Journey surveys provide a different approach to a customer feedback program, one which examines the overall customer experience rather than individual customer touchpoints.
Journey surveys may look a lot like the familiar transactional surveys, but there are some important differences. The journey survey happens after a customer reaches a point in a specific customer journey, and is focused on the entire journey rather than just the customer’s most recent interaction with the company.
For example, let’s look at the customer journey of opening a new bank account. To open a bank account, a new customer may have to make several contacts with the bank. The customer may research the bank online, visit a branch to fill out the paperwork, call to verify that funds have transferred correctly, and so forth. These different touchpoints can happen through different channels over an extended period of time.
A traditional transactional survey process would gather feedback from each individual channel independently, without any attention to the customer’s larger journey. For example, there may be a web intercept survey on the website, a paper survey handed out in the branch, and a post-call survey after the customer calls on the phone.
But since customers use all these channels for a variety of purposes, data about the specific journey of opening a new account is scattered across multiple surveys with no unified view. From the customer’s perspective, though, it’s all part of the process of opening an account.
In contrast, a journey survey would happen after the customer has finished opening an account. The journey survey would ask about all the channels the customer used, and ask questions specifically about opening an account. For customers who are on different journeys, there would be different surveys: a bank could have surveys for getting a loan, fraud reports, paying off a mortgage, and so forth.
The result is a unified, customer-centric view that tells the whole story and not just one piece.
Whether to use journey surveys or transactional surveys depends on the goals, and both types of survey have their place. Transactional surveys are important when you need to know make sure a particular customer contact went well. For example, coaching and training employees requires making sure you have specific and detailed feedback about a specific customer interaction.
Journey surveys are better for understanding the overall customer experience. Journey surveys let you see where customers experience broken processes, and make decisions about how to allocate resources to improve.
It’s important to keep both kinds of feedback program in your toolbox, and make sure you’re using the right tool for your specific goals.
