Foreign.

You are listening to the Horse Radio Network, part of the Equine Network family.

Well, hi everybody.

Glenn the Geek, back with you.

Founder of the Horse Radio Network and host of Horses in the Morning for the last 15 years.

Welcome to the WESA Retail Roundup.

We are only two months away now from the trade show in Dallas in January.

Getting very excited about that.

The Retail Roundup is your go to virtual hub for all things retail.

Panel discussions, webinars, one on one sessions like we have today.

And we're talking about all things retail and manufacturing and just getting the word out to your customers.

We host this virtual event once a month on Mondays and you can find most of the details about everything we do in the Retail Roundup Facebook group.

If you haven't joined that, just search Retail Roundup on Facebook.

Today we're going to talk about something I've done throughout my career and the various entrepreneurial things I've done.

And I am sure I did not do it well.

So I'm excited to talk to Martha today.

It's about customer surveys.

We're going to talk about all things customer surveys and how to do them right.

And we have Martha Brook of Interaction Metrics on.

Hey, Martha.

Hey, Glenn.

Nice to see you.

Where are you located?

In Portland, Oregon.

Okay.

You're the exact opposite from me.

As far away as you can get in this country.

And the exact opposite.

Weather.

Yes, exactly.

Yes.

Yeah.

So let me ask you, what is Interaction Metrics?

Which is hard to say, by the way.

I know.

So I came up with the name of this company way back.

We were founded in 2004 and at the time it seemed like a great name.

And within a few years I was like, oh, this is way too many syllables.

This is a terrible name.

But by that time we had a presence and we really couldn't change it.

And throughout the years I've thought, oh, should we change it?

And then every marketing expert says, absolutely not.

You have too much presence on Google, et cetera.

Anyway, Interaction Metrics is the name of our company.

It's also the measure of what happens between companies and their customers.

And so that could be like proactivity metric.

Are your reps proactive?

It could be empathy metrics, it could be the big satisfaction recommendation metrics.

But it's everything that's happening moment to moment and then overall between companies and their customers.

And in our world, we look at engagement metrics, right?

We're always looking at engagement.

Sure.

Yeah.

And you know, in retail and wholesale, that that's important.

That's as important, too.

And so talk to me like, what do you mean by engagement?

So, so we may have tens of thousands of listeners to a show, but how much are they engaging with us?

How much are they giving us feedback?

What are we, you know, what are we looking at?

For example, if we do a survey, how much engagement are we getting on the survey?

That kind of thing.

Sure, sure.

So what's the response rate, what's the completion rate and just what, what's the overall interaction in terms of how much.

Are they talking to us?

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

So for a smaller retailer, manufacturer, which we have a lot of in our world.

Right, sure.

We have some larger ones too, but I would say the majority fall in the middle to lower range.

Are surveys important if they're done?

Well, they are, yeah.

All of that.

All of that.

Yes, you really want customer feedback, but there's just a lot of crappy surveys in the world.

And what I mean by crappy is they're not demonstrating, listening.

Right.

So I can't tell you, Glenn, you've probably had this experience where you take a survey, then you have something really important to say in the comments, like, please get back to me about all the liquids that spilled in the box or whatever it is, or a refund of my American Airlines ticket because the flight was delayed by X number of hours, blah, blah, blah, and you never hear back.

And it's like, why are you asking if you're not going to answer?

Anybody knows in any kind of relationship that's a bad, that's a bad vibe.

So that, and it reflects on the brand.

You know, it's not just like, oh, bad survey, it's like a bad brand.

So I look at surveys in two different ways and you can maybe clarify the, the actual names for these.

One is what you're talking about.

I bought a product or I bought a service and then I, I do a survey immediately after that.

The other is I'm going to blast my whole email list or whatever.

I'm going to put out the survey in general, asking for responses from my customers on a much broader scale.

So what are the two names for those surveys?

Do they have official names?

Yeah, sure.

There's the Touchpoint survey.

So that's the of the moment.

Like, how do you feel right now?

And then there's the overall experience survey.

So that's like looking at, well, what happened with warranties and what happened with the shopping cart and what happened a year later and how do you feel about us now and who's the competition what do they do better?

So there's those, you know, overall ARC interaction surveys and then there's the.

In the moment.

So what are the, what are the most important key performance indicators?

Let's, let's maybe we can take a look at those two surveys because our, our, our base is going to do both, right?

Or maybe should do both.

Absolutely.

So what are the key performance indicators that the retailers or manufacturers should be tracking and you know, how should they decide what priority should be given in a survey?

That's the hardest part.

I have always had too, when I did surveys in the.

Okay, I kind of know what I want to focus on here, but I don't think I ever drilled it down far enough to make the survey super effective.

I think that's a great question, Glenn, and I'm going to give a very contrarian answer.

So in my world, what a lot of companies, whether it's Bain or Qualtrics or, you know, you name it, big company, billion dollar companies talk about is net promoter score.

So overall, you know, how likely are you to recommend XYZ to a friend, a colleague?

We've all seen that question and we often use that question because it's a great benchmark question.

So that's a kind of KPI or you know, overall, how satisfied are you with xyz?

You know, we use those kind of questions.

I don't think they're the most important.

I think the most important is what we call a themes index.

So after you ask those, you know, ARC questions about, oh, how likely you'd recommend, which by the way, is a biased question, it seems you're somewhat likely to recommend.

But you know, that aside, or, you know, overall, you know, how satisfied or how do you feel about xyz?

Almost always on any survey there's going to be tell us more or, and why did you give us that rating?

Now we get into what I'd call the meat of the survey, the gold nuggets of the survey.

And that's where you.

And so that we call that themes, right?

And it's a themes index.

So what are, what are your customers talking about?

Like why are they giving that, that score and putting, taking that narrative and turning it into something that's measurable.

We call it Themes Index.

So you can see like they speak mostly about deliverability within deliverability.

They speak mostly about parts availability, you know, whatever it might be.

But that's really because that's actionable.

You know, this idea of like, would you recommend or how satisfying, like, what are you going to do with that?

Yeah.

I mean, one of them in our world would be, how happy were you with your checkout experience at the store or whatever.

But if they say not happy, you're right.

I don't have any idea why they weren't happy.

Right, exactly.

And most companies do follow that up with tell us why, why did you give us that rating?

But then they don't do anything with it.

Or what they do with it is they just stick it in an LLM and get this overall summary, which has problems which we could get into and we could talk about for hours.

But, well, you, you let me know what, what direction you want to go with regard to that.

So when you, if you talk to a retailer, for instance, and they want to do.

They want to do the overall survey that we talked about.

Sure.

So what types of questions should they be asking?

And I know that depends on, on what, what your goals are.

Right.

But are there certain tricks for asking the question in the right way?

Yeah.

So first of all, you want to put on your science hat and think, how can I phrase this with the least amount of bias?

So that's how satisfied are you?

Assumes you're somewhat satisfied.

How likely to recommend?

Like we said, as soon as you're somewhat likely to recommend.

So rate the expertise of the service rep you spoke with that was very neutral.

So you always look for, like, how can I state this in a neutral way?

If you can't work with an outside consultant, work with outside teams, because it just inherently you're going to be biased.

You can't help it.

Like, that's the human mind.

There are reasons that we have answers.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, thinking about what is the customer journey and then mapping that out into what are the critical moments within that journey and then asking those questions, like I say, in the most neutral kind of way, followed up with.

And tell us more about that.

We like questions where we ask, who do you consider to be XYZ's competition?

That's an interesting question.

And then piping that name into the rest of the survey.

And so then how would you rate, you know, competition on this attribute?

What is competition?

You know, obviously we're piping in the name do especially well, so, you know, just to try to get as specific as possible, because there's no point in doing the survey if you're not going to act on the feedback.

Right.

So.

And to be able to act on the feedback, it's got to be extremely specific.

And then are surveys valuable?

I would say they're not valuable.

They're invaluable.

That's how you grow your business.

That's how you chart a path forward.

I will say with the Horse Radio network, it's been invaluable to us.

And we do have focus groups for the shows and things like that, too, where we even go further, because I realize in a smaller focus group, I'm going to get a more direct answer than I would asking a large group.

Right.

I get, I get more to the truth in the focus group about whether they especially dislike something.

Everybody, a lot of people aren't afraid to tell you if they like something.

And now days, more people are afraid, are willing to tell you when they dislike something, too.

But.

Well, I have to say, Glenn, though, it depends.

Like, I've disliked Uber experiences, I've disliked Airbnb experiences.

I would never say that it's.

Everything's always five stars.

It's always five stars because it's a quid pro quo.

I would almost call some of the star systems.

It's a kind of asset that companies are trading.

It's a kind of commodity.

And it obviously has nothing to do with real feedback.

It's just the social contract.

You give me five stars, I give you five stars.

So, you know, drilling into the idea of focus groups, what we think is even better is the one on one recorded interview, kind of like, kind of like what we're doing now, you know, where you really get to talk to your customer and find out, like, in a journalistic way, not like a telephone survey, not like the BMW dealership follows up with, you know, some woman who has her set questions, but in a journalistic way, like, you know, tell me about the marketplace, the equestrian marketplace, and what stands out for you and who's doing.

Who's really the champion in this field.

Like, those kinds of questions are.

They're interesting.

And then when you do it times 100, say you've really got.

You've really got some, some meaty feedback about, like, okay, where are we going to?

Where should we invest next?

What should we do next?

So, you know, we talked about the product surveys, right?

The individual, they bought something, you know, how'd you like it?

We seem to get those all the time now for everything we do.

Everything we do.

And it's gotten to the point where I just don't answer any anymore because it's like, I get them all the time.

Do.

Are they effective still?

Are they getting less effective because we're being saturated?

Well, I think it's.

What's really important is how you invite people.

I think there's just so much the problem is like, I think companies think they get the software.

You know, whether it's Medelia or Qualtrics or Alchemy, they get the software.

And now let's just blast our customer base with surveys because we can.

But just because you can doesn't make it right.

Right.

And so it's really important to control how often you survey each customer.

It's really important.

And we put so much emphasis on the invite.

Like, what are you saying in that invite?

I think of bank of America that always wants my feedback.

And they write, dear Martha Brook, that's in caps, you know, so they're screaming at me.

I just know from the get go they're not listening.

They didn't even take the time to correct that and make a title case.

High Martha, uppercase M. Like, they didn't even take the time to do that.

It was just some list that the IT department didn't even clean.

Couldn't even bother to spend two hours and clean up.

So how you invite people is really, really important.

So sometimes we use incentives because it's a way if your customer is worth, you know, we work with situations where customers can be worth, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

You know, hey, a coffee on us.

And we do a, you know, Starbucks gift card or it, you know, really depends on what the interaction is.

But using, you know, good narrative techniques to invite people and thinking about how to show appreciation, sometimes it's, you know, if you're willing to share your feedback.

We're also willing to share the results of this study so that you know more about this industry, the marketplace, where it's going.

So there are all kinds of ways to do the invite that show listening, and that's really, really important.

Those big blasts, I'd say I'm like you, I, you know, delete, delete.

So you have, you have the software.

Right.

Getting back to what you just said.

Sure.

Staying on this topic of the product surveys.

Okay, sure.

You have the software and the software.

Can that software control?

Okay.

I'm only going to send Glenn every third product or every fifth product.

Or is it just the software set up that every product he buys is going to get this survey email?

Right.

So how you, it's, that's, it's how you work with the software.

So the software can't do that for you.

You have your qualtric surveymonkey.

You know, whatever it is, it's just the platform now we have licenses to all the major Survey platforms, Qualtrics, Alchemy, etc.

But it's just the tool that allows you to ask questions and collect responses.

So how you work with your files, that's a whole different matter.

It's a really, really important matter.

So there's all kinds of math and Excel and business decisions and business rules that need to happen behind or.

And with the survey platforms.

Is there a survey platform that you would recommend that's fairly simple for the smaller retailer or manufacturer?

I would.

Well, here I'm biased.

You're allowed to be, yeah.

Okay, so we have licenses to all the major survey platform.

So really you're going to do better to just work with a company like ours that already has the licenses and knows how to use the survey platforms rather than going out yourself to Survey Monkey Enterprise or Alchemy or this or that or Qualtrics.

Because now you're going to have to, you know, buy the license and learn how to use it.

And you know, the stuff is surprisingly not intuitive if you get into the mechanics of a good survey.

So I would say work with a company that already has the licenses.

And you're right, you know, three quarters of the battle is what you do after.

Right.

You know, you know, that's, it's always the follow up on a survey, what you do with the information, number one and two, on a general basis and also on an individual basis as you were talking about earlier.

Right.

So yeah, it's the, it's the quality of the questions and then it's the quality of the analysis which, you know, you can get into.

We use statistical programs when it's large data sets and then we produce what is called crosstab, so you can see, you know, customer type by customer type, how they responded to different questions.

So there's the analytics and then there's the, just the fundamental.

Now you need to, you know, you need to act on the feedback even at an individual level.

If a customer writes and says, hey, I just want you to know I love your company, I love this and that about it.

I think you should write back and say, you know, really, thank you for that, we really appreciate you as a customer and that your feedback is invaluable.

If the customer writes, I got your product and it was, it wasn't entirely broken, but this piece that chipped off or whatever it is, you absolutely have to get back to them.

Otherwise you're never going to hear from them again in any kind of quality way.

Like why would you.

It's just that's, you know, it's like, of course you're not.

So it's.

So it's.

There are many parts.

I guess that's what I hope I'm communicating is there are many parts to doing a survey.

How you invite, how you ask, what you ask, when you ask, who you ask, then how you analyze the results and then how you feedback on it and, you know, create a complete closed loop.

What can they expect?

So let's say they have 10,000 in the email base.

Let's just use that as an example.

What can they expect as the number?

You know, they said they blast it out.

Maybe they put it on the website, they do socials, all of that stuff.

Can they expect 5% response from that?

Is there a standard response?

Yeah, we would say between 4 and 55%.

Okay, so that's quite a range.

And what does it depend on?

It depends on how engaged your customers are with you.

Like, is this, you know, look, you buy a roll of toilet paper like no one cares.

Like, best now you're not even getting 4% response.

Like, no one cares.

It's too high.

That's all I care.

Yeah, come on.

Yeah, like, come on.

So how engaged, honestly, are your, your customers with you?

It depends on world events.

Like, the pandemic was great for survey response.

We got incredible survey sponsor.

Yeah.

Especially from employee surveys.

But you know, when.

When the stock market dips, that can be bad for survey response.

So they're just.

Because people are depressed, they just.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, they have.

Yeah, they have bigger fish to fry.

They've got to go into their Schwab account and deal with, like, should I rebalance my poor portfolio and who should I call and what do I do?

You know, and so you become.

No matter how important you think you are, you just simply become less important.

So there's kind of world events, there's that engagement, and then there's the.

What's the quality of your database?

With us, we're all white hat, so we get 100% deliverability.

But, you know, what's the quality of your.

Your emails and your list?

And, you know, are your emails really being.

Yeah, you have 10,000.

But are they really being delivered?

So, so there's.

That's, that's why there's this big range.

Why say 4%?

I used to say 5%, but we're finding, like, it can be, you know, in the 3 and 4%.

But we've also see, you know, 50, 60% response.

Has that changed over the last 10 years?

Higher or lower?

No.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's, you know, other than the, you know, the few times have never been spikes in, you know, world events where you've seen like oh, a big ascension or, or a decline.

But no, it's, it's, it's pretty standard.

And I'm sure there's times a year like you probably don't want to do one Christmas week, right?

I mean there's times a year you just don't do them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We would say Monday more.

Although typically there's like a reminder schedule and we'll try a Monday or a Friday as part of a reminder schedule.

And by the way, don't ever write reminder in bold in your email.

You're just telling people what they already decided not to do.

Don't do that.

Right.

Be creative.

I guess that's one lesson I'd want to impart is be creative.

Be narrative, be human in your customer feedback process.

Yeah, yeah.

So is there a length, let's go back to the general survey.

Is there a length of a survey that produces the best results?

Because I have, I have gone into some surveys and you get three pages in, you're 20 minutes in and I'm going, is this thing ever going to end?

You know, and some of those you don't finish.

Right.

You bail.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what's the magic there?

Okay, first of all, set an honest expectation.

Like don't if, if it's going to take 10 minutes, say that.

If you truly just have a few questions and you can do it in a couple of minutes, say that.

Don't say it's only going to take a couple of minutes and then do some kind of, you know, dissertation level, the hundred question survey, don't do it.

So your question should be relevant if it's what we call that touch points, just about the shopping cart or it's just about keep it to under 10 questions always.

If it's that big annual or biannual survey where you're asking about multiple departments of a company, set up that expectation and use a lot of logic gating to make sure you're always relevant, to keep it as short as possible.

But you might very well have, for a customer that's super engaged with you, you might have 40 or 50 aspects of the company that you want them to rate.

And just so the point is to really set a clear expectation about what it is and think about if it is a longer survey, how you can incentivize, like what can you do in exchange your customers time is just as valuable as yours.

Like what can you do to sweeten the deal?

That you can discount off the next order or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

Or like I say, you know, we love the coffee units.

We, you know, recognize your time, have a latte on us.

And it's, you know, it just depends on what it is.

But just going back to it might be very long because it's the big survey that you do once a year, set the expectation, think about what you can give in return.

But if it's just the touch point.

Absolutely.

Must, must, must, must.

Keep it under 10 questions.

And 10 is like @ the very top.

If you can do it in three or four questions, that's what you want.

All right.

Speaking of keeping it in time, I have time for two more questions.

Sure.

How should we best incorporate the open ended question?

The text blocks, right.

The questions that we want them to write out their answers.

Do we find that people do that or is it only the negative responses?

That people do that?

No, people absolutely use that.

They like that because now you're human.

Like all of this thing about, like, how would you rate?

The truth is no one thinks about you as, you know what you are 3.5 or you are a 74.

Like, that's really not how people think.

How they think is, well, the product is fantastic.

The service reps don't seem to know anything.

The escalation process sucks.

Like, that's how people really think.

And so the more your survey reflects the human mind and that's the survey invite the survey itself, the better you are.

I like one of the questions.

Maybe this is a terrible question, but I like it when I'm answering a survey is, and this shows me that they really care and want to address issues is the question is, what would you change?

Yeah, yeah.

Because that shows me, okay, the company cares.

They really want to know what, what I, how I feel about something rather than the other way.

Right.

You know?

Right.

Yeah.

And so, and sometimes it's even helpful to like narrow it in.

What are one or two things that you would change immediately about xyz, you know, because it's like, you know what?

Everybody can think of that.

Yeah.

And every product I use, I find something I would change.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's what I like about it.

It's neutral.

If you add in like one or two things that, you know, people, again, it narrows the mind.

So what would you change?

Sometimes that seems too, oh, there's too many things I change.

You know, what are the, you know, and immediately I like that too.

So anything you can Narrow in I think is really good.

I think logic gating off of if you do a rating say on a 0 to 10 scale, logic gating off of if it was say, you know, detractor kind of response, zero to six, you know, really tell us more.

We're really interested in everything that's going on with blah blah, you know, really make it extremely reflective of the fact that they are dissatisfied with you.

On the other hand, if they're giving you a 9 or 10 on that scale, so they're mostly very satisfied now, I think it's really helpful to say, you know, thank you.

That's, that's a great response.

You know, that's great rating.

However, what are one or two things that you would change?

You know, we're always looking to improve what are one or two things that you would change?

So you know, making that open end a natural follow up to a rating question I think is really important.

The surveys I take in general in a year, the best ones I've seen are from cruise companies and why?

Just because they seem to have it down and they, and I have gotten responses from, from them when it's been negative especially, but they just seem to have the follow up questions down.

They have, you know, they just seem to have it down and they should.

How many millions of people take cruises every year?

Right.

Sure.

Yeah.

So last question.

Sure.

Survey is done.

Now what?

Well do the analysis take action?

And it's really about with our clients.

It's meeting in small teams.

It's meeting with the repair.

Here's what we found out because here's what repairs doesn't really care about product engineering.

They don't care.

So break it down to hear specifically what we found out about repairs department.

Forget the whole rest of it.

Let's, let's workshop this.

Why is, you know, here's what, what customers are saying with regard to, you know, why they gave it an 8 out of 10 and not a 10 out of 10.

What can we do this quarter and this year to, to you know, hockey stick up that, that metric.

So I think the smaller, the more focused the teams, the better the actionability.

I think the two, the smaller the company egos tend to get in the way.

So even if you get, if you get an answer that you don't like, you tend to want to, you know, excuse it away because you're kind of, your ego's kind of in the way.

I think that's hard.

It's hard for people to put that aside and we're just human.

You know.

Right, right, right.

But we have to, I mean.

Right.

Well, it depends what, you know, if you have a growth mindset or not.

You know, actually, you don't.

Like, you could just, you could just say, hey, that customer, they're always asking for too much.

They're just the pain.

You could look at it that way or you could say, wow, they took the time to tell us, is it possible that we have six other company, six other customer companies that feel the same way?

Is it possible that's the, that growth mindset?

And if that's true, maybe, maybe we're being held back.

What's the expression, you know, hoisting ourselves and our petard, you know, like we're, we're holding ourselves back.

And so, you know, how much do you want to grow?

I think that's all, you know, isn't that always the question in business?

Like, how much do you want to grow?

How prepared are you to grow?

And you might be, you know, the fact is we're good.

You know, we're doing as much business.

As we want to or can handle.

Yeah, yeah, we're in a good place.

And in that case, maybe you shouldn't.

Why do a survey like, well, you know, why?

Why?

Because again, your custom.

I always come back to your customers.

Time is valuable.

Just, you know, hang on to the, the clientele that you have.

But if you're in the results you want anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if you're in a growth mode, then, then customer feedback is again, not just valuable, it's invaluable.

On that note, if they were going to hire somebody to help them, which.

One of the problems with small manufacturers or retailers is time.

Time's your biggest enemy.

It's always the biggest enemy in business, especially for an entrepreneur.

So they hire somebody like you.

How do they do that?

Where do they go?

They could Google on interaction.

Like we're having an interaction metrics like the number M E T R I C s. And we'll obviously come to the top, go to our website.

There's contact forms.

So.

And we have a guide on five survey mistakes.

You can get that for free.

And other kinds of resources, a survey sampling calculator.

So that's one way is just go to our website and the other is LinkedIn.

And so it's Martha, Brooke, B R O O K E. And just you can look me up directly on LinkedIn and I'll probably get back to you directly and answer your question, tell you more, send you resources, whatever you might like.

And I noticed your list of companies you've worked with is quite extensive and quite large.

And you have some on there that, that are in our industry too.

So, so appreciate you being here, Martha, and answering these questions.

It is, you know, it's something that we, you know, we all know we should be doing.

We do.

We know we're doing it.

Well, until we get advice from an expert, we don't know.

Right.

You don't know whether you've done it the best you can.

It's like anything else in business.

Right?

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Well, thank you, Martha.

Appreciate it.

It is interaction metrics.com I will be back again next week with another episode of the Retail Roundup and then we're off.

We're going to let you guys do your Christmas thing because you're not going to be listening to me over the.

Once we get to Thanksgiving week, you guys are going to be slammed.

So good luck in your holiday sales and don't forget to make all your reservations and do everything you need to do to get to Dallas in January.

It's for the WESA trade show.

Go to wesatradeshow.com for all the details.

Make your hotel reservations, get your flights booked, whatever you need to do to get there.

And I will be there as well as, as well as many of the guests have had on recently are going to be there.

And thank you again to Sophia and the gang over at WESA for putting this all together.

We appreciate that as well.

Martha, you have a great holiday.

Yeah, you too, Glenn.

Thank you so much.

Loved it.