As a company, you want to make sure that the feedback you’re receiving from your customers is accurate and helpful. However, there’s a fine line between getting enough information and overwhelming your customers with surveys. No one likes to spend their time answering endless surveys, which can lead to survey fatigue. In this blog, we will discuss what is survey fatigue and how to avoid over-surveying your respondents. Create better feedback strategies and launch surveys at the right frequency for the responses you need. 

What is survey fatigue?

Survey fatigue is the result of excessive survey requests, which can lead to decreased response rates and lower quality feedback. Respondents may become annoyed or bored with the frequency of surveys, leading to incomplete or rushed responses. This can ultimately harm your business by providing inaccurate data that could lead to faulty decisions.

The two types of survey fatigue

There are two types of feedback fatigue: respondent fatigue and surveyor fatigue. Respondent fatigue happens when customers are overwhelmed by too many surveys. Surveyor fatigue occurs when businesses conduct too many surveys, leading to fewer responses. To truly bring better quality response rate, the feedback collection process has to be mapped out at certain intervals for certain audiences. Constantly pushing feedback forms might make customers block communications from your marketing department and we want to avoid that!

Problems of Over Surveying Customers

Survey fatigue occurs when customers are repeatedly asked to fill out lengthy, irrelevant and frequent surveys without receiving any official communication. To truly seek response from your customers, there has to be a goal and a clear motive to collect responses. Here are some the reasons what causes surveyor and respondent fatigue:

Targeting the wrong audience

Getting feedback from customers is vital for any business. However, it’s essential to target the right audience when sending out surveys. Targeting the wrong audience comes when marketers might have failed to segregate customers based on their interactions and purchases. This can send a wrong impression to the audience , cause confusion and bring inaccurate data.

Using long survey questions

In this context, using long survey questions can exacerbate ‘survey fatigue’, lowering response rates and collecting unreliable data. When people see a lengthy feedback form, they might want to tamper with the data in the hopes of completing a survey. People might also have the tendency to leave out crucial details due to the overwhelming size of the survey. This brings a poor data pool for marketers.

Asking repetitive questions

Repetitive question simply denotes that the questions were not formulated well enough to collect plenty of  data. This also reflects on the quality of a feedback questionnaire. During a market research, every shopper or a respondent may not have the time or patience to fill a form. This can affect survey data and hamper the way you collect customer feedback.

Poor survey design

One of the main issues that come from designing surveys is that a questionnaire might be ill-created or marketers might be tempted to over-question their audience. The temptation to solicit feedback is too high and a poor survey design might follow suit. This brings low response rate and half-baked data and might affect the way you design future surveys.

Too Many Surveys [Over-Surveying]

Customers do not want to be bombarded with constant feedback forms in their inbox. If an online survey is too lengthy, it becomes time-consuming and you risk ruining the customer expectation from your organisation. Deploying too many surveys brings poor survey results, has smaller customer engagement and puts off the survey respondents.

Best Practices to Avoid Over Surveying Customers

Here are some tips that can prevent marketers from going overboard and bringing out quality feedback form. Marketers can also expect better response rates and a better customer experience with these methods.

Launch goal oriented surveys

Do you want to solicit feedback at a certain interval or after an interaction? Define a goal and an objective for high response rates. When you pre-define your surveying goals, you can design a good survey, have a higher quality of data collection and have better customer expectations.

Limit the length of questionnaires

Customers have limited time and patience. The main aim is to collect data and collect it fast. Cut down on unnecessary or repetitive questions and add skip logic when required. Ensure that every single question is clear and crisp while avoiding a double baralled format. When respondents are busy and you want to collect data, the length of a survey can negatively impact the way you get responses.

Choose specific surveying frequency

Choosing the right surveying frequency can bring respite to fatigued audiences. You can choose to collect feedback after a transaction i.e post purchase feedback. Marketers can also deploy surveys after an interaction with the customer support team or at a particular touchpoint. With the right frequency, you will target the right respondents and bring the quality data you need.

Choose the right CX metrics- NPS, CES, CSAT

Lean on to customer satisfaction metrics since they are a standardized format of seeking clear and crisp responses. When appropriate, opt for net promoter score to identify detractors from promoters. Gauge customer effort by using customer effort score and measure satisfaction using the CSAT score metrics. With clear data at hand, you can avoid over surveying customers.

Conclusion

To gather instant data from your audience in a busy environment, switch to messenger based surveys and interactive platforms. This includes Whatsapp surveys that can capture data in an instant with short and conversational feedback format. Additionally, using AMP email surveys is one of the best ways to capture feedback without going into an external browser. Deploy super fast chatbot feedback forms via messenger, chatbots and social media platforms.

Merren can help you avoid over surveying customers at all costs! Sign up for a 14 day free trial and use our predesigned templates to do the cognitive heavy lifting for you.