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Companies may be sitting on a treasure trove of customer feedback but don’t realize it

It’s increasingly difficult for companies to get good response rates when they ask customers for feedback. Many buyers are tired of being “invited” to participate in surveys at the end of telephone calls or chat sessions, or of being surveyed at the point of sale, or asked to log onto the website at the bottom of a sales receipt. Many customers feel enough is enough.

What is a curious company to do? One important approach is to listen to what customers have already said to other parts of the organization, in addition to asking customers directly for feedback. A new DCG report entitled Looking for Customer Feedback in All the Right Places explains an approach that combines “ask + listen” techniques. The analysis provides guidance on how companies can better listen to customer feedback by searching internally for data that already exists.

Listening to customers is important, of course, not only because feedback matters, but also because existing stores of information about customer interactions are treasure troves for new insights. Some of the many places to look include enterprise applications, employee insights, social media, knowledge management systems in the contact center, service records, sales records and predictive analytics. By integrating existing data with real-time discussions in the contact center, the organization may glean new “ah ha’s” that it didn’t know existed.  (For more, see the Hulu example in the DCG post Do you hear what I hear? Employee feedback about customers.)

Companies should never give up their search are because customer feedback:

• Offers a direct, measurable way to determine customer satisfaction.
• Provides actionable insights for future customer experiences.
• Helps to improve a product or service.
• Gives insights about what customers like and dislike.
• May help with customer retention.
• Delivers tangible data for making better business decisions.
• Helps to identify customer advocates or “promoters.”
• Shows customers that their opinions matter.
• Helps identify market trends.
• May provide insights about competitors and partners.

Sources: 5 Reasons Why Customer Feedback Matters More Than Ever and Clientheartbeat.com.

The bottom line is that asking + listening is the best way to obtain customer feedback. For more analysis, read the the related post Customer Care versus CRM: Don’t Stay Stuck in the Past.


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