier.
So ask yourself, what will thisfeedback inform?
What will it do for us?
Don't just ask questionsbecause you're curious.
Make sure you're asking theright questions that you have

(08:11):
the power to act on.
Otherwise, you're wasting yourtime and your customers' time.
We want to think about who andwhen, which customers and which
touch points.
Where are the most criticalplaces to listen to customers
and how will we do it in thatcritical moment?
Sometimes it is something likea transactional survey.

(08:33):
How is this very specificmoment in the journey for you?
Sometimes it's more aboutbehavior.
If we do X, are they doing Y?
And if not, we have to findout.
We have to dig in throughobservation and other things to
really learn about why they'reacting the way they are.
We want a listening map ofmultiple posts, and some of

(08:55):
these will be AI driven now.
So really think about where wecan gather this.
Are you going to do all thosethings I mentioned?
Maybe, maybe not.
Think about what you can do.
Can you do interviews?
Can you have a robust sociallistening program?
Ask yourself things about whereyou can really tap into the

(09:16):
customer and their emotions,their behaviors, their actions,
their feedback, even if it's notreally explicit feedback that
they're giving directly to you.
We also want to align inquiriesto outcomes and actions.
So measure what matters.
And this means that we want tolook at not only can we do this,

(09:36):
but think about could weactually do this in a small way?
Could we run a pilot program?
Could we learn something frominsights and say, hey, let's
test something over here to seeif we get different feedback?
You want to run those smalltests because that will help you
not only gain the resources andthe buy-in that you need, but

(09:57):
it will also tell you, is thatthe right thing to do based on
how customers respond to thosesmall tests?
And then we want to close theloop and govern the AI usage,
especially.
This is why we need humans.
This is why we need to reallymake sure that we are being
transparent and visible aboutour use.
And we are ensuring that weare, of course, always checking

(10:21):
with our cybersecurity teams andwith our legal teams and with
our AI governance teams abouthow we're using this technology.
But then we also want to bevery transparent about that with
our customers as well.
So we want to close the loopboth internally and externally
through a feedback strategy aswell.
So a couple things you mightwant to try.

(10:43):
You could do something likerunning a small survey pilot.
This is where you pick a momentin the journey where you know
something's going on and youthink about where we could
enhance what we're getting fromthis survey?
What information and data do wehave access to that would
inform the answers we're tryingto get, the insights we're

(11:04):
trying to gather.
So doing that in a small wayfirst can help you feel a little
more confident about rollingthis out throughout the customer
journey and then creating atrue feedback strategy around
that.
Your feedback strategy has tobe tied to your overall customer
experience strategy.
This is why we use that toolcalled the Customer Experience

(11:25):
Success Blueprint, which helpsus weave this in.
There are a couple resources onour site at
experienceinvestigators.com.
And then if you join CXImembership, we have an entire
course all about feedbackstrategy and voice of the
customer programs.
So if you want to really levelup, that's what I would
recommend you do.

(11:46):
You go toexperienceinvestigators.com for
our Learning Center as well asfor the membership.
I hope that's super helpful.
It's so important to listen toour customers in all the ways
that they're talking to us,whether sometimes they know it
or not.
So I hope this was helpful toyou.
I love your questions.

(12:06):
Don't forget, you can alwaysleave me a question at
askjeannie.vip.
Thanks for being here.
See you next week.
To learn more about ourstrategic approach to
experience, check out freeresources at
experienceinvestigators.com,where you can sign up for our

(12:26):
newsletter, our year of CXprogram, and more.
And please follow me, JeannieWalters, on LinkedIn.