SurveyMonkey is now Momentive. Learn more here.
A global pandemic, an anticipated-election, and overnight business transformations—for leaders in 2020 and beyond, it was all in a day’s work. Governments worldwide signed the dotted line on stimulus checks and lockdown measures, and many companies balanced between relevance and opportunism. Yet, in periods of adverse change, there’s one constant that analysts and business leaders everywhere can rely on: data. And this year, it took on a whole new meaning.
The idea of sentiment changing over time isn't novel, but the speed at which it's been changing during the pandemic is.
Creative CommonsAs early as April 2020 when COVID-19 hit the world by storm, SurveyMonkey and Tableau began visualizing public sentiment to map regional outbreaks and later to anticipate the outcome of the then-contested U.S. presidential election. To this day, for healthcare workers, nationwide voters, teachers, and local business owners, access to real-time, widely-representative data has become a lifeline. How do people feel about returning to work? What’s the likelihood they’ll take the vaccine? What will post-pandemic life look like? In a rapidly-evolving world, organizations are honing in on the notion of needing to ask questions over and over again.
The idea of sentiment changing over time isn't novel, but the speed at which it's been changing during the pandemic is. Performance metrics are crucial to understanding and managing the performance of the enterprise, but this data alone doesn't always give a holistic picture of the business. Leaders and communities are realizing that access to easy-to-understand, widely-representative datasets has massive benefits on everything from customer retention, employee satisfaction, and better products and services overall. Here’s why.
You don’t know what you don’t know
There are incredible demands on organizations to be prescriptive and thoughtful about how they roll out new programs and interact with their stakeholders. Take vaccine distribution for example. Prior to the CDC announcement that made adults 65 and over first in line, SurveyMonkey asked the question: “If a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, how would you feel about receiving it?” Of nearly 37,000 respondents, 72% of seniors were on board, compared to 51% of the general population. Imagine the figures were reversed. The result could be disastrous with an influx of staff ready to inoculate unwilling recipients.
So far in the U.S., the government is rapidly meeting vaccination administration needs. Global efforts remain sluggish in many areas. While there is not a parallel precedent of mass vaccination, sentiment data would have at least helped spotlight the problem. What support do local pharmacies, nursing homes, and hospitals need? What regions of the world are most at risk and should be addressed first? Should we require vaccination for our employees to safely return to the office? Without timely sentiment data visualizations—communities, businesses, and governments risk miscalculating needs.
Maintaining an engaged workforce
Since the early days of the shift to remote work, HR teams have led through an unprecedented period of change and crisis management. Attracting and retaining talent was part one, and leaders now have to keep remote teams engaged, ensure a smooth virtual onboarding process, and more. That’s a massive shift in responsibilities.
At the end of 2020, SurveyMonkey launched an internal employee-wide survey, asking questions that would guide our long-term vision for the future of work. What do you need to feel productive? Would you prefer to work at home, in the office, or a mix of both? Unsurprisingly, one finding from the survey was that local restrictions and social isolation were weighing on our employees and they were feeling a loss of connectedness with colleagues. With this knowledge, SurveyMonkey began brainstorming ways to bring back this lost interaction. First, this meant using the Donut app, which pairs interested employees for 30-minute chats, work-related or not. Though this is only part one, it’s a step in the right direction. We’ve since aligned around a hybrid work model, which factors in the findings of the employee-wide survey and broader data we launched in partnership with Zoom.
There’s no denying that working as part of a global, distributed team comes with its share of challenges. Some traditional office workers may even choose to remain fully remote even after life as we know it resumes. But for each pivot, pandemic-related or not, it’s crucial to check in. Maybe you discover that employees need more flexible working hours or parents with young children are unable to be productive at home. Only through sentiment data can you identify the opportunities to build new programs and have conversations to improve.
Having a website isn’t “digital transformation”
The appetite for options to shop online only grew in response to COVID-19, leaving many businesses and traditional storefronts compelled to innovate and take extra care in listening to changing customer needs. While having a digital presence has become the norm for many retailers and larger organizations, others are early on in their journey of discovering new business models for reaching customers. For example, through data analytics, a small business owner might discover that there is an opportunity to open a delivery-only business, eliminating the expensive storefront and optimizing for amazing digital customer service i.e. purchases, returns, and personal shopping.
In the landscape of data for the enterprise, there is massive value in sentiment data—i.e. scores, ratings, and explanations. Whether looking to improve customer service and employee engagement, or build a better product or offering, sentiment data becomes a vital signal in this grand field of signals that tells you how things are doing or where things are going. What issues are customers having with completing the checkout process on our website? On our app? How can we improve our service? What challenges are staff facing in getting the job done? The insights allow you to communicate with the team around what needs improvement and what to prioritize.
Data needs to flow where it does the most good
Grabbing the right insights is important, but it’s only step one. How companies store data impacts the actions they’re able to take and ultimately the experience that customers have with the brand. Imagine ordering an item on a company’s webshop and expect the delivery in a few days. When the item takes weeks to show up on the doorstep, a few emails and calls are exchanged with the company or delivery provider asking what went wrong. On the receiving end, it’s crucial that the company has data on the transaction on hand so they can determine how to best serve the disgruntled customer. What issues did they already have with the buying experience? Did the product not meet their expectations? What can they do to improve the quality of their service? Additionally, without tying sentiment data to the right workflows, there is a high chance that subsequent customers will experience the same issue. Funnelling insights into systems of record helps map patterns so you can chart a clear path to improvements.
Employee sentiment data is another instance where you need data to lead into the right systems so it’s best actioned upon. HR teams might check in once every quarter to understand their employees’ experience and ask for general feedback. These pulse checks are valuable on their own, and even more so when you can relate their comments to past individual feedback and as it compares to the rest of the organization. Without this connection, the employee and employer lack the context needed to make decisions and improvements that could lead to stronger engagement and retention.
In the past, surveys were intermittent and data collection was slow. Insights were discovered too late and too infrequently to influence behaviour. Today, it is possible to survey people, and analyze the data, in real-time. With innumerable touchpoints with key stakeholders, it’s crucial to have all the data you need, when and where you need it. Whether looking at data around a customer’s last interaction, call, or purchase, access to real-time data visualizations provides crucial context for improvements and charting the future path.
