Customer survey overload: Why companies are inundating us with endless feedback requests

I saw my doctor and did some online shopping. Then I went on a vacation to Europe that included three airlines and three hotel stays. Each time, I received dozens of requests for feedback, often multiple times from the same company, on two or more aspects of the same interaction.

“How did we do?” “How was the recording?” “Assess your doctor!” “Tell us about your trip!” “What do you think of our meal deals in the Terminal 4 lounge?” “How was checking into your hotel?” And that’s not counting the little things with four facial expressions in airport bathrooms that require you to rate the cleanliness by touch they. enough!!!

Americans have long been bombarded by customer experience surveys. But if you feel that it has become worse, much worse, in recent years, then this is not your imagination.

Last month, Qualtrics, a software company that helps organizations collect feedback, said the total number of customer and employee interactions processed on its platform has doubled since 2023, and that it now captures and analyzes more than 3.5 billion conversations and interactions annually. This includes surveys, but also call center conversations, chat logs, survey responses, social media posts, and product reviews. According to research firm IBIS World, US companies will spend $36.4 billion this year on market research, expenses that are rising at about 4% annually.

“Survey fatigue is real,” says Brad Anderson, head of product and engineering at Qualtrics. He admitted that many emailed survey requests have turned into spam, leaving people feeling overwhelmed. “It’s things like the same brand bombarding an individual over and over again.”

Even as the average consumer grows increasingly exasperated by the endless stream of emails asking for feedback, marketing experts say they’re not working well. “If only all this email siege would lead to meaningful insights,” says Peter Fader, a Wharton Business School professor and customer analytics expert. “But they rarely do.”

For one thing, surveys tend to over-index on rants and rants: People are so angry about their interaction or from constant, annoying emails that they might respond in an angry manner. When a consumer is happy with their product or service, they are more likely to want to fill out a survey to give credit where credit is due. But it is very difficult to capture a wide range of viewpoints among those strong opinions.

“You’re getting a very biased view simply because there’s an excess of surveys,” says Priya Raghubir, a marketing professor at New York University.

A short history of “customer obsession”

Asking customers what they like and don’t like after a transaction is nothing new, of course. In the first half of the last century, as companies grew in size in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, standardized questionnaires were mailed out in huge numbers, improving research tools for extracting insights.

Then by mid-century, focus groups, pioneered by sociologist Robert K. Merton, more rigorous analysis of survey results, both qualitative and quantitative, conducted more sophisticated research. Many early adopters were in the consumer packaged goods sectors.

By early 21st^street In the 20th century, the sector saw the emergence of the Net Promoter Score (NPS), pioneered by Bain & Co. consultant Fred Reichheld as a top metric—one that many marketing managers still swear by. It measured consumer sentiment by asking one simple question: whether someone would recommend a brand to others. It became the gold standard, rising just as then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ slogan — “We’re not obsessed with competitors, we’re obsessed with customers” — became conventional business wisdom.

NPS was the first time that customer feedback became a closely followed tool in the executive suite. To this day, executives still like to show off their NPS results on calls with Wall Street analysts.

But in the age of e-commerce — where it seems like you have to provide your email address and create an account with any entity in order to make the simplest transaction, from your neighborhood coffee shop and your favorite museum’s ticketing system to giant retailers and food delivery companies — the consumer feedback machine has become overused.

Brands know where to find you at all times, and every interaction seems to lead to a “how are we?” Email – all in the name of the sacred “deeper engagement” that is supposed to build customer loyalty.

Watch what customers do, not what they say

Practitioners and consultants say there are ways to reduce the oppressive volume of emails people receive without losing any of the valuable insights. Brands should pay more attention to what consumers do, and less to what they say, says Wharton’s Fader.

“Actions speak louder than words,” Fader says. So instead of asking a busy traveler if they enjoyed the airport lounge, the airline can check if they return on future flights. Companies possess vast amounts of data from all their interactions with customers that theoretically allows them to understand their behavior at a granular level. It’s a major factor why companies push loyalty programs so hard.

There’s also a risk in asking customers what they really think: they may already tell you. Raghubir of New York University provided a personal example of how this can backfire. Raghubir, a million-mile flyer for a major airline, says she is considering ditching the carrier after her detailed comments, if any, in surveys were consistently ignored. “I raved and screamed, and there was radio silence on the other side,” she said angrily.

In this age of technological responsiveness, surveys must have a feature to detect extreme customer dissatisfaction and alert a human on the consumer experience team, she said.

Don’t just ask for feedback; Act on it

In fact, a big part of making customers feel heard is actually addressing their concerns, i.e. doing something based on the feedback gleaned from these ubiquitous surveys.

But many surveys take a one-size-fits-all approach, says Qualtrics’ Anderson. If the survey doesn’t focus on the customer’s specific experience or reflect whether the customer has been surveyed before, “why should they take the time to fill out the survey?” Anderson said.

This is where AI can make a difference, Anderson said. He sees a future in which surveys allow for more qualitative opinions, redirecting irrelevant or secondary comments. For example, if an airline customer wants to talk about the TSA’s screening process, Qualtrics’ technology can ask the digital scan to explain that airline security is out of its control, and link it to the TSA’s comments page.

Generative AI could also allow a survey to automatically add some questions if a respondent has strong feelings about something. So, if a traveler hates an airport lounge, the survey can dig deeper to find specific reasons, such as not enough vegetarian options, or a chaotic buffet. Qualtrics research shows that people are often happy to answer more questions — if they feel like someone cares and acts on their feedback.

AI is already allowing brands to combine insights from calls, conversations, reviews and social media to find trends. Given the trove of data and insights that companies already have, says Vicki Morowitz, a professor at Columbia Business School, the surveys companies send to consumers look increasingly outdated.

“They could answer their questions without having to ask us,” she says.