The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Why We Do What We Do Part II
Wednesday - May 24, 2006 12:41 PM in
I got a phone call yesterday from a prominent industry consultant asking if I'd heard of company X, their survey services, and if they were a competitor to VocaLabs. Later in the day a conversation with still another individual included: "Did you know that company Y is now reselling the survey services of entity Z?"
I have mixed feelings about these entities and the revelation of more enterprises adding satisfaction survey services. On the one hand, it is good news that more and more are realizing that quality customer care is important and knowing/measuring customer opinion is a necessary part of improving service.
On the other hand, mediocre methodology delivers mediocre data, and mediocre services whether sold by one entity or dozens is still mediocre.
Vendors of satisfaction surveys, call center benchmark performance data, usability studies and such seem to be solidifying into one of several business models.
Category one are vendors of consulting services in which the survey is meant to some degree to be a tool to identify what products and services they can sell to act on the findings of the survey. Yes, this raises questions about conflict of interest and the objectivity of the survey process, and is something to carefully consider when taking this route.
Category two are technology vendors offering survey services as an add on product. For example many speech recognition technology vendors are promoting the ability of companies who've purchased their technology to use the platform to create and run end-of-call IVR surveys; and other vendors with a professional services sales arm often provide survey services. The cautions with the former is the do-it-yourself aspect since there is both an art and science to the process of writing objective questions and interpreting results, and that the end-of-call survey method is so prone to bias. Using professional services from a vendor will often solve the quality problem (Shameless plug: especially if the professional services vendor contracts with Vocalabs.), but the buyer still needs to pay attention that there can be a conflict of interest if the survey has a focus on finding problems for which the vendor just happens to already have solutions.
Category three are those companies such as VocaLabs whose only business is providing survey services. Some of these are Net based enterprises who sell you the do-it-yourself tools where all the cautions about methods, objectivity and interpretation apply. Others sell software and technology (such as providing the ability to suck customer data into the survey reports) along with design consulting. If the company is large enough to justify the ongoing expenses and in-house expertise, this latter approach can be a good one.
To the best of my knowledge, VocaLabs stands alone as the only entity delivering very high quality survey services without the need for any significant added costs for technology. Our policy of no consulting, just delivery of truthful data in useful form is specifically meant to prevent any conflict of interest from getting in the way.
Posted by Rick Rappe
On the other hand, mediocre methodology delivers mediocre data, and mediocre services whether sold by one entity or dozens is still mediocre.
Vendors of satisfaction surveys, call center benchmark performance data, usability studies and such seem to be solidifying into one of several business models.
Category one are vendors of consulting services in which the survey is meant to some degree to be a tool to identify what products and services they can sell to act on the findings of the survey. Yes, this raises questions about conflict of interest and the objectivity of the survey process, and is something to carefully consider when taking this route.
Category two are technology vendors offering survey services as an add on product. For example many speech recognition technology vendors are promoting the ability of companies who've purchased their technology to use the platform to create and run end-of-call IVR surveys; and other vendors with a professional services sales arm often provide survey services. The cautions with the former is the do-it-yourself aspect since there is both an art and science to the process of writing objective questions and interpreting results, and that the end-of-call survey method is so prone to bias. Using professional services from a vendor will often solve the quality problem (Shameless plug: especially if the professional services vendor contracts with Vocalabs.), but the buyer still needs to pay attention that there can be a conflict of interest if the survey has a focus on finding problems for which the vendor just happens to already have solutions.
Category three are those companies such as VocaLabs whose only business is providing survey services. Some of these are Net based enterprises who sell you the do-it-yourself tools where all the cautions about methods, objectivity and interpretation apply. Others sell software and technology (such as providing the ability to suck customer data into the survey reports) along with design consulting. If the company is large enough to justify the ongoing expenses and in-house expertise, this latter approach can be a good one.
To the best of my knowledge, VocaLabs stands alone as the only entity delivering very high quality survey services without the need for any significant added costs for technology. Our policy of no consulting, just delivery of truthful data in useful form is specifically meant to prevent any conflict of interest from getting in the way.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 12:41 PM by | | | |