Real-Time Feedback, Urgent Response

By Richard D. Hanks, President, Mindshare Technologies

What best-in-class companies provide. By Richard D. Hanks,
President, Mindshare Technologies

Do you want your company to win?  Here’s my take on how…

Listen to your customers, vendors, partners and employees.
Fix the situation.
Do it now urgency and responsiveness! 

I believe that “real-time feedback” and “urgent response” are among the most powerful differentiators of winning companies in business today.  Understanding relationships with your customers, partners, suppliers, vendors and employees and their key concerns will set you apart.  So how do you do that?  By collecting, consolidating, and managing feedback from all sources and then urgently acting on that feedback.

Listen in Real Time
If you're not continuously collecting immediate feedback from customers (and all other business partners), you are already behind.  Customers no longer have to accept what you package up and give them - there are too many other competitive choices.  They want to be heard, and you'd better be listening.  Why?  The true benefit of real-time customer feedback is in knowing, not guessing, what your customers want, every day, at every location.  No matter how good your existing market research or CRM system is, none of it is as useful as your customer personally telling you about their experience.

Think about the evolution of the words "real-time" over the generations...  To our great grandparents it might have meant weeks or even months.  To my generation it generally means, "Get me the information I need within a couple of days," or "leave me a voice mail or an email."  To my children, however, real-time has taken on another meaning - it means "during" the event, "during" the service experience.  This trend will certainly continue, meaning that our ability to listen and respond to our customers will need to migrate from:

• What they remember about the experience?  to...
• What just happened at their service experience?  to....
• What is happening during their service experience?

In my opinion, comment cards and delayed surveys are already outdated.  At a minimum, every customer should be able to easily provide immediate feedback through phone and web surveys, home page questionnaires, and toll-free call centers.  These should be supplemented with outbound email or phone solicitations to a subset of the customer population.  Occasional mystery shops and internal audits can also be conducted to ensure that prescribed processes are being observed. 

There are a large number of service companies that haven't yet adopted these available real-time feedback methods.  However, there are a few best-in-class companies that are moving forward and are developing methods to utilize the next generation of real-time feedback. Aberdeen Group recently published a report on how best-in-class companies successfully capture and leverage customer feedback to improve customer satisfaction and retention and, ultimately, to achieve increased revenues, profits and shareholder value. Aberdeen examined the use, results, experiences, and intentions of more than 300 diverse enterprises to create a roadmap for companies who are considering using customer feedback management to increase revenues and market share.

The report is comprehensive in that it evaluates the EFM (enterprise feedback management) process that helps a company understand its relationships with customers, employees, partners, suppliers, and others.  It also provides insights from a variety of companies currently using EFM, supplies real-world examples from defined market segments, and shows how those companies use feedback management to better achieve their customer service goals.

Among the important findings:

• Best-in-Class companies are 8 times more likely than laggards to increase customer satisfaction.
• Best-in-Class companies are 26 times more likely than laggards to increase customer retention.

Here's a true story, just dripping with irony.  I run a company that teaches and preaches real-time feedback - for example, post-meal restaurant surveys.   A while back, I was at dinner with some family members and I was explaining the benefits of phone and web surveys, (versus mystery shopping and comment cards) - because using phone or web surveys, the guest can provide immediate feedback to our clients.  As I was expounding profusely, I looked over at my 20-year-old daughter Katherine, whose thumbs were flying, texting on her phone.  I asked her who she was "talking" to.  She said, "I'm just telling my friend, Courtney how delicious this dinner is."

What irony.  There I am crowing about our company's industry-leading, real-time surveying, while my own daughter is taking real-time feedback to a whole new level. Welcome to the new definition of real-time feedback!  Are you getting ready? 

Next steps:  Make sure you are listening to customers immediately after their service experience, and begin thinking of ways to satisfy the future definitions of "real-time." 

Fix the Situation
After real-time feedback is collected, what do you do with it?  Simple answer - if something is broken, fix it.  If something is awesome, celebrate it and emulate it. 

Be prepared to "fix" two major things: 

(1) "Fix" the customer situation.  Contact them right away.  Apologize for any negative issues.  Describe the way you will address the issue.  Offer them some kind of compensation for their troubles, and invite them to return. 

(2) "Fix" the internal problem - be it person, process, or thing.  Train, teach, or counsel with the problem employee.  Clean up the dirty restroom, train the phone agent on accepting responsibility, or raise the standards on raw materials, etc.  Whatever caused the negative issue - fix it.

When processes are in place to "fix" the customer and "fix" the internal problem, hold managers accountable for following up on them.

In the Aberdeen research a case study on Hertz Corporation is presented.  Hertz has a business management strategy in which a defect is defined as anything that can lead to customer dissatisfaction. This means the area managers need to pay close attention to customer feedback. This requires them to send customer comments via email to station managers, so that they can take immediate action to resolve any problems that arise.  Brian Dickerson, Vice President of Customer Care, at Hertz said in the report, "The comments are what you use to drive some difference in the service you're providing and to drive change and drive innovation."

Urgency - Act Accordingly, Act Fast!
Once your customers have told you what they want; you need to act on it.  Quickly!

"Urgency" is an attitude, an approach to excellence.  It doesn't mean being harried or chaotic or out of control - it does mean being fully engaged.  When he was a young man, my dad worked at a soda fountain.  He loved to tell us stories about when he was the only one behind the counter and how fast he could serve people.  As a kid, whenever I had to stand in line with my dad, we would carefully watch the servers and I quickly came to learn the meaning of the term "sense of urgency."

The general state of customer service today is not pretty, as evidenced by the number of blogs and websites devoted to corporate bashing. This has led to a culture in which people don't expect companies to even acknowledge their displeasure, let alone act on it.

It's hard to believe I'm saying this, but for some professions (like house contractors, appliance repair, cable TV or dish installation, etc.)  I have already surrendered and lowered my expectations to: "Please, just show up within an hour of your appointment and I'll be happy!"  Imagine how much word-of-mouth business a carpenter or home repairman would have if they had the authentic reputation of showing up, on time, when they said they would be there.

It's an embarrassing state of affairs that has lowered our service expectations.  However, your company can earn loyalty and repeat guests if you know how to properly respond to both positive and negative feedback.  If you don't act quickly on customer feedback, then why even collect it at all?

I suggest that you take your positive responses and use them to emphasize your strengths. You can also use them to motivate and reward your staff - everyone likes to be patted on the back every once in a while. (Plus, a happy staff goes a long way toward customer happiness and loyalty.)

But what to do with the bad comments?  Oddly enough, they present the perfect situation to win back a loyal customer.  TARP research over the last 20 years has conclusively shown that guests who have their problems appropriately resolved are more loyal than those who had no problem to begin with.

The problem with most feedback systems is that there are no urgency mechanisms in place to sound the alarm when a negative comment comes through.  "Customer Service Excellence" is not earned by taking negative criticism slowly or lightly.  When something goes wrong, a quick response, on the local level is always the best way to win back a customer.  It is in "Service Lapse Recovery" that some of your most heroic customer service experiences can occur.

Aberdeen also recommends the following required actions that companies must do to achieve Best-in-Class:

• Deliver customer feedback analysis to key decision makers across the organization in a time-sensitive (if not real-time) manner, including "alerts" to drive immediate action, when necessary.
• Whenever possible, link actions taken in response to customer feedback to increased revenues and other financial outcomes

One of our clients provides food for major sporting stadiums across the U.S.  During a baseball game at Wrigley Field, a customer had ordered chicken strips to be delivered directly to her suite.  When she received her meal, the chicken strips were cold.  She had also received an invitation to take a Mindshare survey, and provide feedback on her experience.  She called right away and complained about the cold food.  Instantly, the manager received a notification on his cell phone.  He went directly to his computer and pulled up this customer's information from the system.  Before the game was over, he found the upset customer, apologized, and presented her with some fresh, hot chicken strips.  The customer was blown away at such responsiveness.

Best-in-class automated feedback systems have built-in logic that triggers an alert to be sent to both the local offending parties and their supervisors, as soon as the feedback arrives from the guest. These systems give the local manager notice that a problem with service has occurred.  They provide the contact information for the customer, along with the customer's feedback; so the manager can understand the situation, and make restitution immediately by contacting the customer, offering an apology, and "fixing" the customer's situation (see above).

The next time the customer comes in and sees that their complaint has been addressed, they'll know you appreciate their business and will become even more loyal to your company.  All you had to do was respond, offer restitution, and make good on promised improvements.

Sales forces in conference rooms around the world are trying their best to come up with value-adds that will take the pressure off of price and help them close sales.  But, they often are missing the solution right under their nose: strong relationships, fostered by speed, responsive service, and urgency, make price almost irrelevant.

Football Hall of Famer Roger Staubach, hit the nail on the head when he said, "There are no traffic jams along the extra mile."  You have a chance to stand out from your competitors by creating a culture in which negatives are turned into positives, and customers are shown that they're truly valued, by the urgency and responsiveness that you show them.

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