When it comes to customer feedback, you’re an insider. You understand how important it is to gather your customers’ complaints, compliments, and queries. You know that such feedback is your treasure map to more fully engaged customers—and higher profits. Now that you’re ready to make customer feedback the principle driver of your business decisions, it’s important to pause and consider which tools you will use to gather that feedback. You have a multitude of options. Market research gurus tout everything from old school paper surveys and client satisfaction surveys to Twitter and Facebook for gathering customer feedback. In such a rich information market, it can be difficult to figure out what to look for.
Your first consideration should be philosophy. Different market research companies offer markedly different approaches. Some focus solely on increasing customer satisfaction, while others approach customer feedback from a more behavioral stance. Here at PeopleMetrics, we believe customer engagement is the key to long-term business success. As we gather customer and employee feedback, we keep our eye on the prize of engaging customers to drive increased revenue and customer retention. Select a market research company whose approach matches your objectives.
Once you’ve found several compatible firms, you can continue to zoom in on your best option by looking for the following six characteristics of exceptional customer feedback tools:
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Proven, reliable content that can be linked to specific and effective actions. Look for a tool that produces reliable, accurate, useful information about which actions will improve your business.
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The ability to “Push” as well as “Pull” Customer Feedback to the right individuals in your organization. Make sure that the survey results can be easily (or automatically) distributed to the right people in your organization.
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A solution that organizes customer feedback into intuitive categories to drive targeted action and follow-up. Once research results come in, you’ll want a tool that groups answers into logical, useful categories. Again, this allows managers and executives to effectively make changes based on customer feedback.
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Dashboards of relevant information to help managers focus on what matters. Some market research tools provide a single set of data. Others provide real-time, up-to-the-minute dashboards that compile and display relevant customer feedback. Seek the latter, and your managers will thank you.
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The ability to merge customer feedback data with existing customer data (e.g., Salesforce.com). Your customer survey tool should be able to link your customers’ responses across all platforms, including Customer Relationship Management programs like Salesforce.com. This will eliminate frustration as you integrate your customers’ feedback into different areas of your business.
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Built-in accountability for follow-up, including: responsibility, action tracking, and process monitoring. Once you have your survey results, how will you know which employees in your organization are responsible for making the changes that customers suggest? If you’re smart, you’ll look for a customer feedback tool that includes tracking capabilities to take care of the management legwork for you.
Your choice of customer feedback tools will impact your business for years to come. This decision determines not only how you gather and disseminate data—it also determines how successfully your company will innovate to meet and exceed your customers’ expectations. Make the right choice--ensure that your company chooses a market research firm that can provide you with the best customer feedback tools.
–Kate Feather
