How to Get Helpful and Instructive Customer Feedback
Want to know what customers really think of your company, product or service? Ask them!
Some of the companies with terrific customer service employ the "customer plus-delta" approach, according to the authors of the new book "Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force" (by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, $25, Dearborn Trade Publishing, www.dearborntrade.com).
In the term "customer plus-delta," the "plus" stands for a recognition of what customer-service practices within your company work well, while the "delta" represents what needs to be improved.
"Performing a customer plus-delta at various customer touch points gathers quantitative and qualitative data about your company's performance that can create a big-picture view of how your organization is performing at the customer level," writes McConnell and Huba. Following are four customer plus-delta strategies to try:
1. Make real customer contact: "Your customers are more important than anything else that could possibly be going on in your company," the authors note. To break the habit of putting company -- not customer -- issues first, take at least one customer to breakfast or lunch each week. Ask many questions, and let the customer do most of the talking.
2. Scour the Web to discover what people are saying about your company. Look on fan sites, newsgroups and e-mail discussion lists. "An online search helps you discover — and quickly contend with — customer vigilantes," writes McConnell and Huba.
3. Encourage customer feedback about your Web site. Make it easy for site visitors to offer up their opinions about your site. The authors advise collecting data for all types of feedback, including product complaints, customer service questions and employment queries.
4. Mine call center data. This is where your customer actually talks with one of your employees, a veritable gold mine for customer feedback. Have your contact center reps ask for and then log in customer complaints, compliments and suggestions. Then comb through those logs religiously, looking out for any innovative ideas, glowing praise and sage advice.
By Donna Loyle, editor, Catalog Success magazine