Task 16

In your blog, comment on what you think about online surveys as a way of collecting feedback from customers, and addressing the questions below. Before you comment, discuss the topic with your group with emphasis on the following questions:

• What are the advantages of online surveys?
• Where there any questions in the survey which weren't particularly useful?
• Identify issues concerning online surveys that could compromise accurate customer feedback about your organisation? Are there any aspects of desired customer feedback which online surveys cannot capture? How often do you fill in online surveys?
• Identify at least two other ways to capture customer feedback, apart from online surveys?
• What kinds of responses can you provide to customers about to their feedback? How do you tell customers you appreciate their feedback? Provide examples.
• If you cannot satisfy an online enquiry from a customer, to whom will you refer it? Does your customer policy indicate how difficult enquiries will be escalated?

Firstly I think that this whole question is rather contrived given that we are basing the answers to these detailed questions upon a fictitious scenario, and I personally do not believe that I have the experience with online surveys, traditional surveys ad customer feed back in general to answer these questions as they stand, I can however pretend to have such experience and provide answers not based on any real experience but rather upon contrived answers to contrived questions, so with out further ado I shall give you my expert opinion on online surveys.

What are the advantages of online surveys?

The advantages of online surveys are numerous they allow for a non labor intensive collection of information, that can in many cases penetrate deeper into the market than may be possible with traditional methods. Online surveys are highly dynamic, the same survey with the same penetration can easily be changed and updated on the fly.

Identify issues concerning online surveys that could compromise accurate customer feedback about your organisation? Are there any aspects of desired customer feedback which online surveys cannot capture? How often do you fill in online surveys?

One issue that tends to arise with online surveys as a form of collecting customer feedback is that many people are hesitant to fill out forms online, due to a perceived security risk many people are afraid of spam and various other online scams that may try and collect personal information for nefarious purposes, and so they have a very negative attitude to any kind of online feedback.

Personally I have had very little experience filing in customer feed hack forms online, there was only in fact the one time that I did so in all my years of internet browsing, I filled in this survey because of the great service that received at that particular website, and because I was not using my own computer so I did not fear the risk of malicious code.

Online surveys are not a good tool for obtaining certain types of customer feedback, things like gender and age are not easily obtained with any degree of certainty because people tend to lie, and if you can not observe these features with your own eyes than you just never know they could well be lying to you and that would mess up all of your data and that would not be good, because that your online survey would just be a big waste of time, and from personal experience I can testify to how much i detest having my time waisted by stupid questions.

Identify at least two other ways to capture customer feedback, apart from online surveys?

Customer feedback can be obtained by installing a root kit into software that you sell to your customers this can be an incredible source of customer feedback because it eliminates the risk of customers deceiving you and also allows you to monitor habits of the customer that they may not actually want to tell you.

Another form of obtaining customer feedback is to set up a forum that deals with the products you sell, this can than be used to monitor how people feel about your product the only problem with this method is that it can be hard to manage an online forum and it takes a dedicated team of propaganda agents to ensure that the good will of the company is not damaged online. If this method is however done correctly than it can be a really good method because aside from collecting customer feedback you can also bad mouth your competitors and promote your own products, this works best if there your propaganda agents are deeply undercover, even occasionally questioning certain conduct of the company so that there true identity is never revealed.

What kinds of responses can you provide to customers about their feedback? How do you tell customers you appreciate their feedback? Provide examples.


Groan!~

Email is the preferred method and it is also a good idea to make sure that you have an automated email system in place so that you can thank people, this is polite and is the least that you can do to thank people for taking the time to fill out your survey.


If you cannot satisfy an online enquiry from a customer, to whom will you refer it? Does your customer policy indicate how difficult enquiries will be escalated?

How long is piece of string and does it serve any purpose?


If I can not satisfy a customer enquiry online, than I suppose whom I refer it to will depend on the nature of the enquiry , the nature of my company and the nature of my role in that company, I do not feel that I can answer such an open ended question as this with out a little bit of background information as to the nature of the enquiry so I have compiled the following fictitious scenario so that I may answer such a question should it arise.

The Scenari
I find myself creating a blog and I happen to post a fictitious scenario online with a mock feedback form that I do not really care about, when suddenly a member of the general public posts a comment on my blog wanting to know How Mr Howard can sleep at night with so much blood on his hands I am unable to answer this question so to whom should I refer this question that I am unable to answer?

I decide that I will simply tell the man that I too am puzzled by this question but that the answer escapes me, I would suggest asking the man himself but honestly abandoned him when he lost his integrity so I decide to do the honest thing myself and simply te;l; him that he will needed to ask somebody else as I nither know the answer nor do I know tio whom he should refer his question.

As for the latter part of the question the answer is definitely no, my policy does not speculate as to how difficult enquiries will be escalated, nor do I know why I should ever wish it to.