MarketTools Blog

Hot on the heels of the Customer Experience event I wrote about last week, I had the opportunity to attend IQPC’s Customer Feedback Week in Rosemont, IL (Chicago area). Not only did I get to see two of our customers – Simon Leech of American General Life Insurance Companies and Pam Plyler of United Stationers – speak about their Voice of the Customer program success, but I also had the opportunity to understand how companies are using feedback data to drive real change within their organizations.

Here’s what I didn’t see last week:  downtown Chicago!

Let’s face it – the idea of gathering feedback from customers, employees and partners intuitively seems like “the right thing to do.” And yet, as we discussed in a recent “Economics of Customer Experience” webinar with our partner Strativity, some companies find it challenging to justify investments in something that “feels good.” The interesting thing about feedback is that while it can sometimes seem ethereal, at the end of the day it provides cold hard facts that can help cut through a lot of opinions and assumptions. Here are some examples provided at the conference of how feedback data was used to prioritize strategic business decisions and improve business processes:

Corporate initiatives: Putting real customer data in front of executives can make priorities clear and rally cross-functional teams. There was a great example at the conference of an insurance company that created an internal initiative to speed up their claims processing. It “felt like” the right thing to invest in. And yet when customers were surveyed, the results revealed that they were happy with the amount of time it took to process claims – their bigger concern was the lack of empathy of the people processing their claims. The company was able to use this insight to invest in empathy training for service reps instead of finding a way to speed processing time – a much smaller investment than originally planned.

Training: Many companies already use feedback data to help pinpoint areas where customer service reps need training. Leading organizations are taking it a step further by actually incorporating real feedback into training sessions to make it more real and more specific. For example, you can show both positive and negative survey responses to help call center reps understand exactly how their actions impact customer attitudes. It’s an ideal use of “voice of the customer” data, and an incredibly powerful lesson in learning how to deal with real situations and emotions as opposed to made-up training scenarios.

Product Development: Product improvement requests are often peppered with emotion, and many times it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. Looking at real survey data is extremely valuable for assessing requests from people that speak loudly but speak only for the minority. This is especially helpful when debating about whether to invest in improving a current product vs. developing a new one – do you need to invest in product improvements if most customers are highly satisfied? On the flip side, does it make sense to invest in new product development if customers are abandoning your current product due to dissatisfaction? Feedback data can help to answer these questions in a more tangible way.

Call Center Operations: After a few years of backlash against offshore call centers, some companies have the general impression that offshore or outsourced support centers do not provide the same level of service as domestic or employee-based support. Surveys are an excellent way to determine whether or not that impression is true and make improvements where necessary. One of the speakers at the IQPC conference found that overall customer satisfaction scores for U.S. vs. offshore support were the same – and he used that data to shut down arguments against making a very expensive investment to increase U.S. based support.

These are just a few examples of how companies are using the insights generated by EFM programs as a fact-based decision tool for prioritizing investments. The opportunities for using feedback are endless – we’d love to hear your examples. Please comment below!