The contact centre team should be receiving and acting upon customer feedback all of the time. But what if you’re in marketing, sales, or business development? You may want to hear what customers are saying but you might not be receiving any feedback at all.
If your company is currently receiving all of its customer feedback through one portal (the contact centre) then departments are often left unaware of it. Even if the contact centre promises to pass it on, often the volume of feedback means that it is impossible to pass it on, and even harder to do so in real-time.
This is a problem, how can any department improve if they are getting out of date feedback, or worse, no feedback at all.
Leaving departments out of the feedback loop could be damaging to the business as a whole. But making sure that the right feedback is getting to the right departments is also a big execution challenge.
Automate your feedback system
Texting is more and more becoming the main medium through which customer feedback is gathered and shared. Google’s TalkBin allows customers to text their feedback anonymously to one number and Kipsu has also developed a method of sharing discrete feedback with others.
Other companies are now beginning to extend this by sending texted feedback on to the right people automatically. For example, if the text references a particular store, then the feedback will be sent straight to the store manager with the contact details of the customer. This way, not only can the relevant department improve their service but also offer a more personalised customer service.
By setting up an automated system (this could be as simple as an automatic email) within your contact centre that sends feedback to the relevant department, improvements can be made quickly and you can even begin to deal with customers on a more personal basis.
Make sure that there are processes in place
If a department starts getting three of four pieces of customer feedback through every day, then they could be struggling to deal with implementing it whilst also running the usual day-to-day tasks.
Before you start automating your feedback system, ensure that each department has a process in place for dealing with the feedback that they receive. Whether it goes straight to the manager and they set out an implementation plan, or the senior team has a regular meeting to figure out how they are going to make the changes, having a set process in place means that panic won’t set in and defeat the objective of the project.
Share the good and the bad
Sharing positive as well as negative feedback is also important and can be done in a variety of ways. Sainsbury’s use a noticeboard to show customer feedback to employees, whereas other companies post it in real time on screens in-office.
Negative feedback is important for departments to improve, positive feedback is important for moral. Sharing positive feedback with everyone means that they don’t constantly feel like they are making endless changes for no reason.
Review, review, review
This is a big cross-business implementation, so making sure that you review the relevant processes on a regular basis is essential to keeping feedback moving well through the system and getting to the right places.
This is a big challenge, but is fundamental if your business is to grow and develop in the right direction for your customers.
