Peek behind the walls of businesses with permanent residency on customer experience top performer lists and you’ll find they double down on two things: insight and innovation. This is well-trodden terrain for leaders that break the mould. They go straight to the source, customer feedback, to help them work out how to shape products and services. Let’s start with an example.

Volkswagen is listening to, and more importantly acting on, customer feedback. The car manufacturer is shifting its design philosophy for future models after negative customer feedback on the heaviness of its touchscreen technology. By blending tradition, and innovation, the revamped interior design now integrates a row of physical buttons. There’s a cautionary note here for B2B firms.

Customers who drive a Volkswagen car don’t make the distinction between personal use or fleet hire. They just want the company to be responsive to their feedback. The lines between B2B and B2C are blurring. Firms serving business customers need to have a strategy in place to collect and triage ideas from clients. Clients who are used to sharing their feedback with their favourite brands outside of work. They also expect a superior customer experience.

CX leaders commit to an ongoing cycle of feedback and change

Improvement is customer experience 101. To keep competitive, every business needs to implement fixes and improve their CX. The follow on question is how does your business find ways to innovate? This is what makes your business unique.

Customers are restless. Leaders know they need to constantly ask themselves – how do we innovate in the most intuitive and customer-friendly way? The answer? Just ask. Customers understand that not all ideas will break through. But, you need an always-on feedback programme to capture and assess their input.

Use surveys to bring customer insights into the innovation process

As you’ll already know, there are lots of methods to gather feedback. A survey is a low-cost, effective way to gain valuable insights – from your regular surveys or a specific innovation survey.

Show your customers you value their opinions and ideas– Moody’s ran its first innovation survey in 2022. The credit ratings and research company found a strong customer appetite for being more involved in the innovation process. The agency found that 50% of its customers wanted to engage more. Furthermore, customers also gave insights on some of the innovations they thought would have the most impact on the market. Feedback focused on technologies, trends and transformational priorities.

Gain a deeper customer understanding and corroborate value – surface meaningful insights to drive change. And be prepared to act, you don’t just want more data.

Build confidence in investment decisions – offer stakeholders a valuable layer of insight to help them prioritise change and build confidence in their investment decisions.

Understand top-of-mind trends – Red Hat, in partnership with Infosys Finacle and Strategic Treasurer, in 2022 released the findings of its inaugural Corporate Banking Innovation Survey. Insights came from a global roster of 125+ leading banks and financial services firms. These were two of the most significant insights:

1. Digital transformation in core banking was well underway — but challenges in deployment remained. Legacy technology and system integration challenges at 64% were the biggest obstacles.
2. Platforms were shifting from the universal banking model to open ecosystems. By 2026, a 42% shift from the universal model towards the platform model (and ecosystem partnerships) was predicted. Read more here.

Getting started

Do you have the resources or skills in-house to create surveys that are relevant, engaging and actionable? A managed programme to get the insights you need to drive innovation could be a big help here. Either way, here are a few elements to think about.

Be clear on two things: the purpose of the survey and who your audience is (see below for more information on avoiding selection bias).

When it comes to designing your survey, we’ve put together some useful tips here. Meanwhile, here’s a quick round-up of six mistakes to avoid:

1. Boxing participants in – start with an open-ended question to give participants the freedom and space to express their opinion and ideas. You can refine your questions later based on what respondents are telling you.
2. Too many questions – have some respect for your customer’s time and don’t bombard them with too many questions – too often. What’s too many and too often? Experience tells us that around 8 questions per survey and 4 individual invites per year is a good guide. But, as with all things, this depends – on the purpose of the survey and customer preference. Your survey data will tell you about your customers’ willingness to participate.
3. Selection bias – start with all customers and try to manage a process that asks everyone about their experience. You can always apply weighting for different segments once the answers come in. Avoid loaded questions and leading words – “wouldn’t you like to see” is a classic example.
4. Double-barrelled questions – avoid squeezing two or more questions into one survey item, or questions that refer to more than one subject (e.g. asking about staff who are professional and friendly)
5. Radio silence – always communicate your actions back.
6. Seeing feedback as a one-and-done exercise – collect new feedback (from your customers / colleagues) to evaluate the impact of your new or enhanced offering.

Seek insights closer to home

Ask colleagues for their feedback. Your sales team, customer success and relationship managers will be both a source of, and sanity test for, big ideas. One thing’s for sure, relying on the annual survey won’t be enough.

A final thought

Innovation fails for many reasons. A risk adverse culture, a lack of commitment, process and procedural roadblocks, spiralling costs, budget constraints and sluggish decision making etc. can all impact success. But a lack of customer participation in sourcing, testing and validating ideas will almost certainly derail any change.

What’s next?

Need help with designing and implementing your customer feedback programme? Connect with us here.