The question of timing is an important one when considering when to gather feedback from your employees and/or customers.

Employee Survey

A good time to conduct an employee survey is when:
• New management is in place
• Turnover is increasing
• Recent changes have occurred in business direction
• It has been at least 6 months since you hired a significant number of employees
• You aren’t sure if employees understand where the business is headed
• You don’t know what employees are thinking about the business
• Customers begin to complain and/or you start to see a spike in customer attrition

A bad time to conduct an employee survey is when:
• There is so much going on in the business that you aren’t able to focus on sharing the findings with employees or commit to acting on the issues
• It is the busiest time of your business cycle (e.g., holiday season for retail)
• You just finished a survey (within the previous 6 months)
• There is a lack of resources for internal or external support (unless you are an expert, it is very dangerous – although tempting – to conduct a survey on a shoestring budget)
• Many employees will be on vacation
• You just hired a significant number of employees; it is advisable to give new employees at least 6 months to acclimate to their jobs and their new organization

Customer Survey

A good time to conduct a customer survey is when:
• You are losing customers (it’s not good to lose customers, but it is a good time to find out why)
• You need customer input for new products/services
• You feel as though you’re losing touch with customers (surveys are a good way to keep in touch)
• Sales and/or customer service employees are complaining about dissatisfied customers
• You’ve had some success with your customers and would like their feedback and recommendations (open-ended comments from surveys are a great source for testimonials, and statistics such as “95% of our customers would recommends us to others” can be very useful for marketing collateral)

A bad time to conduct a customer survey is when:
• It is difficult to access customers – either they are hard to reach or you don’t have a way to reach them
• Customers haven’t had enough time to use your products/services
• You have very few customers (you may want to consider interviewing by phone or in person)
• You don’t have enough resources (internal or external) to analyze or act on the findings

We hope these lists are helpful. If you find that the “good times” list(s) describes your situation, please pick up the phone or send us an email and we’d be happy to speak with you about how we can help.


For more information about Critical Metrics, LLC, please visit www.critical-metrics.com, or contact us via phone 212 675 9211 or email info@critical-metrics.com.