Customer feedback is quite important for any business that seeks to expand it revenue since it allows businesses to evaluate the customer experience with regard to a given product or service. Recording and communicating customer feedback helps businesses make improvements of their products based on the feedback provided. This in turn allows businesses to customize the products and services to meet the specific need of the customers. Secondly, recording and communicating customer feedback allows businesses to enhance their customer retention capability. By conducting regular customer feedback survey, businesses will be aware of certain aspects of their products and services that excites or frustrates the customers and in the process make the needed adjustments (Lee, Jeong and Lee, 2008). Additionally, customer feedbacks serve as a tangible data that businesses can rely on when making decisions. This is because the feedback provides great insights on how the customers perceive the company’s products and services. Finally, it is important to record customer feedback since it serves as a great measure of customer satisfaction. This is because the feedback allows businesses to assess whether their goods and services meets or supersedes the expectations of the customers.
The issuance of feedback form is among the methods commonly used to collect and record customers’ feedback. The forms are usually in hard copy and are issued physically to the customers. A past study on customer relations revealed that the feedback forms is one of the most effective and actionable feedback collection method since it encompasses the human element. Marketing personnel can issue the forms randomly to the customers and make them feel appreciated on a personal level. As explained by Bovée, Thill and Raina, (2016), to make the method effective, few recommended guidelines should be adhered to. First, the feedback forms should comprise of a maximum of 10 concise and close-ended questions. Secondly, it is important to make use of a rating scale to further simplify the survey and track the customer experience from different survey periods. Thirdly, it is important to ensure that the purpose of the survey is clearly outlined. In addition, the business brand should be clearly displayed on the feedback form in order to build the customers’ trust. Finally, the customer should be requested to leave their personal details to augment the credibility of the feedback and be thanked for their participation. This will allow the business to follow up with the customers who may have communicated their dissatisfaction with the business.
Most organizations focus on improving their performance and productivity. This can be achieved by ensuring the organization products and service are of the best quality. Customers’ feedback are usually compared with organization standards particularly with regard to the quality of the products and services. However, this is made possible by first measuring the customer satisfaction through the collection and analysis of customer feedback. Plans developed using data collected from the customers with regards to quality of the products and services can be designed to shift focus to the processes that are likely to extend income. Therefore, it is through analysis of the customer feedback that organizations can make the necessary adjustment to their processes in an attempt to meet the organizations standards as well as augment customer satisfaction.
The best method for communicating customer service feedback is through the social media. The social media provides several avenues through which customer service feedback can be communicated. Sites such as facebook, Twitter and Instagram provide businesses with an avenue to communicate with their customers freely and casually without being intrusive (Bovée, Thill and Raina, 2016). Communications through emails and other online surveys are increasingly becoming intrusive and thus customers are less likely to participate willingly. For instance, a company can set up a twitter poll about their service delivery in which the customers can engage in and provide their feedback via comments. Such a poll allows the company to determine the level of customer satisfaction and thus devise appropriate measures focused on improving the quality of their services. On the other hand, businesses can interact with their customer on facebook posts advertising their products or services. Consumers can leave comments about their experience with the product or service. Such information are important to businesses that then make improvements based on the customer comments regarding a product or service. The social media is not only non-intrusive but can reach a large group of people.
Other method of communicating and recording customer service feedback include telephone surveys, email survey and customer incentives. However intrusive, telephone and email surveys are commonly used by businesses across the US. As earlier noted, customers are less likely to participate willingly and thus the feedback provided may not be reliable. Conversely, offering customer incentive is increasingly becoming popular among large and small businesses particularly in the retail industry. This essentially entails offering discount coupons to the customers that can be redeemed by visiting the store a second time in exchange for participating in a customer satisfaction survey.
- Lee, D., Jeong, O.R. and Lee, S.G., 2008, January. Opinion mining of customer feedback data on the web. In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Ubiquitous information management and communication (pp. 230-235). ACM.
- Ruge, D., Negovan, M. and Pisani, R., Customer Feedback Solutions Inc, 2007. System and method for providing a unified customer feedback solution. U.S. Patent Application 11/207,219.
- Bovée, C.L., Thill, J.V. and Raina, R.L., 2016. Business communication today. Pearson Education India.