Can Customer Surveys Create Loyalty?

Experts in the field of customer satisfaction and market research are also looking for ways to improve customer loyalty. Many have theories about what builds loyalty and what doesn’t, and there are several loyalty related surveys that exist to help you figure out how to further enhance loyalty. Some experts believe that the survey itself may be one of these methods. In fact, they believe that by allowing customers to be more involved in the company experience (through the use of survey research), you are building a strong enough loyalty with those customers that it may cause a noticeable shift in your overall loyalty.

There are a few reasons to believe this may be the case. Customers that feel directly involved in the company’s processes will become emotionally and mentally invested in seeing the company succeed. That will make them less likely to go to a competitor where their opinions may not be as valued – or at the very least, where their connection with the company is not yet as strong.

Also, there is a good chance that some of the contributions the customer makes become actionable changes. When that happens: Customers will feel more involved in the company and its decisions. Customers will have their needs met.

Customers will care that their contributions are valued. This can all lead to an increase in loyalty.

Despite these reasons, however, there are ample reasons to believe this theory is suspect. First and foremost, very few surveys that a customer completes are memorable, or make the customer feel as though they truly helped the company grow. "How satisfied are you?" is not something that is going to make most customers feel very involved.

In addition, most customers only fill out surveys out of boredom, and even overlook surveys or get annoyed by surveys despite taking the time to fill them out. How memorable does a survey have to be to create loyalty? How dedicated does someone have to be to find their contribution truly valuable? Chances are it is not enough to create an increase in loyalty.

If anything, the customer may have already been loyal, which is why they filled out the survey to begin with. It’s a nice theory, but it probably doesn’t hold much weight, and it’s highly unlikely that filling out surveys has much of an effect. Still, if it was possible that customer surveys improved loyalty, that would be a benefit, correct? Not necessarily.

For businesses to make decisions, companies need to trust that they’re correctly measuring things like trends. If you research a change to your company designed to create loyalty, you need to have evidence that the loyalty change is working. Currently this is done by completing more and more research on loyalty and discovering if the changes have made a difference over time.

It is safe to assume that if you make a single change, and your loyalty measurements increase and decrease based on that change, the programs you put into place are likely to be more effective. Affecting Measurements through Other Measurements If one were to believe that taking surveys improved loyalty, then it would be difficult – if not impossible – to measure whether any other changes had any affect. You would need a way to explain whether a certain change affected loyalty or whether the simple act of being surveyed on the change increased loyalty instead, while the change itself made no difference.

This would make the idea that surveys improve loyalty a potential problem, not just a potential benefit. It would make measuring loyalty decisions much harder and reduce the value of your research. Other Issues Furthermore, if all one had to do to improve customer loyalty is send out surveys to every customer, very little changes would be made, and more and more companies would be using surveys alone as a method of creating loyalty – something that would ultimately backfire as customers get burnt out from all of the surveys they’d be asked to complete.

Overall, it’s still a nice theory that seems logical in some way, but falls way short in others, and as a researcher, it’s not in your best interests for this to be true. While anything that boosts loyalty is beneficial, the idea that surveys can improve loyalty on their own, independent of any changes would make researching much, much harder. Related Articles Customer Satisfaction Survey Difference Between Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty Are Loyal Customers Always Valuable