[Public Voices]How to Improve Business Performance with Satisfaction Surveys

Hwang Hee-young, CEO of Open Survey

Where are companies focusing their attention these days? It is on customer experience. Unlike in the past when products of adequate quality would sell themselves, fierce competition now forces companies to meet customer needs and elicit satisfaction in order to survive. As winning customers’ hearts becomes crucial, industry-leading companies are investing resources to provide better experiences to their customers. They pay close attention to and manage customer experiences, thoughts, and opinions across both online and offline channels. This includes asking delivery app users about their food and rider experiences and checking hotel guests’ stay experiences. However, many frontline teams struggle because these efforts do not translate into actual business results. What is important for experience management to influence decision-making aimed at improving customer experience and to enhance business performance? The answer is ‘consistency’ and ‘data sharing.’

Even customers who were once satisfied can have their satisfaction levels change anytime depending on industry developments or circumstances. Therefore, experience must be continuously measured and analyzed. However, few companies in Korea have established this cycle. According to Open Survey Feedback’s ‘CX (Customer Experience) Trend Report,’ among 450 employees using surveys to collect customer feedback, only 36% conduct surveys regularly and 12.7% do so continuously. More than six out of ten companies only grasp customer experience indicators in a fragmented way. Treating experience management activities like satisfaction surveys as one-off events means they are only used for follow-up evaluations or one-time decisions, limiting their impact. Consistently reviewing data and analyzing time-series changes enables quick responses to subtle shifts and positively affects business performance improvement.

Problems are also found in data utilization. Business decision-making involves many stakeholders and complex processes. Therefore, it is necessary to smoothly share key data with related departments. However, a survey of 876 employees revealed that only about 34.2% reported having a culture of sharing customer feedback. From the perspective of frontline workers, data is still shared internally in static formats such as Excel and PowerPoint, and satisfaction surveys are analyzed only on a case-by-case basis. Real-time data analysis is impossible, and updating data after sharing is inconvenient. For efficient data-driven decision-making, data sharing must be easy. In other words, only when infrastructure and culture are established to view data together and monitor changes in customer experience can data truly lead to results.

Global companies leading their industries are already serious about data-driven CX management. Airbnb, a global accommodation sharing service, built infrastructure related to customer experience, developed artificial intelligence (AI) technology to classify and label message intent, and improved response speed to enhance customer experience. They also make key decisions such as product improvements based on customer feedback, increasing customer loyalty and retention rates. It was also found that customers satisfied with the service are more likely to reuse it, spread positive word-of-mouth, and actively recommend it to others.

Customers who take the time to participate in satisfaction surveys expect a better experience next time. To meet these expectations and provide positive experiences, experience data must not stop at collection and reporting but must lead to action. When the process of experience management flows smoothly, experience data will play an important role in driving business performance.

Hwang Heeyoung, CEO of Open Survey