subject: Beyond customer surveys: three other ways to know your customers [print this page] Beyond customer surveys: three other ways to know your customers
The requests for surveys has skyrocketed in the last five years. Almost every purchase is eagerly followed by a request to take a survey and share your feedback. In fact, most retailers are being forced to offer an incentive to participate because there are so many requests, and incentives can skew survey results as well. However, there are many more ways to get customer feedback, lesser used and often more descriptive. Here are three ways to do get to know your customer better and grow your revenue through increased customer engagement and understanding.
Get a view from the outside: Most companies hesitate from benchmarking activity, either because their competitors won't share information with them or because they believe no one can come close in how they do things. While all that may be true, benchmarking is useful because it gives an "outside-in" view of how an organization performs, which can be used to identify issues, make investments, or to market your strengths. While most companies will not share specific information, there are a few ways to benchmark that are easy to do. One is to join a specific benchmarking forum for example, if your business has telephone customer service representatives, there are numerous forums that will provide comparisons of best in class on key call center statistics, such as Average speed of answer ( ASA) and Initial Call resolution ( ICR). Many forums are organized into specific industries, which will give a comparable benchmark. In addition, a great source of one on one benchmarking are vendors or other businesses you do business with even if they are in different industries, they may be willing to share best practices in areas such as customer service or marketing.
Talk to employees: Who knows your customer better than your employees? Specific forums for them to share customer input give a company that "inside" view that is invaluable. Even though you may believe there are already methods for employees to share customer feedback, establishing special, focused opportunities for them to do this on a regular basis, will ensure you get the full picture. Providing incentives for the most valuable feedback and proposed solutions will further encourage feedback and minimize any fear of retribution for sharing potentially controversial input. In addition, doing this further emphasizes the company's focus on the customer and will only encourage better customer engagement.
Get into it: How much does the management of the company participate directly in customer interactions? There are several methods to interface directly with the customer, including quality listening sessions for call centers, taking a turn on the phone or in the store to actually serve customers, and calling customers who have expressed a concern. In addition, reading and discussing customer complaints, including online comments, in public forums within the company, can educate others on customers' issues and concerns. One company held regular required "customer listening" sessions where taped phone calls and customer letters were shared and discussed, along with potential solutions, and then participants called customers back to inform them of the actions that would be taken.
These three methods can help get a more complete picture of what customers think of your products and services. In addition, they all serve to demonstrate to your employees and key stakeholders that your company is focused on knowing your customer and earning their business.
Beyond customer surveys: three other ways to know your customers
