When close to everything is in upheaval, you probably want to make the smallest changes with the biggest impact on an improved customer experience. Here’s the help you’re looking for.
It all starts with measuring the customer and employee experience, says Sean McDade, PhD, author of Listen or Die: 40 Lessons That Turn Customer Feedback Into Gold.
When you continually find out what they love, like and hate, you can make adjustments accordingly. Or, if you can’t adjust, you can help customers and employees understand why things are as they are and likely gain their acceptance.
Once you have a regular feedback system in place – or take full advantage of the one that exists – try these four high-impact tweaks to get and use feedback that improves the customer and employee experience:
1. Find out the most important touch point
Look at all of your touch points – contact center, marketing material, website, sales process, etc. – that customers deal with.
In getting feedback, you want to find out which one would cause you to lose customers if something went wrong. For instance, would a prospect dump you if a salesperson didn’t follow up? Would a customer ignore your marketing material if they requested a white paper and received a checklist? Or would they run to the competition if your contact center didn’t respond immediately?
Make your survey to find out the most critical touch points is short – fewer than three minutes, McDade says. It’s the most important information customers can give you, so you want to make sure you get it!
2. Focus on that touch point
Any immediate changes, improvements or tweaks to the customer experience should always be focused on that vital touch point.
You might put together a cross-functional team that can review regular feedback, identify the critical touch point monthly or quarterly, and take charge in one focused effort to improve on what customers care about most.
3. Go to the source
The most effective feedback – the kind that gives you guidance on what needs to be tweaked – comes from customers who care the most. They will likely be your biggest fans and loudest critics.
You want to know who they are so you can follow up, get more insight and make things right (or better). McDade suggests limiting or eliminating the anonymous element to customer feedback.
That way, you can get ahead of issues before customers take them to social media. You can create better relationships when you reach out in response to feedback, too.
4. Treat CX employees as well
Measure employees’ experiences with the same vigor you measure customers’ experiences. Why? Happy employees will make customers happy – and those happy customers will love, recommend and buy more from you.
These surveys and their results should be anonymous, McDade says, unless employees want you to know who they are because they’d like to share more. Act on what they say – and get them involved in improvements that benefit them.
