With digital transformation in full swing, a number of businesses are beginning to shift their manual processes for more efficient digital solutions.
This is even truer for customer experience survey initiatives where traditional processes have often led to a drain on time, inaccurate data and budget limitations.
And while it may be routine for your business to prepare and send paper-based surveys, it could be costing you way more than you think.
In this blog, we’re showcasing the benefits of transitioning towards digital with the top 4 savings you’ll experience by ditching paper.
The Savings of Going Digital
Reduce Waste
Sustainability is top of mind for a lot of customers today. In fact, Forrester cited that “a third of US online adults spend more time thinking about the climate than they did before the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Offering a number of paper-based surveys can be off-putting and even rub customers the wrong way. And while it’s clearly a customer preference, lowering your waste can also help you engage your community and employees, do better for the planet, and reduce costs in waste disposal and printing.
Reduce Cost
One of the more notable ramifications of sending paper-based surveys is spend. Consider for a moment the costs that go into hiring companies and people to create surveys and then distributing them. While it can seem within your budget at first, over time these numbers add up and aren’t scalable long-term.
In fact, the majority of paper-based survey spend can be saved through digital solutions and then re-allocated towards brand-building initiatives.
For instance, with an automated solution like Loop, surveys can be drafted by a single team member. That same employee can select and segment contacts to send the survey to and finally, monitor the data. This means you don’t just save on materials but also labour, as you don’t need a huge team or outsourced business to draft, print or distribute surveys.
Further, that same survey can then be sent again and again with little cost. Editing surveys can be done in real-time (in contrast to paper surveys which would have to be reprinted) and data is collected effortlessly.
Time-Savings
It goes without saying that manually analyzing survey data is a huge undertaking. From hours to days, and even weeks, sifting through data can be a tedious task that requires a larger workforce. Not to mention, it’s prone to error.
Opting for an automated solution that analyzes data for you, not only saves time but helps you become more accurate. Providing timely insight into customer feedback, you can make real-time decisions and take action.
Further, a survey solution like Loop can help you visualize data in a more meaningful way. Rather than having a single bar graph or numbers displayed within a table in Excel, Loop allows you to design custom dashboards that are in line with your goals. Say, for instance, you want to understand trends within your restaurant. You can drag and drop trending topics and heat maps to your dashboard for immediate visibility when you log in to your portal.
Last but not least using a digital solution, all data is saved immediately. This means you bypass the possibility of losing customer surveys during transport or simply misplacing them.
Keeping Employee Productivity Top Of Mind
Time-saving also comes into play with consistently asking for feedback. In some instances, employees can forget to communicate your survey or when they do, can spend more time than necessary explaining how to fill it out and where to submit it.
Using digital surveys, you can set automation so feedback is always requested from the customer, without the employee having to lift a finger. In addition, you can send the surveys on the customer’s preferred channel, so they can feel comfortable and confident taking your survey.
Save On Customer Churn
While we covered some critical points on the savings associated with trading paper-based surveys for digital ones, an honourable mention is the savings on customer churn.
Customers want easy. They want a seamless experience that enables them to express their thoughts and then submit them. When you distribute paper surveys, you create a barrier for the customer. You don’t give them a choice of how to fill it out and if the submission is anywhere then where they are right now, they can find it taxing.
Similarly, while paper-based surveys do drive some data on experience, they won’t be as insightful as something digital. This is simply because digital technologies have the ability to extract specific information in line with your objectives.
Lastly, digital solutions can assist you in real-time recovery. Using manual methods of data collection, information on a particular experience can come days or weeks after it took place. In this instance, the experience could have been shared with others or talked about online, which is too late for effective recovery. Using an automated solution like Loop, you get real-time notifications when a survey is submitted. If sentiment is urgent the message is escalated to a manager, for real-time recovery and reduced churn.
The Loop Experience Advantage
Digital surveys are a key part of any customer experience; They allow you to extract meaningful insights and build better customer relationships. This is why ensuring you’re selecting the right solution to help you in your efforts is key.
While we highlighted quite a few benefits of the Loop Experience Platform, there are a few more worth mentioning.
Firstly, Loop allows you to collect feedback using online and offline channels, in-location. That means you can select a range of customer-preferred channels and transition customers seamlessly to ensure the experience in-location and online is consistent.
In addition to a robust set of customer experience insights and analytics, Loop provides exportable data and insights. A key feature to help you develop your own business use case for buy-in.
Lastly, Loop offers an intuitive survey builder that you can customize. Develop a survey in line with your brand standards and ask questions that coincide with your objectives. Using Loop’s drag and drop survey builder you don’t have to be an expert in marketing or survey design to create an actionable and engaging survey.
