Customers don’t want what’s best, they want what they want

Like it or not, your customers don’t want what’s best. They want what they want.

I’ve been running PopSurvey for almost two years. If you’re not familiar with PopSurvey, it is opinionated survey software. We don’t compete on features, we compete on simplicity. Our selling point is that we get you a higher response rate and keep your users from hating you for sending them a survey that rivals the ACT.

But to help you create surveys that your users will actually want to take, we have to put some limitations on things (we don’t call them “limitations”…that’d really kill the marketing…but for practical purposes, that’s what they are).

You can’t create a multiple choice question with more than five options. Why? Because people don’t read more than that. Yes, I know you want to add 19 options, but the fact is, your respondents will literally ignore them.

You want to add 3 paragraphs of text before you ask a user to rate something on a scale of 1-to-3? Too bad. Again, your respondents will glaze over all that text.

Say you had a list of 20 items you wanted respondents to put in order of preference…that isn’t even remotely possible because people are awful at putting things in order in a way that would be meaningful to your business.

Despite the fact that we know all these things to be true and our research shows you get higher response rates and that your respondents can take your surveys faster with our platform, our #1 reason for cancellation are these limitations. We don’t let you create big hairy surveys with big hairy questions.

I’ve explained the reasons behind the “limitations” we put hundreds of times to hundreds of former customers and despite them acknowledging that their customers would get a better survey experience and they’d get higher quality responses by sending out one with PopSurvey, they still leave.

Why? WHY?!?! Because they want what they want. They approach surveys with the same mindset they’ve always had and want to replicate the surveys they’ve been sent before. You can’t change them. Humans are stubborn like that.

So what’s a company to do? Ignore them. Don’t waste your time trying to educate them. Move on. Cater to the people who get it.

When users want the simplicity you’re selling, you get customers who sing your praises from the rooftops instead of constantly battling your “limitations.” They trust you and know you’ve got their best interests in mind. And a user who trusts you will be a customer for life.

This focus on simplicity and trying to avoid having to constantly change the standard thinking of an industry was one of the initial factors that encouraged us to launch Temper. Temper helps you measure and improve customer satisfaction over time, and I’d love for you to check it out.

P.S. Let me know your thoughts! Hit me up @Shpigford.

 
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