20 Best Practices for Customer Feedback Programs: Business Process Integration

Below is the next installment of the 20 Best Practices for Customer Feedback Programs. Today’s post covers best practices in Business Process Integration.

Business Process Integration Best Practices

The area of Business Process Integration addresses the extent to which the organization embeds elements of the customer feedback program (including processes and data) into other business operations and processes. Integration of the customer feedback program is intended to support the governance structure.

Figure 3. Integration of Voice of the Customer (VOC) program and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) provide a comprehensive picture of the customer relationship.

Customer feedback programs can impact all areas of a company, from marketing and sales to service and support. The integration can occur in a variety of forms, from regular companywide communications of the program’s goals and processes to dissemination of the results.

A customer-centric company will integrate the program across all levels of the organization, from top management to front-line employees. Executives review customer feedback metrics in their quarterly meetings. Account managers use customer feedback as a regular part of their account planning. Call center agents draw upon the caller’s customer experience history to better manage the transaction.

The advent of technological advancements (CRM systems, Internet) has greatly impacted the extent to which customer feedback programs can be integrated into business processes. Loyalty leading companies incorporate the customer feedback program into their CRM system and are able to use both objective data (sales/service history) and attitudinal data (satisfaction) to get a comprehensive picture of the quality of the customer relationship (see Figure 3).

For the customer-centric company, customer feedback programs play an important role in the management of the business. The integration of customer feedback into the business operations keeps the customers’ needs in the fore of the management and front-line employees’ mind. A list of best practices in Business Process Integration is located in Table 3.

Table 3. Best Practices in Business Process Integration

Best Practices

The specifics…

6. Present customer feedback metrics in executive dashboards

Build and use summary scores (aggregate of several measures into fewer metrics) to track performance attributes for entire company and business units. Summary scores help communicate the general health of the customer relationship at a macro level (great for executive reporting).

7. Integrate the customer feedback program into business processes and technology

Use customer feedback metrics in meetings with your customers (B2B, account management). Use customer success stories to help develop marketing and sales materials.  Integrate customer feedback metrics into your company CRM system to facilitate employees’ access to customer feedback metrics.

8. Communicate all areas of the customer feedback program (e.g., process and goals) to the entire company

Develop a customer feedback portal on company intranet site to house all content related to customer feedback programs, including data collection methods, research results, satisfaction/loyalty trends, and customer success stories. Include information about the customer feedback program in employee training.

9. Integrate the resolution of customer issues into the company’s Customer Relationship Management system

Develop a closed-loop process of problem notification to resolution. This can be facilitated by housing customer feedback metrics in the CRM system. Employ the power of the Web to immediately notify employees, typically account managers, of “at-risk” customers who respond negatively to specified survey questions.

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Take the Customer Feedback Programs Best Practices Survey

You can take the best practices survey to receive free feedback on your company’s customer feedback program. This self-assessment survey assesses the extent to which your company adopts best practices throughout their program. Go here to take the free survey: http://businessoverbroadway.com/resources/self-assessment-survey.