Answer as always…….it depends.

In my last blog I extolled the virtues of using outbound agent surveys. Now, if you don’t have the budget and you don’t need to ask a lot of questions you might want to consider using SMS as a means of reaching your target customers.

SMS is increasingly being used by organisations in Australia to communicate with customers. However, it is a methodology often used to most effect as either as an outbound reminder service or as part of a wider “holistic-type” marketing programme rather than for research or a sophisticated customer feedback programme.

That said, it can in some cases be used as a research tool or a recruitment tool for research, but its limitations for this purpose need to be understood. As a research or recruitment tool, SMS could be used in one of the following ways:

1. Customers complete a short 2-3 question survey via their mobile phone, or
2. Customers reply to the SMS with an email address – an automatic reply containing a link to a survey would then be sent to that email address, or
3. Customers would reply to the SMS with a home telephone number – an interviewer would then contact the customer by phone to complete the survey.

The main advantage of SMS is it is a very cost effective methodology for collecting data from large customer populations. Mobile devices are also widely used by the majority of consumers and fully integrated into their everyday lives. Therefore respondents won’t need extensive training on how to complete an exercise. SMS also allows for information to be captured and reported quickly and close to a service interaction.

The main drawback of SMS is that in order to achieve an adequate response rate, the length of the survey needs to be restricted to 2-3 questions. In many of the programmes that we run for clients 2-3 questions is just not sufficient enough to provide anything really useful. On a practical level, it is extremely difficult to control data quality (resulting in data skews) and to control quotas / sample requirements. Another consideration is that not all customers would have a mobile phone number attached to their customer record. Finally as the survey can only be administered one question at a time, the format of the interaction can become very frustrating for respondents as they have to engage in series of send and receive tasks. This process does not generally reflect the way that consumers use SMS and would therefore potentially cause customer frustration. SMS also has the potential to cost the respondent between 80c and $1 to complete the survey as they would be liable to cover the cost of outgoing SMS responses.

Verdict: I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

I would be really interested to find out if anyone else has experience of using SMS and be willing to provide feedback on how effective it is. Feel free to add a comment.

Answer as always……it depends.

It depends on your customer and their relationship with your organisation. It depends on what type of service interaction you are looking to evaluate. It depends on the scale of the programme you are looking to develop in terms of volume of surveys. It depends on the depth and frequency of reporting the organisation requires. And so on and so on……oh yes and what budget you have.

But what are the options?

Post: send out a paper based self-completion questionnaire to customers.

Email: send out an email to customers that directs them to an online based survey.

SMS: send out questions and invitations to take part in research via SMS.

Outbound IVR: contact customers using an automated dialling and IVR system.

Post call IVR: direct customers to an IVR based survey immediately after a customer service interaction.

Outbound agent telephone survey (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews - CATI): market research interviewers contact customers to complete a telephone based survey.

There is also any number of multi-methodological solutions too. For example, phone based agents inviting customers to complete an online survey or sending customers an invitation to an online survey via SMS.

At the end of the day each of these approaches should be considered for any customer feedback programme. Fifth Quadrant uses more than one of these approaches but it is always the client’s objectives and situation that drives our recommendation. To help you navigate this challenge, over the next few blogs I will go into a bit more detail about the advantages and disadvantages of each. Starting with outbound agent telephone surveys.

Using this approach ensures high quality and standards throughout the interviewing process. This methodology promotes quality data collection and ensures that data is safely and effectively stored for immediate analysis and future reference. I will admit I am a bit bias towards this methodology as we do run our own customer satisfaction outbound call centre in house and we have used this methodology quite extensively.

One of the big advantages of a CATI methodology is that it can deliver very high response rates, often in the 30%-40% range which is much higher than other methodologies. From a data quality and quota management perspective it is much easy to maintain control. For example, if a survey is of poor quality, that survey can be immediately flagged and replaced. With other methods you have to wait until the fieldwork is complete before reviewing the data quality. In addition if you have skilled interviewers you can often gather a much greater depth of understanding from open ended questions.

From a negative perspective, the biggest issue is cost. CATI can be more expensive than other methodologies and hence may result in a lower sample size given a particular budget or higher costs for a similar sample size. As a CATI methodology may be based on a smaller sample, the depth and frequency of reporting may be less when compared to other methodologies.

One of the most important elements to take into consideration when choosing an appropriate methodology is the scope, breadth and depth of the information that is required. CATI is great for collecting a much more detailed level of information compared to some of the automated approaches. With a CATI survey you can probably keep the customer involved for up to 15 minutes which allows for much more information to be collected. The key trade off here is volume of data versus depth of data.

Next time……..SMS.

One thing I would like to know is what method, if any, are you currently using? Feel free to answer through the comments box below.