You know you need to be monitoring customer experience, especially when customer expectations are higher than ever and there are so many product and service options for them to choose from.

According to Zendesk, 50% of consumers will switch to a competitor after one bad experience, and 80% will switch to a competitor after more than one bad experience. A better and consistent experience is what sets your business apart from your competitors.

Understanding and adjusting to customer expectations is important to ensure a good experience with your brand at every touchpoint along the customer journey.

There are many tools out there to help you track customer experience. Let’s compare Customer Surveys with FeedbackNow to help you understand which is best for your business needs.

What are the Main Differences Between Customer Surveys and FeedbackNow?

1. Timing – One critical difference between surveys and FeedbackNow is the timing of when they are administered. Surveys are generally administered after a customer has completed their interaction with a business, while FeedbackNow is designed to capture immediate feedback in real time and can be used throughout the customer journey. Surveys require the respondent to remember what the experience was like, which can often be unreliable. FeedbackNow captures the true emotion in the moment of the interaction.
   
   
2. Collection and Actionability – Another difference is when (and how) the data is processed. The time it takes to analyze the data is critical to a business’s ability to respond. Survey data can be instantly collected when it’s in a digital format, but getting actionable insight from this data can take time as the data is funneled to a person or third party for review. Paper surveys, especially when mailed, can take even longer to comb through. The powerful platform behind FeedbackNow instantly analyzes the data collected. This means that FeedbackNow can provide businesses with more timely and actionable feedback, enabling them to respond more quickly to the concerns and needs of their customers.
   
   
3. Response Value and Consumer Burden – The format of the feedback collected is another way these two methods differ. Surveys are typically longer and more detailed, with a structured set of questions designed to gather specific information on the customer experience. The value of the data is left to the respondent and their willingness to provide the detail needed. This type of response can be more detailed but is more effortful and requires more thought to respond in a manner that is helpful to your business. The response format FeedbackNow uses takes less effort from the respondent. One question that pertains to the experience had at that location is asked with a simple response of a red, yellow, or green smiley button to correspond to how they’re feeling. This leads to a larger number of responses because very little effort is required to respond.
   
   
4. Uses and Possibilities – The final difference to mention is the range of uses cases. Customer surveys are used to collect information about the experience the customer had. While this is a great use, that’s usually where surveys stop. When deployed as a whole solution, FeedbackNow can be used to inform about customer experiences, and it can also help your teams improve the efficiency of their operations when paired with other devices. Additional collection methods allow you to correlate customer experience data with additional inputs like people traffic, noise, cleaning schedules, etc. to understand how operational changes impact customer experience. You can also get instant alerts to the right team members when metrics drop below acceptable levels so they can take action.

Why Surveys are Important for Customer Feedback and Operational Management

Despite the rise of newer feedback tools like FeedbackNow, surveys remain an essential tool for gathering customer feedback and improving operational management. One of the main benefits of surveys is that they allow businesses to gather comprehensive data that can be analyzed more deeply in order to identify areas of improvement. Surveys can help a business understand their customers’ needs and expectations, which can lead to better products or services to meet those needs. They are also used in specific industries, like healthcare, as a standard way to collect patient feedback across many hospitals.

Why FeedbackNow is Important for Customer Feedback and Operational Management

FeedbackNow is a newer tool that is gaining popularity as businesses seek to provide more immediate feedback to their customers. By capturing feedback in real time, FeedbackNow allows businesses to respond more quickly to customers’ needs and concerns, which can lead to improved customer loyalty and satisfaction. Another benefit of FeedbackNow is that it is less intrusive than traditional surveys. While surveys can be perceived as time-consuming, FeedbackNow provides a quick and easy way for customers to provide feedback without being distracted from their overall experience.

FeedbackNow can also provide businesses with valuable data that can be used to improve their operations. For example, if FeedbackNow data identifies consistent customer complaints about long wait times, a business can take steps to improve its staffing or queue management in order to reduce wait times and improve customer satisfaction. Businesses can use FeedbackNow to improve the efficiency of their operations through correlations with additional data points. They can also use FeedbackNow to do better on quarterly surveys, such as HCAHPS, by understanding if improvements are working and using the real-time data to adjust accordingly.

Which Tool is Best?

Ultimately, whether businesses choose to use surveys or FeedbackNow will depend on their specific needs and goals. Surveys remain an important tool for gathering detailed customer feedback and identifying areas for improvement over time. FeedbackNow, on the other hand, provides valuable real-time feedback that enables businesses to be more responsive to their customers’ needs. Many businesses choose to use both surveys and FeedbackNow in order to gather both comprehensive data and immediate feedback. By combining the insight provided by both tools, businesses can gain a more holistic view of their customers’ needs and make more data-driven operational improvements.

Contact us to learn more about how FeedbackNow can help improve your customer experience and operations!