Think about the last time you actually finished a customer survey. You probably didn't. These days the feedback box gets dismissed, and the "tell us how we did" email goes straight to trash.

It isn't that we've run out of opinions but we've just stopped volunteering them on someone else's terms. In my new piece for UKTN, I make the case that this change in behaviour is reshaping customer insight, and that the brands who win the next few years won't be the ones asking the most questions.

The numbers back it up. Telephone survey participation in the US fell from 36% in 1997 to just 6% by 2019, and even the ONS's flagship employment survey now runs far below its pre-pandemic response rate, despite more interviewers and a bigger sample.

Two things are driving the change. Attention is stretched thinner than ever, and AI increasingly sits between a company and its customers, handling the filtering and comparison-shopping people used to do themselves.

My point is that opinion is the last thing we still insist on gathering by asking directly, when we already understand so much from the behavioural signals customers generate anyway. Increasingly, that response can be modelled from data a company already holds. Publishers including The Times are already using this kind of approach.

It doesn't replace real conversations with customers. It simply means the survey is no longer the only way to listen.

Read my full piece in UKTN: Your customers are busy. Stop asking them for their thoughts