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Why being honest and open with customer feedback is the best policy
Customer feedback is the life blood for running a successful business. Every businessman or woman would probably readily agree with this.
But two aspects of this are often not appreciated.
Firstly, feedback should mean seeking and listening to feedback on a continual basis, not just doing occasional ad-hoc surveys. Secondly, a business should not just keep its feedback to itself, but communicate openly to customers the true range feedback it gets as well as showing what it is doing in response.
It’s part of the steady but sure revolution in business where the individual consumer is becoming ‘king’ in most markets and suppliers are having to work with and develop relationships with individual consumers rather than simply promote to them en-masse.
Dialogue not monologue
Most big companies – and many small ones – still run their businesses as a monologue. They think they know what customers want, they come up with products or services they think are suitable, and then ‘push’ those products at customers. If customers don’t buy enough, they push harder with more hard-hitting promotional and selling effort until they do.
These companies may try to talk to customers on a one-to-one basis, but they aren’t really listening. Their whole way of doing business is geared around talking at the customer, not with the customer. A monologue, not a dialogue.
However, in today’s modern internet-age, customers are increasingly rejecting this traditional mass-marketing approach. Consumers today are much more informed, independently-minded, discriminating, and cynical than consumers of 30 years ago and are using many more diverse media and channels for obtaining the products and services they want. Consider how much consumers nowadays order goods or seek information online rather than visit the high street; and how so many people now turn to social networking, price comparison or ‘independent directory’ websites for advice on what they should buy.
Consumers nowadays expect to be treated by businesses as intelligent, well-informed individuals, not as mere pawns in suppliers’ promotional marketing campaigns. They want to be treated as equals in the ‘sell-buy’ process and have their individual preferences or questions respected and addressed. If they are going to buy from a particular supplier more than once, they will expect that business to get to know them as individuals and develop a listening and responsive relationship.
Ways to get ongoing feedback
There are many ways that a business can keep an ongoing ‘listening ear’ for customer feedback, to complement the periodic use of more formal customer survey techniques (like postal, telephone or online questionnaires). Some very simple-to-use methods are as follows:
i) Website - including a simple feedback button on your website can be very useful.
ii) Telephone ‘hotline’ – allocating a given number, even if used for other
purposes, looks good and also allows an immediate response if the point is a complaint or a complex issue.
iii) Email / fax - email is the quick and direct way preferred by many customers
nowadays. Fax is little used in comparison, but it is still worth making available, if possible.
iv) Comments cards on-display in store or inserted in bag given at check-out.
v) Service follow-up – a phone call or comments card mailed or emailed quite
soon after a customer has used a particular service. Questions could cover factors like convenience of booking, standard of service, attitude of staff, and quality of facilities.
vi) Product sale follow-up – similarly a call or comments mailer to check the
customer was satisfied with the advice/sales process and explore any problems with the product since.
vii) Customer user group – holding an informal meeting a few times a year
with a willing cross-section of your customers to provide general feedback.
Viii) Customer open day / drop-in event – extending a general invite to your
customers to come in to meet with you to enjoy some light refreshments and hear news about your business and at same time give you general feedback.
ix) Staff hearing feedback in conversations with customers – you and
your staff informally noting casual comments from day-to-day conversations with customers.
If you want to encourage feedback, try and offer customers a choice of feedback mechanisms to use. Also, make each method is as easy as possible to use – for example, don’t ask a long list of detailed questions and, for telephone feedback, consider using a discounted phone number. If the feedback is a specific complaint, do ask for precise contact details and make contact with the person as early as possible to address the problem. And be sure to review regularly the pattern of comments and feedback you receive so you can spot trends and identify aspects of your pharmacy where you may need to change or improve things.
Communicating your customer feedback
Don’t keep customer feedback just to yourself. It is obviously vital intelligence to help manage your business but also use it as a direct promotional tool. In the current competitive age openness, credibility, and authenticity are the watchwords to consumers regarding how they prefer companies to do business and – as several major brands have found to their cost with hate-websites and blogs started up by angry or ignored customers – customers value and respect those businesses that show clearly they are taking stock of what the marketplace is saying about them.
Consumers nowadays want to know that the companies they buy from have a trustworthy reputation. Since getting to hear opinions or complaints from other customers in the flesh or out loud is so rare, turning to feedback sources like third-party review websites or, ideally, a company’s own website, is so helpful. Consumers are savvier today and look for feedback before they venture to the high street, not just to e-tailers. For many customers the days of spontaneity and impulse purchases are long gone. Businesses need to open up to customers before they make a sale.
Where should you reveal your customer feedback externally ? The most valuable place is a dedicated section on your firm’s website. Other useful communication tools are newsletters, open-days or other customer events, magazines, marketing literature, and, if you produce one, your company’s annual report.
In revealing customer feedback to the outside world, remember the following ‘guidelines’:
- Always, always ensure feedback you show is legitimate and authentic. Never try to fabricate, manipulate, disguise or hold back feedback – no matter if you don’t like it!
- Don’t just present summary statistics (e.g. customer satisfaction ratings) or general
review paragraphs but include actual comments from individual customers - Don’t edit customers’ comments too much. Shorten long comments if needed, but keep them as ‘raw’ as possible.
- Include negative and positive feedback. Customers will see your feedback overall as
more credible, balanced and honest. - If customers have identified themselves fully in a public way in making a comment or complaint to you – for example, on a feedback or message board on your website – don’t be afraid to include those persons’ names in your communications. Obviously, don’t divulge their full addresses or even their full personal details. If in any doubt about using individual customers’ feedback for wider publicity, get their permission first.
- Ideally, indicate (briefly) next to individual complaints or types of comment what
action your business took in response to deal with the issue. Customers want to see how you have taken note of feedback, not just been prepared to receive and recognise feedback.
Providing reliable customer feedback in a public way (e.g. your website) is particularly important to encourage people who are looking to order a product or service on-line or who are considering a product or service which is complex, high-priced, new to them or about which they are feeling nervous or unsure.
The other advantage, of course, of publicly revealing customer feedback is that it is a very strong motivator and stimulus for you to quickly improve areas of your business where you have been found wanting. At the same time, you are also alerted to perceived strengths of your business, so you can plan to build on these further in the future.
Using customer feedback is altogether one of the most important keys to driving and promoting a business. Do so, though, with an attitude of honesty and openness and as part of a wider dialogue with your customers. If you do, you’ll have customers for life and many of their friends too!
CALL OWEN MORRIS if you’d like any assistance or support with the ideas contained in this article.
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