The customer feedback centre – It tells you what your clients think of you
Many organisations seek customer feedback; after all it’s the right thing to do. Listening to your customers’ opinions is good business practice, and as we all know it builds customer loyalty, improves client retention and encourages a referral culture for your business…….or does it?
In truth gathering customer feedback can be an expensive and time consuming process that, if not conducted correctly, can bring little reward. Paper-based processes in particular take time to administer; sending out questionnaires and then spending time collating and analysing the results into something meaningful can be so time consuming that too often the end result is a set of information on which little or no action is taken.
A key element of a good customer feedback process is how you collate the results to ensure you can take immediate action where necessary and analyse ongoing trends to make more fundamental changes to your service proposition. Good technology can help, allowing you to automate the process of requesting feedback through online systems which automatically collate the responses and produce statistics or management information from the results, particularly useful for FSA TCF and ARROW assessments.
Blanket surveys have their place but they are more suited to questionnaires that request specific information that is not related to service, perhaps to gauge interest in a particular product or to conduct market research. However, asking your customers precise questions about a service they have received very recently is more relevant. The customer understands the questionnaire you have asked them to complete as the service has happened recently enough for the customer to remember the details and be able to offer constructive feedback; it’s specific, its relevant and the feedback is useful and actionable.
The style of questionnaire is also important. Customers are far more likely to respond to a questionnaire if it is short; perhaps no more than ten concisely worded questions so it only takes two minutes to complete. The questions should also have a clear focus on the outcome your firm wants to deliver to its customers. Asking questions about customer satisfaction is all very well but what do the questions “Were you happy with the service you received?” or “Was all our literature clear?” really tell you about your service proposition? Good questionnaires ask specific questions about a service received and allow a number of answer options so that levels of opinion can be gauged and scored to establish trends.
To achieve real results, make sure that your customer feedback questionnaires are sent out with a real commitment to take action to change and improve customer outcomes. Set an expectation with your customers that you will be asking for feedback and they are more likely to respond. Once your customers start to expect feedback requests from you and know that their answers will drive real change you will reap the rewards through stronger relationships and enhance business reputation.
So how do you implement a feedback process that is both efficient and cost effective for your business, whilst at the same time ensures your customers get results they want too?
The Customer Feedback Centre, the online client feedback tool from FinQS, allows you to address the issues mentioned above. TCF Centre simply tells you what your clients think of you but also allows you to action and report on the results in a meaningful way. The system is available from £30pm (inc 1 user) and £10 per additional feedback individual. Capita Financial Software members are entitled to 1 month free rental and no set up, branding or training cost. For further information please contact us at info@finqs.co.uk or 01564 711153.