“Champions know that success is inevitable; that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. They know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it.”- Michael J Gelb
Despite years of being around and serving customers, companies will never be mind-readers! They will always need customers to give them some indication of what they want and how best to do it. So it boils down to feedback. Gaining competitive advantage and growing a healthy business is what companies are aiming for and what better to do that than asking the people you service. Make customer feedback work for you. It also goads customers to think about you repeatedly, take the time to think about what you do well and appreciate the value you are adding to them and their business and that is a huge advantage. Regular feedback receiving exercises keep customer focus on you.
Getting and using customer feedback has been and will remain a crucial step in providing great customer service. Companies must ensure that it is easy for customer to provide feedback since that will ensure that customers are more forthcoming for providing it. Collating and using that feedback to understand the needs and demands of customers will clear the path for exceeding the needs and in turn receive the reward of continued patronage, new prospective customers and a resultant increase in profit margins. Your customers are the reason you are in business and so knowing as much as you can about them through feedback will keep you in a leadership position and ahead of competition.
Getting precise, explicit and useful feedback from customers depends on how you solicit this information and the methods used.
– The first and most obvious way is to ask. Asking the customers directly what they feel and how they perceive the company, the offerings and the customer service is the surest way to receive accurate feedback. Sometimes customers may not know what they want or can get since the company has not laid out their own capabilities clearly enough. Pro-actively sharing and nudging your customers towards what they could possibly want is a sign of great customer service. As we mentioned, make getting customer feedback an easy process – allow your customers to provide feedback and ask questions via every possible channel available. This in itself will be a point of positive feedback and customers will be sure to mention it while commenting. Make sure key contact names and phone numbers are listed and that these calls are responded to by the people listed.
– Call up your customer service numbers, visit your stores, check on the efficiency of the service staff – are all ways to place yourself in the customer’s shoes to figure out whether even the smallest detail has been paid attention to. Immediately resolve any discrepancies and make your service staff aware of them. This is a great way to getting and using customer feedback for better service – being your own customer will know how you are treating your actual customers.
– Segment your customer service staff in to groups to make it easier to deal with different sections of your customers. There could be customers whose queries are more urgent and so would need immediate attention or a new customer who needs more information about your company – both sets of customers need a different kind of focus and attention. Being able to give the customer what they want and when they want, will display to them that your company is indeed committed to using the feedback provided to provide customer service excellence.
– For more comprehensive feedback and insight in to customer perception, surveys and questionnaires are extremely helpful. These can be both as hard copies that are mailed to the customer or better still have them on easily accessible portions of your website and on the social media landing page. The kinds of responses and the ideas that you receive from your customers may surprise you since you may not have even thought about some of those ideas. It is important to remember that once you have asked for feedback, there must be a robust process in place to use the feedback and implement some of the useful ideas provided.
– Before receiving feedback, a company could be befuddled on why sales are decreasing and customers are leaving them for competition, since in your opinion you are doing ‘everything right’. The vital information you receive from your customers would show you the gap between what you perceive is great service or offerings versus what the customer perceives about them. In this case, your perception won’t count! The customer’s perception is reality and you will need to re-align strategies accordingly.
– Your customer service staff just has to be high quality adept at every aspect of customer service and the skills required for it. Your customer service staff must be fully aware of the feedback received from customers and the management’s decision of new ideas to be implemented service that feedback. The skill of your customer service staff will determine how success the implementation of the ideas is and what perceivable improvements have taken place in the realm of customer service.
– Conduct business reviews with your customers. As an open forum, these reviews allow you to make a personal association with your customers and give them an opportunity to voice their opinions, grievances and hear what you have to say. Companies can ask pointed and pertinent questions in these forums and receive meaningful answers to them. This is the time that your customers are only focused on you with no distractions, and so this time must be used to the fullest.
– Form a group of your most expressive and ready with feedback customers. Use their opinions as information and stepping stones towards understanding what the others could possibly be saying. The customers that are not very forthcoming with feedback will be more inclined to provide it when they see the value of it for themselves. Steadily your company will be in a position to get customers to offer feedback with little or no effort and strengthen your standing in the market scenario.
– Make visible discussion boards on social media sites where customers with similar interests and or issues can comment and provide feedback. It gives a feeling of oneness and community and as humans we all tend to be more open and friendly when in familiar territory. While feedback in some form or the other is always around, feedback that is pertinent and insightful for your company and brand is the one that will help you to raise the levels of customer service. Better customer service means customer loyalty and increased revenues.
As a company you may feel that you are providing the best customer service possible however, if the customer does not perceive that, it is quite a waste of time and other valuable resources. The surest way to actually know that your customer service is the best is by getting and using customer feedback. The results of implementing feedback receiving techniques will help create an increased number of better and superior customer experiences and a noticeable change in the way your customers begin reacting to you.
You want to service your customers but you also must be able to see value in it for your company. Listening to your customers and doing as much as you can based on what they tell you will provide the business and market intelligence which is impossible to get from any other source. Taking customer feedback in to consideration is vital to maintaining a successful business and make improvement on the offerings. You can save a lot of time and effort in re-thinking business strategies that are distorted and not aligned to customer needs. Getting and using customer feedback is not only crucial for the health of a company but vital for its sustained growth and revenues.
