Bright Pattern Blog for Contact Centers

Make Better Business Decisions: The Importance of Contact Center Surveys

Written by Sergey Menshikov | Jul 27, 2018 2:00:00 PM

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Analytics often drive contact centers and are the main influence on key business decisions. But, while quantitative data is critical to performance, qualitative data created from customer satisfaction surveys should not be overlooked.


The Importance of Contact Center Surveys

First-hand qualitative data from consumers is one of the best tools for learning where contact centers need to improve. Poor feedback can be analyzed to improve agent training and performance, and positive feedback can be celebrated to boost agent morale. The following are a few of the many other benefits of conducting surveys:

  • Gauge customer satisfaction ratings
  • Judge customer loyalty
  • Create an opportunity to proactively reach out to dissatisfied customers
  • Learn about product or service complaints or ways to innovate your current offering
  • Develop empathy and understanding for customers
  • Invite customers to have open communication with your company
  • Dissuade customers from taking complaints elsewhere, including poor word of mouth over social networks

Complexity of Building Good Surveys

Now that you know the importance of surveys, you also need to know that not all surveys are created equal. There are many reasons why creating surveys in a modern contact center can be a tough task, as you might have a complex omnichannel structure, siloed departments, and lack of survey conducting experience as roadblocks.

Your approach to building surveys should be different across all channels. Consumers act differently across channels, so things like survey length, tone, and questions asked will change depending on the channel.

It is also important to ask the right questions. Comm100 has a great article on this topic: Call Center Survey Questions for Better Customer Satisfaction. Make sure to customize questions based on your specific company. There are some generic questions you should always ask like overall satisfaction, but the key to gaining true insight is asking tailored questions (more on this later).


Bright Pattern Extended Survey Functionality for IVR Workflow Automation

Although it can be complex to create surveys, many vendors provide automation around how surveys are delivered to customers. Survey automation should be added at the end of interactions for every channel, whether it be voice, IVR, video, or digital channels.

In the image shown, you can see how easy it is to add surveys into a workflow and save collected survey data in Bright Pattern’s drag-and-drop Scenario Builder interface.

Whether the customer interacted with an agent or was able to solve the problem within the self-service IVR, the customer will be asked to take a survey at the end of the call.


Collect Customer Data and Make Better Business Decisions

In the workflow shown above, you can tell the system to save the collected data in reports, using variables that get data for problem resolution, contact satisfaction, Net Promoter Score, and so forth. Custom survey fields allow you to save other specific interaction data as well. The saved data is what you will use to learn from your customers' feedback.

In addition, you can transcribe recordings using speech-to-text capabilities as well as store the transcriptions and sentiments of those recordings. It is also possible to send recording URLs as email attachments or play them in Agent Desktop.


Tailoring Survey Questions to Extract True Insight

As mentioned, you can gain better insight on customer needs by asking questions tailored to your business, product, or service offering. An example of this is, “How satisfied are you with our latest product release?” These are the types of questions that will drive improvement through the customer service organization as well as through the company.

For complete details on Bright Pattern’s latest product release download the full overview PDF.