“We welcome your comments, as your views are very important to us and we take them seriously. All comments will be forwarded to the relevant departments for further discussion.”
WHAT A LOT OF NONSENSE!
Today it appears that the customer seems to be interfering with the way a company wishes to do business. Unfortunately, the days of companies relying on customer feedback are long gone as we are too busy trying to compete and not seeing that our growth potential is in front of us every day … Our customers.
The trend to implement complicated structures and systems has now created a barrier between expected business results and customer experience.
Feedback is the breakfast of champions, but why does it seem like companies large and small seem to ignore and even ignore the opinions of their loyal customers?
I was recently asked to present one of my customer service workshops to a large company. Before conducting the training session, I was asked to sit down with the human resources department and the “customer liaison officer” to discuss the areas where they saw problems and what they had been doing to evoke a culture of customer service within the club.
The discussion with the two managers went well, and while they had great theories about how they could make the company a great place for their customers, it all seemed to me to be a superficial solution and not a creator of culture.
Let me give you an example … They had been getting a lot of feedback from their older customers that they felt they were just a number to their staff and not a valued customer. Now, for me, there is a very easy solution here, but the solution that this company came up with was when, every time a customer presented their membership card, the machine at the front desk would say “hello … (your name ) “WT?
This company had missed the point in an important way. Here, loyal customers had given feedback that they felt unappreciated, and their solution was to get a machine to say hello.
Your customers will have great advice or information on how you, as a business, can further improve their experiences.
A new bakery recently opened in our area. It was happening on opening day so I decided to give it a try. I was in line waiting to order and the only way the menu could be seen was on the TV screens behind the counter. The problem with that was that the screens changed every 5 seconds, making it difficult to see what was being offered.
When I got to the counter I asked if I could give some feedback and they said “yes”.
I suggested that they should slow down the screen change and the owner said that was a great response. It disappeared for a minute and came back and said it was done. He thanked me and then got great feedback from other people on the line saying it was “so much better now”. He saw value in his customer feedback.
It’s the customer service companies that are moving forward these days, not the ones with the pseudo-care factor. There is no point in doing “focus groups” if you have lost focus on the basic desires that your clients have.
Your clients want:
• Commitment
• Entertainment
• Experiences
• Education
Sending survey emails or having your customers give a score of 10 in a phone survey after their call to your company could be great in theory, but unless you actually act on it, it’s all just white noise.
I think the problem lies in the training of the staff. Since I’ve been doing this for a fair amount of time, I can safely say that staff training within the area of sales and service skills is not that frequent.
As a business owner, as a department head, I know that you will probably see the value in giving your clients / clients an amazing experience. That is not the problem … it is within the staff which is where things can take off.
Unless our staff understand what the customer really wants (and no, it’s not always cheaper prices), unless they realize that the customer / customer wants what I noted above, then all their hard work, all their surveys. And all your comment boxes are irrelevant to the customer experience!
Staff must understand buying behaviors, sales psychology, and customer wishes. Once they do, meeting customer needs becomes second nature.
It is and should be part of the job description, otherwise they will just become order takers. Online shopping is where orders are taken, face-to-face engagement is where customers become attached and relationships are built.
So when asking your customers for feedback, make sure you at least acknowledge it and maybe even act on it, as the only thing the customer has more of now than ever is CHOICE! They will go where they are appreciated.