I had a conversation today with a client debating who at your customer location should be surveyed for feedback.

The question to debate is should we survey a customer who has had no interaction with your company. Perhaps they use a copier or printer in the office but never place a service call or supply order, which really means they have no feedback other than knowing if the equipment is working when they need it. Are they in a position to give good feedback, as the goal is not to get a survey response or a higher NPS score but to better serve your customer.

We have "transactional" surveys after service calls, equipment installs, sales orders, etc. But how then do you identify the non-transactional engaged people?

Hopefully most of the answers to your customer/prospect questions should be online with visits tracked (why? read They Ask You Answer).

So we need to focus on Engaged Customers but the same can apply to prospects. If a prospect has no interest in your company or product should you continue to chase them or focus that energy on people who are real prospects.

With the tools we have today the easiest way to see who is engaged is to track who is visiting your site and blogs. At Juice we use HubSpot for marketing and can track who our visitors are closely. More importantly, we can track who has NOT visited. We also have a process to weed out non-engaged people from our marketing list.

Surprisingly the last time we sent the above message 30% of people said keep me subscribed.

The result is a database of engaged prospects and customers, people who have clicked a link, watched a video, or visited our site.

Customer Engagement is a hot topic with lots of research. This article shows that "engaged customers can quickly become brand advocates and influencers, giving you the type of marketing that can only be earned – never purchased. However, customers who are actively disengaged can also be influencers; if they do not “love” your brand, they may be quick to share their negativity with others through reviews, forums and social media.

In between the two poles are your indifferent customers, those who could move either way. Obviously, you want to turn indifferent customers into engaged ones while encouraging engaged customers to become “true believers” in your brand."

So to answer the question I posed at the start on who to survey if you want to survey everyone at your customer site, I suggest you start with your Engaged Customers, the ones who can help you provide a better experience.

If you are using HubSpot (30% of our clients do) and you need help building an Active List (one that auto updates) of Engaged Prospects or Customers, email us.