What Are You Actually Doing With All That Customer Feedback?

Everybody agrees it’s important to get customer feedback. That’s why you have surveys after each phone transaction, satisfaction questions after online purchases, “exit questionnaires” for subscribers who quit, and all the other things you’re doing to try find out what they liked and didn’t like about doing business with you.

Ok. You’ve got some responses. Maybe lots of them. What do you do with that information?

1. First of all, you should recognize it’s data, not information. There’s a big difference. To turn these raw responses into something you can use — information — requires analysis of lots of responses, finding some common themes and drawing inferences about the way your company’s service is perceived by customers. Example: You take a chunk of responses over a two-week period and find you averaged 5 out of 5 on Courtesy, 4 on Knowledge, but 3 on Overall Satisfaction or How-Likely-To-Recommend. So what? A little analysis might lead to a conclusion that your folks are friendly and seem to know what they’re talking about, but couldn’t really get the transaction done or the question answered in the way the customer wanted and expected.
2. Make small changes and watch what happens. They don’t have to be big sweeping changes. Example: Augment the protocol to include a step where representatives get clarity by repeating back to the customer what they think they heard as the request. If they’re not sure of some detail, make sure they ask — every time. Try it for two weeks and then check to see whether survey results change.
3. Tell customers their feedback matters, and prove you mean it.  Most customers have become numb to surveys. They get so many of them, and they never hear anything back so they assume nobody’s really listening — that it’s just an exercise. When you make changes in how you do things and put examples out there in your communications — on your website or in your responses to requests — you’re telegraphing back to customers that you’re listening and acting on what you’re hearing.

You know what you’re trying to do — what your intentions are — when interacting with customers. You also know that what really counts is what you’re actually delivering and, even more importantly, customers’ perceptions of it. And you’ve got systems in place to gather customer feedback about their experiences dealing with you.

But none of that really matters unless you have a seamless process for converting data about customer perceptions into actionable information, making changes and then closing the loop by giving credit back to customers for helping you make things better.

USE IT NOW: You’ve done the hard work of putting into place your surveys and feedback gathering systems. Now spend a little more time and thought setting up a process for analyzing the data, making a few well-placed changes and watching the results.