Introduction
We are human beings. We keep learning in order to do better every day. In our businesses too we need guidance on how to improve performance and grow. An obvious solution to this need is to hire a good consultant with expertise in your industry who can help you. What if I told you, we have such a best consultant for you and that too free of cost? Want to know who? Read on…
That super consultant is a well-designed Customer Feedback Program
Customer feedback is your biggest and best consultant. It leads to the best advise you can get, even better than advise worth millions given by consultants. Whether it is a good customer or a bad customer, they can tell you what is wrong with your business, your performance, your delivery, and your products and services.
Taking action based on your customers’ feedback is the best strategic action you can take to improve your business performance and make it grow.
Benefits of obtaining Proactive Customer Feedback and taking corrective action
- It shows the customer how open you are to listening and addressing their needs.
- It raises their positive perception about you and your business
- It makes them more tolerant to your mistakes.
- It diffuses customers anger due to poor performance.
- It increases customer retention rate to more than 90%.
How to design a feedback program and how to monitor its performance
Design a feedback program for your customers that encompasses every aspect of your business processes that directly impact the product or service delivered to your customer. Here are the steps to execute a customer feedback program:
- Create a feedback form and ask the right questions that will get the best advice on what needs to improve in your business. Checkout this format of a feedback form.
- Ensure that you include the universal questions that you must ask when obtaining feedback.
- Set the frequency of feedback depending on the nature of your business and the frequency of your interactions with your customers.
- Keep a track of customers who provided feedback and those who didn’t.
- Get seniors from your team or even yourself get in touch with those customers who have not provided feedback to know the reasons for denying or avoiding feedback. This shows how persistent you are to improve your product or services to meet your customer’s needs.
How to ensure that the customer is ready to provide feedback and that it is objective:
- Set a clear agenda when meeting a customer for obtaining feedback.
- Ask for honest feedback. Insist on one.
- Insist on an in-person (face-to-face) meeting to obtain feedback.
- Do not negate or try to justify when receiving critical feedback. Just listen and acknowledge.
- Reward your customer with some small gesture for providing feedback. After all it saved you thousands in consulting fees ?.
Conclusion
No wonder you see all the biggest corporations have a strong customer feedback system. When you visit a large super store, when you subscribe for an online service, or when you download a mobile app, you notice that your feedback is asked for on a consistent basis. This is because these large corporations know the importance of customer feedback.
Begin your journey of regularly obtaining customer feedbacks and enjoy a lifetime of consulting, for free!