Surveys are a mainstay of customer experience measurement programs. It is important to use them strategically, however, to avoid boring your customers to tears!

Recent years have seen a major drop in survey response rates and a big jump in abandonment rates. In fact, 80% of customers say they have abandoned surveys halfway through.

There are two steps to improving the quantity and quality of your customer feedback and avoiding survey fatigue:

• Update your surveys
• Adopt an omni-source program

Update your surveys
To optimize your customer survey program, keep in mind the following points:

• Customers are more likely to take a survey if they feel it is relevant to them. It’s important to identify target customers when designing a survey program.
• Make sure that your questions are clear and easy to answer.
• Simplicity is key. The more questions you have, the greater the chances of triggering fatigue or receiving answers that contain errors or are incomplete. In fact, 52% of customers say that three minutes is the most they would spend on a feedback form.
• Unlike closed questions, open-end questions allow customers to express themselves freely and let companies know what they care about most.

Adopt an omni-source program
The principle behind omni-source programs is that you must expand beyond surveys in order to understand the entire customer experience. Consider taking advantage of the many internal data sources at your disposable (for instance, CRM systems, customer emails, and employee surveys) to diagnose and treat customer experience problems.

Source: http://go.clarabridge.com/WC-LP-The-Cure-for-the-Survey-Fatigue.html