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How to Gain Valuable Customer Feedback

Guest post by: Drew Stevens Ph.D.

Article Overview: The biggest thing that organizations need to realize is that they have got to create a feedback loops. Feedback just like any other management function especially in the customer service field is one of the best resources that any organizations have.

How to Gain Valuable Customer Feedback

Drive by Jimmy's a major automotive dealership in the United States and you will notice a satellite on the top of the building. Inside the building is a computer that is sending and receiving information on customer purchases. The company believes that satisfaction must be measured. They built the system that enables them to track loyalty at both purchase and follow on service level. The manufacturer tracks, which customers are coming back for, more and which are not. The biggest thing that organizations need to realize is that they have got to create a feedback loops. Feedback just like any other management function especially in the customer service field is one of the best resources that any organizations have.

Feedback allows companies to learn from its mistakes. It defines the right units of failure such as customer defections and then tracks them and helps to understand how to correct the issues for better future performance.

There is no one right method of data collection but lets discuss a few.

Call Centers

Many call centers today utilize numerous techniques for remaining close to clients. These include the number of calls and the number of trouble calls. One major network marketing company regularly "listens to" customer service representatives in action to gain a better understanding as to personality or troublesome client calls.

Email Marketing

The age of instant connectivity allows instantaneous access of clients to your organization. E-mail marketing is an effective tool so that when customer service complaints do arise clients might gain easy access to your organization.

Blog

Blogs are great methods for engaging with your clients. They allow you to interact with customers. Blogs allow you to write stories, provide testimonials and allow even customer comments.

Survey

Whether by phone, email or in person, businesses can survey their customers to ask them how they feel about the business, the level of service provided and the products or services you offer. Customers should be aware that surveys are anonymous, to eliminate hesitation and uncertainty. Offering incentives, like sales coupons or free products, may entice customers to give more feedback.

Product Reviews and Testimonials

Case studies and testimonials provide excellent amounts of feedback for every organization. Southwest Airlines and the Four Seasons request that consumers provide testimonials about their experiences and many restaurants do the same.

Customer Relationship Management Software

There are many types of software that help build alliances with clients. The software allows company's to collect data from notes to calls to better track and understand customer-buying patterns.

You Tube

Believe it or not the world of social media allows for consumers to provide candid video information. Many news agencies are providing these reports such as CNN with their iReports.

Facebook

With over 500 million users strong Facebook provides a wealth of customer interaction and many Fortune 500 corporations such as Johnson and Johnson and Apple are moving to this platform to get closer to clients.

Word of Mouth

Word-of-mouth is very effective. As I mentioned customer-to-customer influences are very strong. Listen to what others directly state about your organization.

Companies can be greedy and deliver what they believe is appropriate or they can listen to what the customers need. Companies can buck trends and ignore issues or they can remain close. Circuit City was a company that did not listen and did not follow trends - they went bankrupt. Best Buy decided to realize the importance of customer service and they and many others like Crutchfield are flourishing. What does the data feedback show for your organization?

©2011. Drew Stevens Ph.d. All rights reserved.

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Article Tags: customer feedback, customer loyalty, customer service



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Re: Two Useful Books To Help You Focus On The CLIENT - Hi David, To add to your thread, I'd like to recommend Jonathan Tisch's "Chocolates On The Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience". Tisch's book includes content on "Welcoming Customers", "The New Art of Customization", "The Challenges of Customer Diversity" and "Offering Something Extra to Your Customers" to name a few.
Re: The Best Method for Online Marketing - A good writing style and information is certainly useful. For all readers continue to write such excellent articles. Thank you.Thanks for sharing this formation. Valuable.enjoyed reading it…
Re: How Important is Feedback in eBay? - Feedback is VERY important to me when purchasing on eBay and similar sites. If they don't have several transactions and a 100% feedback (or close to it) then I most likely will not purchase from them.
Subject Line Etiquette - For myself, it's not so much "etiquette" as common sense. If you're emailing someone with a business offer or to strike up a relationship, you do not put "Hello" or "Hi" or something cryptic in the subject line. You make it clear what your email is about - just as you would on a message board. So instead of "wff" for example, the guy who emailed me a couple of days ago should have said, "Feedback on Your WFF Article" - so that I would have known what it was about without having to look at it and try to think...
Re: Paypal process $315 million in payments per day. - I agree with you David, their Customer relations suck. This mean other payment systems like 2CO and WORLDPAY should work on their customers relations to take more slice of the market.


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