Heuristic and qualitative analysis provide beneficial, multi-faceted customer experience data across the multitude of communication platforms, UIs, contact centers, out of box experiences, and so on. Human interactions are nuanced and complex. Surveys cannot capture nor measure how someone interacts with a product, service, or company. Observation and expertise prevail with richer data to assist user experience designers and practitioners.
Surveys immediately bias the data away from experience and more towards influencing opinion. Although in the past surveys provided statistics and charts for PowerPoint decks and business plans, today surveys for user experience provide only some insight into how customers "feel." If you peek behind a customer experience survey-based analysis, often times statistical bias blemishes the best of intentions.
One example that I recall illustrates how bias can start even before the customer begins to check the boxes: the survey was provided to prepaid (non-contract) mobile users via email. Most of the demographic of the companies compared in the study didn't use email. The results were so biased that price alone seemed to be the real experiential care-about and all that mattered. Hurts consumers, markets, companies, and so on. That's an extreme example, I admit. But I am biased.
Recently, a few established customer experience practitioners took pot shots at the larger research and consulting organizations because they claimed there was a lack of quantitative survey data in their analysis. Experts who exhibit this kind of behavior erode the foundational underpinnings of newly formed and growing corporate Customer Experience programs. A market that's rich and ready become part of the fabric of many enterprises, large and small. Cooperation and best practice sharing should prevail and the methodologies utilized by trusted firms such as Forrester and Gartner should not become the targets of self serving editorials.
Yes, surveys still remain an important part of measuring sentiment, however, it's very hard to quantify the je ne sais quoi of customer experience.
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