How to use Customer Feedback to Improve Service

How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Service within your Business

What’s the one thing (other than revenue) that every business needs? We’ll give you a hint: customer feedback.

Once you have that precious customer feedback, what do you do with it? How do you take what your clients said and turn that into real-life action?

Several methods can improve your team’s customer service. Customer service should be driven by customer needs. Empathy training makes customer happiness, which affects income, simpler. Customer service performance measurements are the best method to help your team succeed. A detailed framework is needed to choose KPIs.

Allowing agents to set their own goals encourages initiative and success. A coaching environment is needed to improve customer service. Reporting issues and receiving timely feedback helps teams improve. Use simple customer service performance management software. Fun and rewarding workplaces boost employee satisfaction and reduce attrition.

4 Ways to Use Customer Feedback

These four ways of utilizing customer feedback will improve and strengthen your business service quality.

Let’s get right to it.

1. Truly Listen

Listening is the most used form of communication, but studies show we are actually poor active listeners- generally speaking. Active listening is simply focusing your full attention on what others are saying. In the service world, not active listening is a sure shot to failure.

Listen first and then act. Are your actions based on hard facts or on what you think people want? Customer feedback is pretty cut-and-dry, real, raw. So, before you move forward, analyze what people are saying and genuinely, truly absorb it, even if that means admitting what you thought was great is not.

Often times companies hear customer feedback but dismiss the feedback because of some assumptions that may or may not be true. An example of this is if you are a restaurant manager and you receive a customer complaint on yelp saying the food was terrible and was cold. You might assume the person is overreacting and that it’s not possible for this to happen at your restaurant.

It’s important to objectively review the customer feedback to improve service for your company.

2. Make Informed Business Decisions

Customer feedback should be the bread-and-butter, the foundation if you will, of your business decisions. When you implement a change to your service, make that change based on feedback if 1) your budget allows for it, and 2) it is feasible.

For example, if your customer feedback shows that people are unhappy with the timeliness of x service, find ways to give x service a speed boost. Change is great, and to survive among the competition, making informed business decisions is a must.

3. Share Feedback Across Departments

One of the best ways to use customer feedback is to share it. Share wherever you can, but definitely distribute feedback across all your business’ departments. That means Sally in HR needs to know what’s happening just as much as Paul in IT. Every department is interconnected, so what affects HR will trickle into IT and so on.

After you’ve collected your feedback, either in-person using a kiosk or online using a survey, gather every employee for a discussion. This is a prime opportunity to address customer’s concerns and receive input from your team.

4. Follow-Up with Customer

Once your clients or customers finish giving you feedback, the process doesn’t stop there. Always follow-up with your survey takers. You can send them an email, text, call, or letter in the mail thanking them for their response. By following-up after the fact, it shows them that you really care about what they have to say.

If you are lucky, they might even share more feedback that they left out in their initial response. People tend to open up more once you show that you’re attempting to form a relationship.

Using Customer Feedback to Improve Service

Knowing how to use your customer feedback to improve service is an incredible tool for your business. How does a company know what to improve upon without feedback? Growing as a business and utilizing client input go hand in hand.

If you haven’t started gathering feedback yet, you’re missing out on a world of information. In-person kiosks are excellent for allowing your customers to share their feedback before they even leave your location, and online surveys are the best for companies collecting digital feedback online. Try both to see what works for your business.