Boost Customer Retention by Identifying Concerns: A Guide to Post-Call Surveys

Customer experience and support have never been as crucial as it is today. As per research, 97% of customers and 98% of customer support representatives have confirmed that consumers are more likely to stay loyal to a brand if they receive good support.

However, keeping customers happy and engaged is not as easy as it sounds. It requires strategic planning and a strong support team to get the right results. The best way to evaluate your agent’s performance is using a powerful tool – the post-call surveys.

Read this blog to know how you can use post-call surveys to address key concerns and craft a strong customer retention strategy.

Why Is Customer Retention Challenging?

It is common knowledge that the key to a successful brand is all about having loyal and long-term customers who keep coming back to your brand. For this, brands often try to implement several customer retention strategies to try and improve their brand loyalty. However, there is a problem: most of these quick fixes or hacks never work.

In a highly competitive marketplace, customers have multiple options to consider. This has led to unsteady business for most brands, as 71% of consumers worldwide have switched brands at least once in the last year.

The reason? At the basic level, customer retention is not about the strategies that you implement but the service and value that you offer to your customers. If the customer’s needs are not met, or their issues are not resolved in time, there is a high chance of them switching brands.

A customer retention survey conducted by Insider Intelligence laid out the reasons for switching to a different brand. The reasons should not come as a surprise.

The top 3 reasons for switching brands included:

1. Competitors Providing a Better Deal

Customer churn is part of any industry, as brands will provide deals, discounts, and promotions to woo customers. It is no surprise that some customers will be tempted to switch, given the better value.

For churn reduction, brands can leverage loyalty programs and personalized discounts to propel their existing customers to keep buying from them and not be tempted to shift to a competitor.

2. Better Product Quality

Product quality and perception is the second factor that plays a prominent role in customers switching to a competitor. This is not necessarily about the product quality but also about customer perception of your competitor being superior to your brand.

3. Better Customer Service

While the first two factors are partly in control of a brand, customer service is one aspect that is completely under your control. Exceptional customer service can make or break brand loyalty.

If your competitors excel in this department, providing quicker responses, more personalized interactions, or better problem-solving, customers might be enticed to switch for a smoother experience. After all, who doesn’t appreciate being treated like a VIP?

Just one negative experience can result in 60% of your consumers switching to a competitor, and almost 61% of customers will spend more with brands that provide good customer experience.

How To Improve Customer Retention?

As we have seen, customer retention is crucial to any business. But in the digital era, customer expectations have only grown, making it crucial for brands to understand their customers better. As per Talkdesk Research’s global report, 58% of customers have higher customer service expectations than before.

This is where post-call surveys come into play.

Post-call or follow-up surveys are a customer feedback mechanism used by businesses to gather insights and opinions from customers immediately after a phone call with a customer service representative or support agent.

These surveys are conducted immediately after a customer interaction, whether it’s a support call or a sales inquiry. This timely intervention allows you to gather valuable feedback and insights directly from the source – your customers.

How Post-Call Surveys Improve Customer Retention

Post-call surveys help brands in their quest for customer retention by getting direct and relevant feedback. Thus, it helps in overcoming some key challenges for retention, such as:

1. Understanding Customer Expectations

In an era where customers demand personalized, efficient, and responsive service, understanding their ever-evolving expectations can be a daunting task.

Post-call surveys capture the customer’s thoughts and emotions while they’re fresh, providing you with unfiltered feedback.

2. Identifying Pain Points and Gaps

A single negative experience can break a brand and turn even a loyal customer into a detractor. To understand this, brands often rely on third-party research or analytics to gauge paint points and gaps. However, the best way to know what is not working for your customers is by hearing from them.

Post-call surveys act as a magnifying glass, highlighting areas where customers encounter difficulties or dissatisfaction. These surveys offer data that can be analyzed to make informed decisions about your products, services, and customer interactions.

3. Improve Agent Performance

Another gap in customer support and experience is the lack of training or mentoring to support teams. Without proper support, agents often feel lost in the challenging environment and can lose focus, leading to inconsistency in service quality.

Identifying concerns regarding support and service through post-call surveys enables you to provide targeted training to your agents, resulting in better service quality. When agents see the direct impact of their interactions through post-call survey feedback, they become more engaged in delivering exceptional service.

4. Proactive Issue Resolution

To stay ahead of the competition, brands can no longer have a reactive approach, i.e., fixing issues only after they crop up. A proactive approach ensures that issues are addressed before they can create any damage, helping improve customer experience and support process.

Salesforce Research on customer personalization and expectation shows that 62% of customers want companies to anticipate their needs, which was 56% in 2020.

By addressing customer concerns proactively, you demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction, which can lead to increased loyalty.

Setting Up Effective Post-Call Surveys

To design effective post-call surveys that fit into your customer retention strategy, you need to ensure that the surveys are relevant, actionable, and easy for the customers to fill out. For this, you can follow the tips given below:

1. Keep the surveys short and simple, ensuring it takes minimum time for customers to complete.
2. Ensure the questions can be answered with yes/no or rated on a scale of 1-10 rather than keeping it open-ended.
3. Show your customers you care by using their names and mentioning the specific interaction they had.
4. Include open-ended questions that invite customers to share their thoughts and feelings in their own words only at the end.
5. Include an NPS question (On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?)
6. Send the survey immediately after the call to capture the freshest feedback. Also, ensure this is sent only after addressing customer complaints and not before the complaint is resolved.
7. Say thank you and always express gratitude for your customer’s time and feedback.
8. Consider offering small incentives, like discounts or entry into a giveaway, as a token of appreciation for completing the survey.
9. For customers who provide negative feedback or express concerns, have a follow-up process in place. Contact them promptly to address their issues and show your commitment to their satisfaction.

Get Valuable Feedback Using Post-Call Surveys

In summary, post-call surveys are a powerful ally in the pursuit of exceptional customer experiences and unwavering loyalty. By leveraging these surveys, brands can tap into the customers’ minds to understand how well the brand is doing in terms of service and support.

Capturing these insights regularly helps businesses swiftly address any issues or complaints in the customer support process, thereby improving customer experience. To make post-call surveys a part of your call center software or overall customer support process, you can use workflow automation to trigger these surveys as soon as a service call is completed. This helps to get timely responses and increases the likelihood of the customer providing valuable feedback.