Five Steps To Better Customer Service And More Revenue

Customer feedback offers a swell of benefits no matter what your industry. For starters, instant awareness of what's not working, how you can improve your service or products, and a method to identify wasted resources so you can redirect them for a profitable impact.

Customer feedback is very powerful, yet highly underrated. Feedback consists of customer responses about your services or products that can generate more business, leverage change, or forecast growth potential.

Feedback is free; although from the benefits it sounds like something most people would pay for. Surprisingly, many smart people still pass it by, and wonder why their business is not more successful or quite often, less stressful.

Are You Asking The Right Questions?

Strategic questions need to be asked with the aim of connecting the delivery of fantastic service or products to the results you're after:

How does your organization collect and assess customer feedback?

Does your business provide consistent outstanding service?

How do you know? Where would you look and how frequently?

The absolute best way I have found to get customer feedback is ASK! Most of the feedback I've received throughout the years indicates people broadly know what they should do, but never get started because the whole thing seems so daunting.

In response, I've given you five powerful tips on how to use feedback to get the results you're after:

1. Get feedback before, during, and after the sale

Don't sit back and wait for feedback to come to you. Go get it! It all starts with asking just one customer. The starter formula: Create a cycle of feedback, tweak, and repeat as needed. Connect feedback to the sale, before, during, and after.

2. Interface feedback systems with other segments of your business

Your feedback system should consist of a loop of communication that connects multiple sources. Involve ALL employees, which translates to ALL customers. For example, a hotel chain may involve perspectives ranging from the front desk to the cabana boy; a clothing designer can assess vendors, and strategic alliances; accounting firms could start with an internal system and then link it to their customers.

3. Assess REAL customers in REAL time with the no fluff approach

You may ask, "Don't I need to assemble a focus group to see if they like my service or product?" Nope. Instead of time and money consuming focus groups, focus on REAL customers in REAL time. Tracking customers' experiences as they happen is very powerful, much more so than after the fact, or in some fluffy off site location.

4. Create a team to oversee the feedback system

Create a team to plan and head up the initiative; next connect each member's department into the circuit of information and outcomes. Link your feedback between and within departments by using both an internal (employees) and external (customers) loop of communication. This model can work for any size organization, even if the department is made up of one person.

5. Measure your results now in order to achieve better results later

Align your feedback system with the results you want to achieve. If you have benchmarked your organization's current performance with your existing customers, then you will have a starting point of reference. Pilot your feedback program, and refine as needed.

Repeat business is a buzzword in successful companies. If you're not sure what your statistics are in this regard, then do the numbers; you may be surprised at what you find. More customers equal more revenue; this is a no brainer.

My suggestion: Use these tips as a springboard to taking action. Just get started in some regard.

Copyright: Copyright © 2007-2008 Diana Keith

About the Author:

Diana Keith, the owner of M-Level Systems Consulting, has been helping to create high performance organizations and teams for eighteen years. See her website http://www.mlevelsystems.com for valuable resources, and programs to get better business results through your people. Get a free copy of her Strategy Guide to create your strategy for success.

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