Requests for feedback are everywhere. When you shop online or visit a new website, a service survey window will usually pop up. When you contact a company via Chat, a customer survey window almost always appears at the end of your session. When you walk into most restaurants, you’ll see “Tell Us How We’re Doing” survey cards. When you call a company and navigate its phone tree, you’ll usually hear a message asking for your feedback at the end of your call.
Real World Story: Smart companies that are serious about customer service will often ask customers for feedback regarding their experiences with them. Such companies want to know 
about the areas in which they excel and which areas need improvement. Without customer feedback, a company can’t possibly know how well or how badly its customer service actually is. How then can a company improve and elevate service to its customers? Knowledge is power so strengthen your service arsenal by knowing what customers think of you.
Strategies that Turn it Around:
- Identify collection method. Collecting feedback from customers can range from dedicated feedback forms to surveys by mail or email, monitoring social media sites to putting together focus groups. Choose a collection method that best fits your organization and industry. For example, if you rely heavily on LiveChat sessions, consider an online feedback form at the end of each session.
- Collect and tabulate data. Don’t let good information go to waste. Consistently review feedback from your customers. When gathering and arranging all your data, take note of any recurring issues or trends. You can employ social scientific methods, develop case studies, or use informal methods like an Excel spreadsheet to tabulate the collected data.
- Report findings. Evaluate your findings and create a comprehensive report. Your report should include the customer service tools that are working and those tools that need improvement. Also include ways to ensure that what is working is delivered consistently by everyone in your organization at all times and how best to improve problem areas with actionable measures. For example, customer feedback may indicate wait time on the phones are excessive during the lunch hour between noon and 1pm. Therefore, create an actionable task that ensures you have full phone coverage during this time.
- Implement changes. Once you have a better and fuller picture of your customer service delivery, make sure to implement changes with actionable tasks (as noted in #3). It’s great to have information about how well or how badly you are delivering service to customers, but without implementing changes, you won’t be able to elevate service delivery. Once you implement changes, track their progress periodically to ensure you are getting the results you want.
Remember: You are constantly battling to win over customers. By employing the secret weapon of feedback, you give yourself an advantage to achieve that goal—consistently, with every customer interaction.