CRM in Action: Boosting Satisfaction Survey Responses
The Challenge: Reduce the cost of satisfaction surveys while improving results.
The Solution: TLC Vision Corp. devotes itself to helping people see more clearly through laser surgery. For its own clarity of vision, TLC increasingly is relying on online surveys. In the past TLC conducted customer surveys by phone using an outsourced survey firm. But after seeing WebSurveyor in action when it was used for internal questionnaires, the marketing department asked for full access to the application. "We initially did one survey; the cheapest, lowest-cost, simple way to go. But we now have ten standing surveys," says Roger McIlmoyle, manager of technical services at TLC. The surveys collect input from customers, surgeons, and referring optometrists, as well as employees for HR and help desk--related issues. Acting on patient and prospect input, TLC has made improvements to its office environments and to postprocedure support documentation, which made it easier to find help-line numbers. Also as a result of the surveys prospects are now given more detailed information during the prescreening process, making them better prepared for the consulting session with the laser surgeon. Operating costs are minor: The system needs just one person to police the active surveys, and no special programming knowledge is required to put questions in and get data out.
The Payoff: TLC pays just a few thousand dollars per year for the survey hosting, which is substantially less expensive than external phone surveys. And TLC now gets a much higher response rate (as high as 75 percent from some customer segments), and can poll constantly and with more frequent changes to the survey questions.