From TripAdvisor to Twitter, hotels are broadening their conversations with customers, providing a great opportunity for an enriched understanding of customer perceptions. So why not replace traditional forms of survey research with social media? After all, doesn't this public feedback produce unfiltered, honest conversations which are the most valuable form of customer feedback?

The challenge with social media feedback is that it's inherently messy — it's public, unsolicited and unpredictable. The vast majority of hotels on TripAdvisor receive fewer than ten reviews per year. Even with additional feedback from other social media sources, problems relating to sample size and representativeness, credibility, scope and depth of evaluation, frequency, and other issues prevent social media from displacing survey research.

But social media is an important source of feedback within a comprehensive Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) strategy and can significantly impact consumer buying behavior.

Solicited Feedback

The results from formal survey programs are used extensively throughout organizations, especially in operations, human resource, and marketing functions. Survey data often play an import role in quality assurance / compliance, incentive compensation programs, continuous improvement programs, employee development, resource allocation, etc. Issues relating to sample size and representativeness are generally not a problem because they are under the control of the survey administrator.

Structured surveys provide consistent measures across a diverse set of operational areas. By proactively gathering feedback, you get to ask the questions you want to ask rather than relying on what others want to talk about online. Managers can see trends of specific issues over time, analyze their results and take action based on detailed information. Surveys also offer the possibility for timely and personal service recovery. Conversely, most reviews posted online do not allow a personal reply or require a ‘public’ response on the website.

Unsolicited feedback from other sources (polls, review sites, etc.) can provide more or new insight that may be incorporated into existing surveys. Customers may be discussing a topic in a forum that you never thought to ask about in your surveys. Conversely, managers may uncover an issue within survey results and have the opportunity to fix it before people start discussing it on the social web.

Moderated Feedback

Polls, or panels, such as the Market Metrix Hospitality Index (MMHI), can provide a reliable and detailed comparison of brands. Based on a repeated quarterly survey methodology, including careful sample selection to be representative of the population, a consistent core set of questions and using a single scoring system, MMHI results are comparable among all brands in the industry and across time periods.

A poll can provide detailed results from a broad survey and include comments or follow up questions based on individual responses. Survey questions can address current trends or target specific issues that might not be top–of–mind for many customers. Polls are an important source of industry data and serve as an objective comparison source.

Unsolicited Feedback

The role of user–generated reviews is exploding. TripAdvisor™ attracts more than 35 million monthly visitors and 88% of these visitors are influenced by content they read. Word–of–mouth adds a layer of credibility and is more effective than other more formal forms of promotion. It used to be said that an unhappy customer would tell 3 others about their poor experience; now they tell 3 million (with less effort). The guest experience has never mattered more.

Issues mentioned by customers in social media often support trends already identified in traditional surveys. But input from social media sources may also point to new areas that should be added to a customer satisfaction program. In this way, social media feedback is used as qualitative input that can be applied in a more rigorous research process.

Market Metrix recently completed a study of TripAdvisor reviews ("Are TripAdvisor Reviews Bogus?") to evaluate the reliability of their data. Results from TripAdvisor reviews were compared with results from the Market Metrix Hospitality Index (MMHI), a well known hotel customer satisfaction panel in operation since 2001. Customer evaluations for hotels were directly compared using TripAdvisor and MMHI data for 2009. While the results indicated that these sources often provide similar results by property, numerous properties had conflicting results. In addition, there was a lot more variability (noise) in the TripAdvisor reviews. It is logical that individuals who have had either an exceptionally good or bad experience would be more inclined to post a review, which would lead to more variation among TripAdvisor reviews.

In another study of a large domestic hotel chain, evaluations from social media provided conflicting results with their formal survey program. It was discovered, however, that the social media results were based on 553 evaluations compared to 53,149 completed surveys for the same period.

While unsolicited customer feedback in social media can yield critical insights, it doesn't replace proactive customer satisfaction surveys. So embrace social media as a feedback channel, but don't lose sight of the wide-ranging role that traditional feedback methods provide. Social media is a vital source of feedback within a balanced, comprehensive feedback strategy.

Hospitality companies must properly gather and utilize customer feedback from multiple sources. In short:

  • Use solicited customer surveys for deep operational and customer knowledge
  • Utilize third party polls and panels for reliable competitive benchmarking
  • Monitor and respond to unsolicited channels to ensure that your brand reputation is solid by responding to negative feedback and picking up any missed key trends or issues

Together, these sources should provide the business operator with a clear vision of his customers, their experience, and his competitive position in the market place.

About Market Metrix

Clarabridge’s customer experience management platform helps hundreds of the world’s leading brands understand and improve the customer journey. Powered by the industry’s most sophisticated customer analytics engine, Clarabridge collects and transforms all forms of customer feedback into intelligence, allowing businesses to activate the voice of the customer across the enterprise. Industry leaders including PetSmart, United Airlines, L’Oréal USA, Virgin Active, Rackspace, and ADP use Clarabridge insights to inform key business decisions. The result: happy, loyal customers.