5 Tips for Using Customer Feedback to Change Company Behavior
Posted on April 5th, 2012
Knowing when and how to properly gather customer feedback is imperative for any successful Business. However, acting on this feedback and using it to influence your company internally is even more important. Properly implementing a closed loop feedback system can dramatically improve every aspect of your company from the products you sell, to how you sell them, to your entire company culture.
Here are some tips for using customer feedback to change your company behavior for the better.
1) Real Time Feedback. The sooner you receive customer feedback the better. Most companies are still asking for customer feedback quarterly or only a few times a year. This can cause customer attrition that is hard to recover from. Be sure you have a mechanism in place that allows your customers to give you feedback instantly and at times it’s convenient for them.
2) Direct Feedback. Make sure customer feedback is sent directly to the team member responsible for delivering the service to the customer. This way, your team members get consistent responses to their interactions so they can adjust their behaviors and actions properly. Positive feedback reinforces their exceptional service and negative feedback alerts them to issues and areas they can improve on.
3) Focus on Details. There has been a lot of talk about the gamification of customer service recently. Common components of gamification include things like points, scores and leaderboards. While these things help increase engagement and are a big aspect to the overall success of a closed loop customer feedback process, it’s important not to lose sight of the big picture. When measuring customer feedback, it’s important to focus on the specifics requests and actionable items found within this feedback, rather than on the scores themselves.
4) Keep Managers Engaged. It’s important that company managers and executives have insight into customer feedback. These team leaders may not need to know every detail of each customer interaction, but it’s crucial they have an overall sense of customer sentiment and important issues that need attention. This information should encourage team leaders to use customer feedback for coaching, not just evaluating – ultimately helping employees meet their personal, team and company goals.
5) Lessons become Guides. Design training and company on-boarding programs to reinforce the value of lessons learned from your closed loop customer feedback process. The relationship building and problem solving strategies learned daily from this process can eventually guide the entire direction of your company.
Really, it’s quite simple: Collect consistent, real-time feedback from your customers that goes directly to the team members providing customer service. Be sure that feedback is accessible to managers and executives, and pay attention to the details. Use this information to coach and reward employees, address customer issues and use as guiding principals for your company as a whole. Following these tips will help your company create a culture of exceptional customer service.
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