The customer experience is a crucial aspect of business/product success. Whether your company serves the B2C or B2B market, customer experience impacts your new and recurring sales. At a time when anyone can find and post a review for any product on Amazon or any business on Yelp, this is true now more than ever – a shared customer experience, positive or negative, speaks volumes.
Customer satisfaction and loyalty studies provide reliable, unbiased insight into the experience of your customer. Their primary benefits are that they identify areas in need of improvement, and which of these improvements would be most beneficial to focus on.
We’ve covered a lot of this information in this blog series already, so one of the next questions is how often should a company be performing customer experience studies?
Specific to Your Business
While some ‘experts’ may tell you that it’s essential to be gathering new customer experience information quarterly or bi-annually, the truth is there is no right answer for everyone. Each business will have a timeline that would be most beneficial based on their audience and their product or service.
Variables
There are a number of variables that influence the recommended interval between studies, including:
- Purchase and Use Cycles
- If your product or service has a high purchase/use cycle, you have a greater number of touch points with your customers – more opportunities to delight or disappoint them. The more touch points that exist within the customer journey, the more often you should be checking customer experience.
- Stability of Industry
- Industries that are more stable and don’t change very often do not require as much customer experience research.
- If, on the other hand, your industry is fast-moving and constantly changing, frequent customer experience research would allow you to make changes more rapidly, keeping pace with customer expectations.
- Competitive Nature of Market
- There is a strong difference between true customer loyalty and being one of only a few (or the only one) in your industry (think internet service providers for your neighborhood). Frequent studies aren’t necessary, but be cautioned – if you ignore your customers, you run the risk of losing them one day when a new competitor enters the market. Regular studies at longer intervals are probably right here.
- If new products and services are coming to market left and right in your industry, it’s important to shorten your research cycles to get fresh information. This will reveal how your product/service fares against others, and how you can outshine the competition.
Streaming Insights
Shorter intervals may sound costly and time-consuming, but there is a new trend in marketing research that promotes shorter studies – allowing you to reach your targeted audience with specific questions, quickly and affordably.
In as little as two weeks, for as little as $4,000, you can receive actionable customer experience insights. With the shorter research timeline and lower price tag, you’ll be able to replicate the process as many times as you need throughout the year.
This direct approach may also work for you even if your research needs are fewer and further between, but you may also fare better with more traditional custom research. If you’re only “going to the field” once or twice a year, it may be more effective to seek a variety of insights, rather than focusing on a single objective.
Actionable Research
Whatever interval is right for your team, whether quick-hit research or traditional custom research is right for you, Actionable Research is your research solution. With 17 years of experience in the medical and dental, digital technology and consumer markets, we have the industry knowledge and expertise to meet your research needs. Contact us today for research interval recommendations specific to your business.
