Guest Blogger Gary Schwartz: Build Customer Engagement by Responding to Feedback
One thing I always emphasize is the importance of providing feedback on the feedback you receive. Leading IT research firm Gartner feels the same way. They've reported research that shows that while as many as 95 percent of companies gather feedback in one form or another, only half of those companies bother to tell their staff. Even fewer change processes and make improvements.
Want to guess how many actually tell their customers?
Only 5 percent.
This presents a fabulous opportunity to differentiate your business from the competition. Whether you respond directly to an individual complaint from your feedback management system, or change business processes and tell your customer base through a press release or newsletter, you'll increase satisfaction and loyalty by simply responding to customer feedback.
A few years ago I ran a workshop at a, IQPC Customer Feedback event, and one participant claimed that while his baseline satisfaction rate was about 60 percent, it climbed to 80 percent for those customers who were contacted after reporting a poor experience. He stopped short of suggesting that his company provide a poor service to all and then fixed it.
Keep in mind, though, that there are different approaches to feeding back on customer feedback. One poor VP at a movie theater in Minnesota found out the hard way that even when a customer is rude in complaining, it doesn't pay to be rude back (warning: indecent language within).
Nestle recently learned, however, that no response at all is sometimes the best response.
One company recently ran a test that evaluated customer response to different ways the company handled complaints. The company offered a free service to half of a small sample of customers who provided feedback about poor service. The other half received a detailed response informing them about how the company addressed their complaints. In some cases, the resolution involved changing processes.
About 40 percent of the customers who were offered free service replied. One hundred percent of the customers who received responses explaining the effect their complaint had on the company replied, all positively.
The truth is, the best incentive you can offer your customers who provide feedback is to give feedback on their feedback: resolving their problem to show that their feedback is valuable to you.
Just take a cue from our poor Minnesotan, though: As a general rule of thumb it's worth thinking twice before hitting send.
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About the Author: Gary Schwartz is senior vice president, marketing, at Confirmit
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