Across all industries and businesses, one thing holds true: at the centre of it all is the consumer. The overused ‘happy customer, happy business’ phrase carries more weight than it is given because everything starts and ends with the customers.
Businesses turn in their focus on customers and customer feedback as there is no better place to source information when working towards self-improvement. The feedback establishes a starting point for the business, in that it firstly helps gauge where the business stands with its customers. Are they happy? Are they satisfied? Are they even staying? These three aspects, customer experience, customer satisfaction and subsequently customer loyalty can be further improved based on feedback.
Any consumer-facing input provided back into the organisation has to find proper established channels to be of any use. This feedback should be passed through a systematic process that aligns with the structure of the business. Other aspects to be considered are the size of the customer base and organisation personnel who work with the feedback. This process is paramount to the business as it provides an avenue for customer engagement and involvement. With this comes data that on analysis, provides insight that leads to informed, actionable decisions.
Customer feedback may come through surveys and reviews and with this, you will want to have short and straight-to-the-point questions. Long questions lead to loss of interest and inaccurate responses. The questions should exact information your organisation needs. The frequency of surveys and the number of questions posed to customers should also be carefully considered, as well as the timing. Dipping attention spans will also require you to be creative in the manner in which questions are posed to clients. Find a way of keeping them engaged for the duration of the survey.
Depending on business objectives and goals, data obtained can be categorised or viewed as a whole. The reason for the survey may drive how the feedback is analysed, but at the same time, some room should be left for the discovery of unforeseen responses. Individual responses may bear more insight than picking collective responses. Data may be broken down according to an organisation’s settings, like departments or management levels, with feedback relevant to each sector.
After data assessment, there should be actions by the organisation in response to the customer feedback. This includes making improvements to any weakness identified and monitoring the progress for any areas with change. Sharing this resolution throughout the organisation facilitates improved customer experience, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
