Understanding your customers is a crucial component to creating and delivering a successful product or service. No business can afford to ignore their customer service standards, and the best way to find out about your customers’ experience is through input and feedback.
“If you don’t understand the customer experience you are providing, you can’t improve it.”
You need to get input on your customers’ wants, needs, and expectations – this information is a “leading indicator” and can allow for improvements before a customer interaction.
Getting feedback on how you’ve performed is also beneficial, and this “lagging indicator” can help determine what changes need to be made to improve your product and customer service for the future.
This input and feedback needs to come from three sources: external customers, an engaged workforce, and key performance indicators.
It’s important to go through this process continuously, as satisfaction is a moving target and constantly changes. Factors like shifting product performance, changing customer needs, and growing competitors all allow for a customer service experience to veer off track.
When gaining input and feedback from external customers, how do you listen to, interact with, and observe to obtain actionable information? Are you assessing your workforce’s engagement and satisfaction also? Take a good look at your processes – how do you use input and feedback to track overall organizational performance?
How good a job you do with identifying needs is a predictor of your ultimate success.
Surveying your customers and employees is not something that can be approached half-heartedly. A badly done customer input and feedback process can backfire and actually lower satisfaction. Let them know that their voices make a difference.
If you truly desire to be a competitor in your industry, staying on top of customer service satisfaction is the way to get off the bench and into the game.
Watch a one-minute preview of “Why You Need Input and Feedback” here:
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