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So, we posed this question to our panel:“ Are there changes in how contact centers are – and should – listen for the voices of customers? Are customer surveys becoming more or less valid? Are customers and companies becoming tired of surveys?”

RAJ BALASUNDARAM: Survey data remains vital for capturing broad sentiment, but there’ s growing survey fatigue among consumers. Not every experience is best measured through a post-interaction questionnaire.

In the past, contact centers have added richer listening methods, such as speech analytics. With AI, we can now detect consumer sentiment in real time during calls and from agent input. These newer tools can capture a more complete picture of CX, as well as the employee experiences, providing actionable insights without overwhelming customers with surveys at every touchpoint.

Additionally, when brands bring more complex journeys online, there is a need for struggle detection. Voice of the customer solutions can identify friction points and intervene instantly to keep customers moving forward, before they result in lost revenue and changing customer loyalty.

MANISHA POWAR: Recent research from Qualtrics shows direct customer feedback is at all time lows. And when consumers do respond, their feedback is fragmented across channels rather than flowing through traditional surveys.

The data shows that only 29 % of customers provide direct feedback after a good or bad experience. This is a continuation of a troubling trend, as the number of consumers who said they provide direct feedback after a bad experience is down 7.7 points since 2021.

That has important implications for survey impact and for how companies should design listening strategies.

If only three in 10 customers give direct feedback and that feedback is splintering across many touchpoints, a contact center that relies solely on post interaction surveys is effectively missing a majority of customer sentiment.

Surveys themselves are not inherently invalid. But their coverage and representativeness have eroded.

Contact centers must improve the effectiveness of their survey programs and make them more adaptive. They need to evolve to omnichannel listening, looking deeply into behavioral and unstructured customer feedback to capture the 71 %-plus of sentiment that conventional survey programs are likely missing.

CARMIT DIANDREA: Surveys remain an important tool in the voice of customer toolkit, providing critical direct feedback to companies.

But the future is about multi-channel, real-time listening. That includes analyzing interaction data using AI across voice, chat, social, and digital interactions, detecting customer intents and sentiment, and surfacing systemic issues without waiting for surveys. With AI, organizations can process millions of unstructured interactions to generate a more complete and accurate view of customer voice than surveys.

ERIC WILLIAMSON: Although traditional survey metrics like NPS and CSAT have been the dominant measures for years, they have limitations. Legacy surveys tend to offer only hints about what’ s happening: pointing to symptoms rather than root causes. They can be biased, limited due to survey fatigue, and are often too simplistic to capture the nuances of an individual customer journey.

However, despite these challenges, reliance on surveys has actually grown. The CallMiner report found that 72 % of organizations say they collect all or a majority of solicited feedback( feedback they actively request, like surveys): a notable increase from 2024.

This underscores the persistent challenge organizations face in balancing solicited and unsolicited feedback methods( unprompted input such as reviews or conversations).

To get a complete view of CX, organizations have an opportunity to collect unsolicited feedback as well as solicited feedback from surveys.

By combining these feedback methods, organizations can not only capture a more comprehensive data set but also use unsolicited insights to make solicited efforts more targeted and relevant. This creates more personalized, contextual outreach that drives higher-quality responses and builds greater customer trust.

When more data is captured and analyzed at scale using AI and automation, organizations can strengthen customer service to improve efficiency, engagement, satisfaction, actual products and / or services, and ultimately the entire business.

10 CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE