Your Feedback Matters (But Only When It Suits Us?)

Customer relationship management relies on knowing what your customers are saying and thinking in relation to your company at all stages of the customer life-cycle. The use of this data helps your business target its communications more effectively and turn prospects into customers, and can also help retain existing customers for longer.

One of the most important forms of customer data used for keeping existing clients / customers happy is collecting their feedback. According to statistics, 95% of all businesses collect feedback. However:

• Only 50% inform their staff of the feedback they’ve collected
• Only 30% take any action on it
• And only 5% take the time to inform customers of what action has been taken

This paints a rather underwhelming picture of businesses’ attitudes towards their customers’ opinions, and there is little excuse for this neglect when customer relationship management software is so readily available.

Training your customer service team to use a CRM package will allow them to telephone existing clients and record the findings of their conversations in a single place, as well as keep track of customer activity (i.e. When you last spoke to them, whether they have purchased anything recently etc.) over prolonged periods of time. This dedicated approach to customer care will collect valuable feedback that can in turn be used to:

• Improve internal efficiencies in the business, reducing costs
• Identify areas where sales might be being lost
• Increase customer satisfaction and the length of life-cycles

Installing CRM alone will not make the feedback valuable – a change in company culture is necessary for action to be followed through on it – but it will make it easier and more methodical to collect, store it in a place where it can be accessed by those who need to see it, and encourage collaboration when trying to devise a solution. The end result? Feedback that matters to both clients and to you.

Photo credit: liz_com1981 via Flickr