Customer Feedback Management

Customer Feedback Management
Introduction
Customer feedback is an important source of information to identify the service provider’s performance. It measures the satisfaction level of the customers and ensures maintenance of positive relationship with customers. It helps to detect the root causes of customer’s dissatisfaction thereby helping in customer retention and improving the profit margins.


It provides first-hand information about customer’s need and design product/services to satisfy those needs.
Moreover, a disgruntled customer is always for a look out for showing their discontent and a customer feedback mechanism can prevent them to complain to a third party.

Closed-loop customer feedback management is an effective measure to identify the customers’ needs / issues and address the same – therefore increasing customers’ overall experience with the service providers.
It can help to transform the business from transaction focused to relationship focused and thereby achieving:
· Increased overall customer experience
· Increased customer wallet share
· Better retention rate
· Positive customer reference
Closed-loop Customer Feedback Management Process

Step-wise implementation of Customer Feedback Management
1. Designing of customer feedback questionsThe critical part of customer feedback management is the design of feedback questionnaires.
The questionnaires can encompass the following areas based on the business needs
i. Overall Satisfaction
ii. Service / product level satisfaction
iii. Quality of Service satisfaction
iv. Price level satisfaction
v. Customer service level satisfaction
vi. Likelihood to recommend
vii. Brand value perception
viii. Willingness for a follow-up call
The following best practice can be followed in collection of customer feedbacks:
a. Top management advocacy
b. Business needs to conduct the survey to be figured out and accordingly the feedback questions to be designed
c. The survey should be kept short (around 5 important questions) – to have the maximum attention of the customer to every question
d. Reasonable number of options for every questions to be provided
e. Use of simple language in the formulation of the questions to avoid confusion in understanding
f. Provide ample time to complete the survey
g. Focus on the content rather than the score
h. Process to use the feedback constructively and learn to change

2. Methods of Customer feedback collectionCustomer feedback can be obtained from any and every point of interaction of the customers with the company. It could be:
i. Feedback from customers at the front end desk
ii. Feedback from customers during interactions in call centers
iii. Feedback from customers over SMS interface
iv. Feedback from customers over web interface ( for web accessed customers)
v. Feedback from customer over email
vi. Feedback from channel partners (retailers and distributors)
The customer feedback needs to be collected and kept in the feedback database for analysis and formulate actions.
Note: Special attention to be given to avoid approaching the same customer twice for the same feedback

3. Action on customer feedbacki. Empower the front end desk executives to act on the critical customer feedbacks
ii. Closed loop feedback – get feedback – categorize the feedback - measure the feedback indices - act on the issue/problem – Communicate the customer on the action taken (to notify the customer about the action taken to resolve the addressed issue based on the feedback – in-turn to increase the overall customer satisfaction)
iii. Identify the areas of improvement and devise an implementation plan
iv. Train the executives based on the feedbacks of customers
v. Modify the customer feedback questions based on the insights from the already contacted customers
vi. Track the number of customers contacted and feedback obtained and accordingly update the database

Conclusion
Thus a complete closed loop customer feedback management system can be implemented which can provide insights about customers’ views about the service provider and identify the areas of improvement to enhance the overall customer experience.