Achieving World Class Customer Feedback in Five Secret Steps
One of the hardest things to obtain, from the company's perspective, is the feedback of a customer. Yet, customers are often only too eager to provide it because they want to help you get better as a company. How often, do you actively seek out the suggestions and feedback from your customers? When polled, most companies suggest that they, in fact, always talk to their customers and get feedback. However, when polling those companies' customers, the results are different. There seems to be a disconnect. One way to get better is to actively seek out and record and review feedback from your customer, the best way to do is using a customer feedback software. Doing so will help you learn about yourself, learn about your customer, and openly reduce your customer can attrition. In addition, although these techniques are not truly secrets, so few companies do ask their customers for feedback that it might as well be. Companies that are in contact with their customers will reap the many benefits over those that do not. In the end, which one do you want to be?
Regardless of whether the customer is leaving and you are conducting an exit interview or is merely a routine opportunity for you to conduct feedback, you need to have a plan for collecting the data, analyzing the data, and completing the feedback loop with your customer. Too often companies with ask their customers how they did and will fail to follow-up and make sure that they acknowledged the change. In an ideal world, you should document the plan and should write the plan with some supporting tools and templates to help you carry out the feedback section.
It is amazing and frustrating to most customers that they will provide feedback or even purchase from a company, but the company will then take this feedback (remember this is the best gift a customer can give you) for granted. Unfortunately, there also seems to be a sense of entitlement on the company's part. Whenever you ask for your customer's opinion, whether it is as they are leaving, or during the normal course of business, make sure that you thank them for their business and thank them for their feedback. During this period, it is not the time and it is not the place to defend or argue against those ideas or feedback. You may be correct and they may be wrong but you want their feedback, so simply say "thank you”.
Remember that you asked your customer to take some time out of their busy day to provide feedback to you so that you can get better. Though they benefit from this, make sure that you respect their time and are quick to ask a few questions that are very important as opposed to many questions that are only somewhat important. You will serve the customer best by getting very focused on what you want to know and cutting to the chase by asking the questions. The best way to get their feedback and reviews about your product and/or service is to deploy an efficient customer feedback software.
Analyze and Review the Data
When you get the feedback compiled, take time to review what you have received. Try to make sense of what you receive in context of your current situational assessment, operating principles, mission, or vision. In other words, when you get feedback, do the comments and responses confirm or surprise you based on what the customer told you? For example, if you are a banker and your bank is very concerned about losing money and credit losses, but you get feedback from customers that say your lending practices have gotten too tight and restrictive, ask yourself, "does this tell you something that you did not know previously" and "is it something that you want a change"? Quite simply in this situation, you may not want to make a change all. However, understand that doing nothing is, in fact, doing something. Once you make a decision and do something, be comfortable with your decision accepted, live with it, and move on.
Finally, once you have the feedback, once you have done the analysis, and once you have made a decision to pursue a particular path, you must go back to the customer and let them know what you course you will pursue. More than anything, customers do not want you to coddle them; however, they want to know that their vendors and suppliers (you) hear them and empathize. They also want to know that you have heard them. It makes no sense to listen to them and simply not acknowledge that you heard what they said. One of the best ways to do this is by getting a higher-level (read: senior management) official to make a phone call to the customer that provided feedback to thank them. Alternatively, you might want to send a letter that summarizes some of the key findings you found in your survey or feedback session as well as some of the actions that you are going to take. This is the ultimate way to close the feedback loop and the customer will know that you take their feedback and them seriously.
Applying the principle of obtaining customer feedback is one of the easiest ways to help you, the company, and reduce your customer attrition. If you are able to be strategic discipline and focus in the feedback collection, you will reduce customer churn and attrition and make more money.
