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CULTURAL BIASHow Does Culture Affect Your Survey Responses?Five Recommendations for Reducing Cultural Bias

3 INTRODUCTION

4 WHAT DRIVES CULTURAL BIAS THE MOST?

5 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REDUCING CULTURAL BIAS

6 BEYOND CULTURAL BIAS

Table of Contents

Introduction

Today, as many companies expand to operate globally, they must take serious measures to internationalize their organizations in everything from marketing messages to product packaging and delivery. What they sometimes forget, however, is how their customer feedback program may be affected across international lines, as well.

Many companies endeavor to compare survey results across countries, but doing so presents a unique set of challenges. Differences in loyalty and satisfaction scores across geographic regions may in fact be due to differences in cultural survey response patterns.

Global companies must take cultural bias into consideration when interpreting customer feedback. Inarguably, different countries and regions will demonstrate different response patterns to surveys. The level of bias depends on various influences such as cultural norms and social factors across countries, which can strongly impact how your survey questions are perceived and answered.

There’s a good deal of debate on this subject, so rest assured, there are no cut and dried rules. But there are ways to reduce cultural bias in your feedback program to protect against making false conclusions and ill-advised actions based on international survey results. You’ve made a first step by reading this guide. A deeper awareness and examination of cultural bias will help your company make better decisions that improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and experience across the globe.

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What Drives Cultural Bias the Most?As you step back and begin to question whether your feedback program shows the signs of cultural bias, the two biggest factors to consider are language and survey methodology:

SURVEY LANGUAGE The survey language that the recipient sees has a tremendous effect on your results. This is true even in countries that have a high percentage of multi-language residents with proficient English. So, even if your German customers generally also speak English, you’ll still see higher response rates when you deliver your surveys in German. It’s more polite, demonstrates respect, and is a confirmed best practice: deliver the survey in the native language, whenever possible.

SURVEY METHODOLOGY The methodology (e.g. NPS, CSAT, CES, etc.) you utilize will reveal different interpretations and responses across cultures. For example, research shows that Americans tend to give more extreme ratings on 0 to 10 scales, compared to Europeans, who tend to offer more neutral scores.

Keep in mind that customer feedback is not an apples-to-apples practice. A score of 8 out of 10 does not always mean the same thing across cultures. Your British respondent may have been highly pleased with your service and gave the score as a compliment, whereas, your American respondent sees that 8 as slightly less than satisfied.

There have even been discussions around developing a European NPS, where an 8 be counted as a Promoter (versus its Passive status in the current system). But this isn’t widely recommended because tweaking the scale for one country and not others can inhibit a company’s ability to make fair comparisons.

Also, keep in mind that when choosing your methodology, numerical scales are not always perceived the same way. In some countries, a 10 may be lowest and 1 highest when presented in a horizontal scale. Do your research on the countries you survey to make sure you’re using scales that make sense within those cultural norms. Or, as we’ll discuss later in this paper, use worded scales instead.

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Recommendations for Reducing Cultural Bias

The business decisions driven by customer feedback should of course be based on fact and a true understanding of the experience. However, if you haven’t developed a scientific way to distinguish the discrepancies caused by cultural response bias, your analysis may be inaccurate. To avoid this, companies need to examine how cultural factors influence responses and in some cases, implement controls that bring international comparisons into balance.

As you work to improve your global feedback program, take comfort in the fact that no company does this perfectly and cultural bias is next to impossible to eliminate completely. So while cultural bias may be accepted as an unfortunate but inevitable part of doing international business, it certainly doesn’t mean you ignore it. You can take steps to address it and mitigate its impact.

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HERE ARE FIVE TIPS TO HELP NEUTRALIZE CULTURAL BIAS:

1. RUN SURVEYS IN NATIVE LANGUAGES As mentioned above, you should strive to deploy surveys in the native language whenever possible. This doesn’t need to be a manual effort; your feedback platform should make it easier by automatically selecting the correct language based on that customer’s contact data. Note that this is the top recommendation because while it won’t prevent all cultural bias, it’s the most effective thing you can do to reduce it.

2. USE WRITTEN SCALES Save salespeople’s time by capturing essential information about opportunities from the customer directly.Automatically trigger requests for updates at points in the sales cycle with requests that are prepopulated with known information. Use the information to update the opportunity status where appropriate.

Recommendations for Reducing Cultural Bias

4. COMMUNICATE CROSS-CULTURALLY It’s critical to communicate the goals and outcomes of your feedback efforts with your global business units or departments. Share survey results and analysis! Explain how the follow-up procedures work and ask for input from the teams responsible for customer satisfaction or experience in those locations. The more you involve key stakeholders, the more they can help enrich the program with the knowledge they possess for that region. There’s nothing more valuable than direct input from the people working in those areas, especially when it comes to the nuances of language.

5. TEST, TEST, TEST Just as you would with any of your surveys, it’s critical to run comprehensive testing before you launch your survey(s). Similar to the previous tip, it’s highly recommended to ask for help from staff across global business units to help test for potential issues with cultural bias. Ideally, identify native speakers in each region or country, so that they can advise on problematic question types, question wording, and any problems with translation.

3. DON’T FORGET FOLLOW-UP AND WORKFLOWS It’s not enough just to consider how cultural bias might affect responses to the original survey. You also need to build your follow-up and workflows with an international focus. For example, you might want to develop country-specific follow-up for high or low scores, where the trigger scores differ by country. In Japan, you may wish to have a service agent place an outbound call to any respondents who rated you 3 or below, but in Austria, calls are made to scores of 4 or below.

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Many other factors beyond those relating to culture can drive response trends, of course, and you may be aware of unique ones for your business. Depending on certain demographics such as age, gender, and other individual circumstances, you may define rules for how you survey and respond to aggregate groups in different ways. The rules you set to neutralize cultural bias may be merely one set among many attempting to address the complexities of survey response styles.

Remember that the primary goal of your feedback program is to generate actionable data that drives positive improvements across the business. The key to doing so is carefully scoping the initial strategy, strategically designing your surveys and follow-ups, testing a lot, and being vigilant in evolving aspects of the program where necessary. Yes, that’s a lot of work, but the good news is that cross-cultural comparisons can help your company create a clearer understanding of customers, gain unprecedented insights into regional needs and expectations, and build systematic workflows and actions that strengthen customer loyalty and relationships. As you observe cultural differences in areas such as customer satisfaction or loyalty, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge of how to deliver better experiences to those unique groups by country or region.

Beyond Cultural Bias

ABOUT CLICKTOOLSClicktools powers enterprise feedback for hundreds of companies worldwide. Across industries, the Clicktools platform enables organizations to collect, centralize, and act on feedback using surveys, call scripts, and web forms that integrate with leading CRM solutions. The company is owned by Callidus Software Inc. (NASDAQ: CALD), which operates as CallidusCloud®, the leading provider of sales and marketing effectiveness software.

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