Recently my wife and I spent some very nice time in a Club Med beach resort. These have become one our favourite vacation destinations over the years because the all-inclusive approach and range of activities make them fun and easy.

On returning to Australia I received the now common customer feedback form. As we enjoyed our time and I am a compulsive customer survey taker (it goes with the job) I leapt in.

For a big company they didn’t do so well and you can certainly do better if you don’t make the same mistakes.

Some aspects were well done:

1. They bothered to ask at all
2. They personalised the email with my name and even personalised the images in the survey based on the location where we had stayed. Nice.
3. It arrived after I had time to returned from my trip.

Umm… that’s about it for the upside. On the downside we have:

Problem 1: Images for Key Message Parts

Below is how the email arrived in my inbox as I have (like many people) images turned on only for known email addresses.

Unfortunately they used images for all of the most important parts of the invite including the key call to action, aka, the survey link. From what I see below there is no way to get started on the survey if you don’t have the images showing.

With image download turned on the message looks great but for many a quick “delete finger” that will be too late.

Lesson: Make sure your invite looks good and customers can respond with images turned off.

This is a pet peeve but the sign-off is the very impersonal “Head of Quality”. For an organisation that prides itself on a friendly and fun loving atmosphere this is not “on brand”. A recent client case study showed that having a real person as the sign-off lifts response rates by 50%.

Lesson: Make sure that the invite comes from a real person.

Problem 2: Massive Question Overload

Having successfully managed to get into the survey this is the first page.

While they have very kindly given me a progress meter so I know far through I am, this one says 1%! That means I have 100 pages of questions yet to get through?

Feeling somewhat squeamish about how long this was actually going to take I start clicking Next buttons. Overall there were more than 25 pages in the survey with each page having several, and more, individual questions.

There were probably around 100 questions in this feedback survey asking about every aspect of the location from the reception to the meals, and each of the activities. This is too much, way too much, for a feedback survey.

To provide thoughtful and considered feedback to this survey would have taken me more than an hour of effort. Much more than many people are prepared to invest. That means they will be receiving a very low response rates and/or poor information as people skim down the page selecting the middle scores just to get through it.

Lesson: Keep your survey short to maximise response rate and information accuracy

Problem 3: Actually It’s Just A Lead Generation Form.

On the final few pages we start to get questions like this:

Now our customer feedback survey has turned into a marketing and promotions engine. Customers see this stuff a mile off and it ruins any good feelings you may have generated.

Lesson: Resist the urge to do anything except collect customer feedback in your customer feedback survey. Customers sense when you have other motives.

We had a great time at club Med and have enjoyed our vacations there over the years. They are a fun and relaxed destination.

Their destinations do a great job at looking after their customers. It’s a pity their Head Of Quality, whoever they may be, doesn’t do the same.