Stop Comment Cards - tellustoday

12 Reasons to Give Up on Comment Cards

The comment card should be consigned to the elephant graveyard of bad ideas. Their biggest flaw is not enabling the business to take immediate action on their own Real Time Customer Feedback.

There is simply no point in asking how your coffee was today if the business can’t act on the feedback until tomorrow. Fortunately, mobile surveys – such as Tellustoday, that use the customer’s own mobile phone to input on the spot feedback, solve these issues, help you retain customers and make more money.

So here are the dirty dozen reasons why comment cards should be retired and why a mobile phone questionnaire should be used.

So here are the dirty dozen reasons why comment cards should be retired and why on the spot customer feedback, via mobile phone is a more effective replacement.

The Basics

1) Inconvenient — Comment cards are often hard to find, harder to read, with neither a writing implement to hand nor a box in which to post them.

2) Inflexible — Comment Cards are printed, have fixed questions for every customer, are costly to change and waste many trees. This means that you are asking the wrong questions to the wrong customer and you can’t alter anything until you reprint the cards. Tellustoday uses no paper, can be updated in real-time and deliver different questions for every customer type.

3) Way…..Too Long — If you just finished eating a bad meal, you don’t want to complete a long survey. Surveys need to be short – no more than 30 seconds for the customer to complete. Convenient and quick.

4) Stuffed With Poor Content — Even if the customer has taken the trouble to fill out your card, most questions are poorly worded, ambiguous or too open ended so that the business owner, can’t take action. Tellustoday provides both the technology and the expertise in feedback construction to ensure the process is easy and the answers are actionable.

5) Demand Too Much Info — This is the kryptonite of customer feedback. Anonymity is precious. Name, address, dog’s maiden name – are useless to the business and a turn-off for customers. The result – low response rates. Get feedback first and improve the business or better still, use a technology that asks for permission to contact.

6) Staff Interference — A comment card left on the table or in the comment box will be read by staff, and only the best will be kept. Don’t think it doesn’t happen in your business. Tellustoday feedback goes straight to management.

The Basics…cont.

7) Error Prone — Data from cards has to be manually entered into a spreadsheet, so is prone to typos or missed columns. Likely the analysis will be poor quality, incurring a delay in getting it to the right staff to take action! Tellustoday does all the analysis, so you don’t have to, even while the customer is still experiencing your service.

8) No Integration Needed — Many businesses use comment cards as just one of a number of methods to get feedback (others might include the web, or mystery shopping). So now the business needs this data integrated with the others. This means more expense, more time and more error. Tellustoday is one database that receives feedback from all sources, 24/7.

9) Way…..Too Costly— Having comment cards are more expensive than you think. Simply add up the following: designing, printing, distribution, postage, re-printing, collection, inputting, analyzing, correcting, communicating and delay. Tellustoday is more cost effective since it does all this in real-time without error.

10) Wasted Social Media Opportunity — Even if a customer wanted to share something nice about your business they can’t! Guest feedback on comment cards is not connected to social media, and that’s a wasted opportunity! Tellustoday invites only happy customers to post on social media – generating awareness and interest in your business.

11) Way Too Late — Worst of all, an unhappy customer tweets and posts to Facebook/Yelp/Google all before you know it has even happened. No chance to fix the issue, no chance to salvage the customer, and no chance to save your reputation. Tellustoday is in real-time, enabling immediate recovery so the customer no longer needs to vent.

12) Not Actionable — Low feedback scores mean unhappy customers and a reason to defect to a competitor. Comment cards provide too little, too late – and are not connected to the right staff. The business doesn’t know how it is performing so the unhappy customer leaves, never to return. You lose the revenue and your reputation. Tellustoday delivers alerts to the right staff in real-time whenever there is an issue, so they can take action and salvage the customer.