Andrew McGuiness from Forrester Research wrote a recent blog asking readers: “What have your experiences been like with NPS*? Is it really your ultimate question? Has it helped you make improvements and drive financial results?”
This prompted me to think about the questions our customers ask when assessing their customer feedback programs:
During this past season of AMC’s Mad Men, we often found the hero/anti-hero Don Draper embroiled in a battle for his personal and professional reputation. Rather than defend or deny rumors head-on, he subscribed to the simple idea that “if you don’t like what people are saying about you, change the conversation.”
While I usually hang on Don Draper’s every word anyway, that particular line stuck with me a little more than usual. It made me think about the idea that many companies are afraid to listen to what customers say about them in social media. It’s a little scary to hear what people are saying about you when they think you’re not listening. I attended several Voice of Customer and Customer Experience Management conferences this...
Most companies will tell you that a great customer experience is essential to their business model. In fact, a recent survey conducted by MarketTools, Inc., as part of its Enterprise Feedback Management Marketplace Report, found that 75 percent of companies think that customer satisfaction is extremely important to their bottom line.
But while 64 percent of the businesses responding to the survey plan on a greater focus on customer satisfaction compared with last year, only 39 percent plan to invest more in customer satisfaction-related products and services in 2010. That’s a big discrepancy between what businesses say about customer experience, and what they actually do to ensure that the experience is a good one.
When a company doesn’t put enough time and energy into customer satisfaction, they run the risk of the customer experience breaking down—and that can negatively impact the entire organization.
Every business has access to an important source of data that can power significant growth and open up new opportunities: its customers' feedback. And yet most companies only capture that feedback through ad hoc or one-off surveys, with haphazard follow-up to address problems uncovered by customer input.
Any company can benefit from a more systematic approach to implementing surveys, so it can receive customer feedback on a regular basis and then use that data to resolve issues. But the most successful customer-centric organizations are implementing Enterprise Feedback Management systems (EFM) to capture customer feedback in real time as well as with ad hoc surveys, then act upon that input in ways that benefit both its customers and its business results. EFM systems can help businesses immediately capture customer opinions, proactively respond to issues, and provide the insight to establish a clear direction even in an uncertain business environment.
Customer data...
