John Lionato of web-hosting firm Rackspace reports that the company has achieved 50-70% response rates in its (B2B) customer relationship Net Promoter feedback process. Here's some of what they do.
1. Simple, clear invitations sent to the right customers by the right people
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Rackspace NPS survey invitation, which includes live linked recommend question
- Before the survey goes out, Account Managers review contact information to make sure the most up-to-date contacts are listed to receive the survey
- Account Managers are encouraged to contact customers to ask them to respond to the survey, whatever their opinion
- The email survey invitation comes from the Rackspace domain (so it doesn't get caught by spam filters)
- The email subject line explicitly lists the number of questions: "How are we doing … 2 questions from Rackspace"
- There is little additional "fluff" language in the email to distract from its purpose
- Survey email includes HTML-based radio buttons to respond to the first of the two questions (likelihood to recommend) right from the email
- The email invitation is signed by a real human being (John Lionato, the SVP for worldwide customer care), and his contact info is right there in the email
2. Short, clean and simple survey:
- The survey is kept short -- really just the likelihood to recommend and open-ended verbatim -- both delivering on the "two question" promise and earning the trust of respondents over time
Clean, simple survey page - It confirms your initial response, giving you an opportunity to change your score if it looks wrong
- It provides space for an open-ended verbatim explanation of your response
- It offers you the option of participating in a sweepstakes to win something of value (in this case, a 17" MacBook Pro)
- Note that there is no need for the customer to provide additional identifying info, because the email response click-through provided identifying information that is captured by the survey system
- Note, also, that Rackspace does not provide an opt-out or opt-in for subsequent contact (see below for explanation
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3. True closed-loop rewards the customer's effort
- If a customer responds to John Lionato, who signed the email invitation, he gets in touch with them himself
- The team of "Rackers" responsible for serving the account really closes the loop, contacting the customer to learn more (good or bad)
- Whenever an issue is uncovered, the account team responds directly to customer concerns or issues
- Over time, customers learn that their feedback really gets action
Why no opt-in or opt-out for follow-up contact? In controlled tests with their B2B customers, the Rackspace team found that they experienced no fall-off in response rates when they eliminated the opt-out or opt-in for a follow-up call. They did find, however, that when they offered opt-out, about 20-25% of the customers opted out. Similarly, when they offered opt-in for a follow-up call, about 20-25% of customers opted in. They need to be able to link the explanations, verbatims and causes back to known events and characteristics of a customer's account in order to take action. And customers have not ever complained about being contacted.
What are you doing to get your closed-loop feedback system's response/participation rates edging toward 100%?