Customer feedback information is important if you want to remain competitive. If you don’t know when your clients aren’t happy, you can’t change anything. While it may not always be what you want to hear, you should encourage consumer feedback at every level of your interaction with your customer base.

There are a number of ways in which you can get a customer feedback list that will help you make further business decisions. Utilize every point of contact with your customers to elicit customer feedback information. Look for reports of the feedback and find ways to address the areas that are receiving negative feedback and look for ways to reinforce positive responses to your inquiries. Find customer feedback in a variety of ways.

1. Ask employees to relay customer feedback they receive

2. Hire a customer feedback provider to gather the information

3. Follow-up with clients to get consumer feedback

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Require customer feedback reports

Front-line employees have more contact with your customers than most other staff members. They hear the complaints and the compliments. You can make it part of your corporate culture that every employee reports the customer feedback to management either through regular meetings or written reports. Look for ways to make the reporting a part of their regular duties.

I recommend: From Checkbox, you can order specialized online surveys that your employees can take to fill in predetermined questions about the customer feedback they’ve been receiving. Allegiance can provide enterprise feedback management software for you to gather and use the data you receive from employees.

Use an outside customer feedback provider

A third-party consultant can give you unbiased customer feedback that they collect from your customer base through surveys, feedback cards and other methods. You should consider bringing in a consultant every couple years at least so that you can be sure your practices are getting you the best return for your company.

I recommend: Questar is a full-service consultancy that can design customer surveys and focus groups to gather feedback. They also can analyze the results for you. LRA can study your organization and help you to design customer feedback tools to make your company more profitable.

Find customer feedback tools

Whether you use a call center to make follow-up calls after a sale or your sales staff contacts customers for feedback, you should make it a policy that someone does the follow-up. You can create tools online that your staff can easily turn to for follow-up direction and management.

I recommend: Find templates that your staff can use to gather customer feedback from Constant Contact. Rate Point has computer programs that can help you to build relationships with your clientele through their feedback.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Include customer feedback collection training with all your new employees and make sure they see how you use their feedback. You'll find them more willing to be engaged in the process when they see the results of their work.