Call Center Management Featured Article
Waiting for Customers to Come To You with Feedback? You May Have a Long Wait
Companies that rely on their customers to remain successful – nearly every company there is, unless it has a no-bid government contract – spend a lot of time measuring the quality of customer support. They establish metrics, use analytics, identify weak spots, bump up training, and purchase new technology to shave minutes off customer interactions while boosting the quality of service. While most companies say that they measure the quality of customer support they offer from the customer’s perspective, there is evidence that too few companies are really collecting and analyzing customer opinion. If they do, it’s an irregular occurrence.
Not very long ago, the process of gathering customer feedback was an onerous one. Mail surveys and outbound telephone calls – both of which are expensive and have very low rates of return – were once the norm. E-mail and Web-based surveying are other options, but they require customers to be proactive and go out of their way to offer support. Unfortunately, it’s true that usually only the most disgruntled customers will be willing to offer feedback, which skews the results. Most customers actually like providing input, so finding a way to collect it that’s easy, fast and regular is a powerful tool for companies that wish to improve the customer experience. According to Akshaya Venkat writing for Entrepreneur, companies should go where the customers are rather than expect customers will come to them.
“Stop brainstorming and start following customer discussions on forums,” wrote Venkat. “Read support tickets, listen to feedback and, most important of all, record all the ideas you hear. Not only will your customers appreciate your willingness to listen and implement their ideas, but you will set yourself apart from your competitors, as a business that genuinely cares.”
Social media presents both a great opportunity and a great challenge for companies today. The feedback left on a Facebook (News - Alert) page or Tweeted by motivated customers offers a deep pool of knowledge companies can use to fine-tune their customer support (or overhaul it completely, if necessary). Hunting for customer feedback on these forums, however, isn’t something that can be done part-time. Most successful companies today are realizing that they need a full time customer experience team to collect and analyze feedback. Venkat recommends that companies use the information they gather to build something called a “Wall of Love” that collects all the amazing things your customers have said about your organization and its products and services.
“Put it online to show your employees that what they do actually matters; it changes people’s lives for the better,” she wrote. “You can even create a document with these testimonials and publish it online for potential customers to see just how trustworthy you are, how much you really care about them and their feedback. It also makes for excellent sales collateral.”
Not only will it help a company what’s working, it will motivate workers to understand they are truly helping people. Likewise, it’s probably useful to also create a “Wall of Complaints” that contains the most relevant and on-point criticisms. By studying them and understanding the frequency with which they crop up (and on what processes), companies can quickly identify pain points and take action to eliminate them.
When customers do show your organization love, wrote Venkat, be sure to return that love and appreciation in a variety of ways. Express thanks, offer them bonuses or discounts, engage with them on social media and give them “sneak peeks” at new campaigns or sales, and encourage them to keep coming back. Above all, help them understand that their feedback really matters.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi