Gleaning – and Acting On – Customer Insight Critical to Business Health

When your company sales are flat or floundering, leadership will
be laser focused on the cause and how to turn the ship back in the right
direction. Serious discussions will be taking place throughout the
organization, and new strategies will be contemplated.

While looking inward is only natural, it’s just a small part
of the equation. To really understand why business is down, you’ve got to
understand your customers. You may already be surveying your customers
regularly, but is anyone actually reviewing the results and taking action on
the feedback? Your customers can provide key information on what you’re doing
wrong, which in turn is likely to be impacting sales – thanks, Captain Obvious!

How many of us have completed a company’s customer
satisfaction survey – going so far as to list specific grievances – and never
seen any changes?  It often feels like
these surveys are dropping into an online version of the circular file.

If you’re surveying customers by rote, you’re missing
highly-valuable insight. Focus on quality not quantity if you have limited
resources to compile and review surveys. Ask questions that gauge satisfaction
with all your customer touchpoints from frontline service reps to  back office operations. At the same time,
keep the survey as short and simple as possible to help ensure completion. Many
businesses today rely only on the one Net Promoter Score question: “On a scale
of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to others?”

Try to avoid adding or changing questions from one survey to
the next. You need to establish a solid baseline so you can track performance
over time. Consider one or two comprehensive questionnaires annually to prevent
survey fatigue. Implement suggested changes as practical and let the customers
know they have been heard.

If a customer hasn’t bought from you in more than a couple of
months, call and find out why. Personal contact with dormant accounts could
provide even more valuable information. From pricing issues to competitor
intelligence, a one-on-one conversation could reveal much more than you could
obtain from a survey.

As we all know, customers are the lifeblood of any business.
Gleaning consistent feedback from them is critical to ensuring the ongoing
health of your organization.