Ah, so you *do* survey them -- just in an AD HOC, UNSCIENTIFIC manner! And,m those that respond to your queries (informal or otherwise) you seem to consider "sensible"?
So, it's not the fact that they respond to your SURVEY that makes them "nonsensible". I guess just people who respond to *other* surveys are nonsensible?
Are you sure the way you *informally* question them elicits the information you really *need*? Are you sure the way your phrase your comments doesn't implicitly bias their answers? So, when they next make a purchase decision, you are unaware of some other issue that caused tehm to "buy a competitor"? "Buy just one" (instead of several"? "Defer a purchase"?
It seems to me that a business owner would want to know how to ask the *right* questions of his customers (just don't call it a "survey"?) to get the "information he *needs*" instead of the "answer he wants".
I guess if you have only a few thousand possible customers, you can afford to contact them individually? What do you do when the number approaches tens of thousands? Individually select which *ones* you will contact and informally query in your ad hoc way? :>
I recall a CEO who lamented: "We lost our market when we were selling the most product, ever!" I.e., they wrongly assumed purchase orders could be counted as "positive survey results". Kinda easy when you're doing tens of $MM of business and think everything is fine and dandy!
Another firm approached development as a laundry list of features -- without even considering what customers *had* been purchasing.
Yes, ad hoc methods are a GREAT way of "surveying" your customer base!