Relationship vs. Transactional Surveys – Why You Need Both to Improve Customer Experience

When you were a child, did you ever stand outside with your mother while it was snowing? As you watched the huge snowflakes slowly floating to the ground, trying to catch them on your tongue, did she tell you that every snowflake is unique? I think that many of us can remember a similar story to this one.

Like snowflakes, no two customers are exactly alike. Each has a unique relationship with your company and valuable feedback to offer. If utilized properly, this feedback can improve your customer experience. How will you collect this feedback? This article will discuss the benefits of using two types of customer surveys: relationship surveys and transactional surveys.

Relationship Surveys

Customer relationship surveys focus on understanding and improving customer relationships and increasing customer loyalty. They are administered at certain times during the year, generally quarterly, bi-annually or annually. Customers are asked to rate their overall experience with and loyalty towards the company/brand and its products/services over a specified period of time. The relationship survey will typically provide feedback based on the entirety of the customer’s experience.

Customer relationship surveys provide business intelligence that drive companies to improve customer experience and loyalty. They help company executives determine which customer experience touch points to focus their efforts on.

An effective customer relationship survey will include questions that measure:

• Types of customer loyalty: advocacy, purchasing and retention
• Customer experience
• Competitive benchmarks
• Reasons behind the ratings

Creating an effective customer relationship survey is critical to increasing your customer loyalty and driving business growth. After survey completion, customer feedback data are analyzed to help companies diagnose problem areas and determine which factors need further evaluation. Once your company is aware of where improvements are necessary, the next step is to understand how to improve those experiences using transactional surveys.

Transactional Surveys

Transactional surveys strike while the iron is hot and experiences are fresh in the customer’s mind. Online businesses email transactional surveys to customers immediately after their purchase, department store cashiers direct customers to complete a survey using the link at the bottom of their receipts, and restaurants encourage customers to fill out a survey card after completing their meal.

Transactional based surveys measure individual customer interactions, whereas relationship surveys provide feedback over the course of many interactions and transactions.  The relationship survey results guide what transactional surveys are needed. Customer experience areas that score low on customer satisfaction should be a top priority for your transactional survey efforts. The focus of a transactional survey is on achieving a deeper understanding of what aspect of the experience left the customer dissatisfied. Each company’s transactional surveys will be different based on what problem areas need to be addressed.

While overall satisfaction is important, transactional surveys are more likely to bring information that may be lost in an overall satisfaction survey. For instance, transactional surveys are more likely to:

• Spot a specific issue that happened to an otherwise pleased customer
• Identify employees that provided exceptional or unacceptable customer service
• Help companies make more immediate business decisions

Transactional surveys are extremely valuable to businesses because they uncover details about specific transactions and all of the customer experiences leading up to that sale.

Relationship Surveys + Transactional Surveys = Improved Customer Experience

Remember, each of your customers is unique and has valuable feedback to offer. Start capturing that feedback using these two complementary survey methods: Relationship and Transactional Surveys. Doing so will improve your customer experience and how you do business.

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