Customer Feedback Practices Survey Results

We recently surveyed a population of composed of mainly Sales, Marketing and Customer support people to collect some data on their Customer Feedback Management practices. We found some interesting data points. For instance:

• Understanding and Influencing Customer Loyalty & Satisfaction was the top priority (75% of respondents) for customer feedback.


• Yet respondents often (30%) reported difficulties in translating customer feedback into actions that support business priorities.
  
• 72% report using some type of manual approach for translating customer feedback into action (using MS Excel or a Statistical analysis tool).


• 24% report using their CRM system to help them act on customer feedback

Our Opinion:

Too many organizations pay lip service to the idea of metrics based customer feedback. Meaning that they track some type of metric (NPS, ACSI or "customized loyalty metric") but do not use the metric to manage their reactions to feedback that customers give them.

In the survey data we found many instances of organizations reporting that they use metrics, statistical analysis tools, "are very systematic about gathering" relationship feedback, yet are receiving lower than average value from their customer feedback towards improving customer loyalty (their highest priority). Our interpretation of this finding is that:

• The data these companies receive for action taking is tied to a transaction and thus not useful for guiding relationship "fixing" actions; and /or,


• Mechanisms don't really exist in the feedback management systems these companies use to convert data about problem relationships into relationship "fixing" actions.

One additional data point from the survey supports this conclusion.

• Roughly 70% of respondents report using feedback only tools (i.e. the systems they use to collect customer feedback are, by definition, data collection only toolsets).

When combining feedback only tools with manual processes for converting customer feedback into action, its no surprise that many organizations really aren't able to easily act to repair a damaged customer relationship before a sales person trips over it on a new sales cycle.


The data behind this post can be seen at:


https://webreports.questback.com/isawebrep/webreporter.aspx?auth=D5D38D6AE02DB3D327F1CD14EB4316686C52668B&rid=1511507

Jumpstarting a Customer Experience Management Program

The QuestBack Boston Customer Experience Management (CEM) Jumpstart

Creating and deploying an effective program to manage customer feedback is not rocket science. And, it doesn't have to cost a fortune. It does take some dedicated organizational effort. The ingredients of CEM success are well known. Boiled down, they are:

• Leadership - true customer centricity starts at the top.
• Commitment - to the goal of getting good at managing customer feedback.
• Resources - financial and human (usually a team).
• Tools - to collect and analyze feedback, to help develop follow up action plans.
• Knowhow - QuestBack Boston has developed a service offering to rapidly put in place a turnkey Customer Experience Management program.

At QuestBack Boston we have the experience, programmatic knowhow and the tools to help you quickly create and jumpstart an effective customer feedback process. It can be up and running in a short timeframe and for a modest investment. Best of all, we "teach you how to fish". So once your program is up and running you can manage it internally, with support from QuestBack only as necessary.

Customer Feedback Management within a net promoter framework

We have released another new White Paper discussing how to deploy customer feedback management within the framework of a net promoter based methodology. The white paper discusses how to do this using QuestBack's feedback management toolset. The executive summary follows and a downlink is included at the end of the summary. Comments are welcome

Executive Summary

Making effective use of customer feedback can fuel an organization’s continuous improvement efforts and drive customer retention and growth - to name just a few key benefits. The programs and effort necessary to systematically gather and utilize feedback are sometimes seen as complex, expensive and difficult to implement. This paper demonstrates that this does not have to be the case and presents some practical, clear examples of powerful uses of customer feedback. By taking advantage of an established conceptual framework like Net Promoter, and combining this with a feedback management platform like QuestBack, any organization can create a powerful and practical framework for turning customer feedback into tangible benefits.

Three high-impact customer feedback applications are described (from QuestBack customer experiences):

• A Survey “Hotline” Process to spot problems in the customer base that are expressed in relationship surveys and to take quick, direct actions to prevent customer defections.
• Identify & Engage Your Promoters. Use survey results to identify and segment your best “promoters” or “advocates” for the purpose of engaging them in the marketing mix and stimulating more referrals.
• Create a Dialog through Follow-up. Follow-up your customer surveys by sharing some information about the results and planned actions with all customers. This creates a two-way dialog dynamic with customers and demonstrably strengthens customer relationships.

With an approach guided by the Net Promoter loyalty management concept and implemented with the QuestBack feedback management platform, any organization can easily and cost effectively duplicate the success of these examples and gain the tangible benefits from the effective use of customer feedback.

To view the entire white paper click the link below:

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0M0bj3iQjmjYzAxYzQ3MmEtMDBkZC00MmNjLWJmMzAtMWFkNmM0NDhlN2Nk&hl=en

White Paper: The Role of Customer Feedback Management in Business Today

QuestBack Boston has recently authored a new white paper on Customer Feedback Management. I've posted the executive summary here and included a link to the white paper if you would like to read it in its entirety.

Executive Summary

Executives intuitively understand the value of customer feedback and collect it for good reasons. They realize that customer perceptions have a strong impact on their business relationships. Customers can choose with whom they do business. If customers have perceptions that are less than positive, they will go elsewhere. So companies collect customer experience data across numerous touch points, including service events, general attitudes, and relationship data. The goal is to improve the overall customer experience by taking action in response to feedback.

Why, then, do so few companies make truly effective use of the feedback they gather? A 2003 Gartner Group study noted that 95% of all businesses collect some form of customer feedback but only 10% actually act on the feedback they collect. This is not surprising to many front-line managers tasked with putting feedback data to use. Fundamentally, most customer feedback data remains un-acted-upon because most companies lack an organized, systemic, and metrics-driven process for making use of the data. This white paper discusses why this occurs, why it matters, and what to do about it.

You can view the entire white paper here:
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0M0bj3iQjmjYTM2N2FhNjgtYTBiZi00MTVjLWIzNWEtM2ZiMWI4MjQxZTMy&hl=en

The Death of Advertising

One of my favorite websites is www.netpromoter.com. Lots of useful information about how to use customer loyalty in different ways to build a better business.

Since its necessary to know who your loyal customers are and why they're loyal, before taking action to leverage that loyalty, customer feedback management dovetails very closely with loyalty initiatives. In fact you need feedback management in order to accurately identify loyal customers.

At any rate, one of the netpromoter.com blogs talks in depth about how advertising is failing to produce desired results these days and how loyal customers seem to be the one group where advertising still seems to have an effect. It seems to me therefore that targeting marketing and especially direct marketing towards customer segments with higher loyalty makes a lot of sense. By doing so it would save on marketing spend at a minimum and potentially could provide a boost in business generally.

The entire article can be found at:

http://www.netpromoter.com/netpromoter_community/blogs/richard_and_laura/2009/04/22/how-to-win-customers-and-influence-buyers