Customer feedback

Grant Leboff: So Adrian, one of the things that you talk about in the book, which I think is really key, is just getting feedback from customers which I'm not sure companies do all the time or do right.

What for you, is the best way of getting useful feedback from your customers?

Adrian Swinscoe: So, I think there's two types. Two types of feedback I'd like to talk about. One is that the standard asking for "how did we do?" so on and so forth. But I think the key thing to remember about when companies ask for feedback, is one to make it timely and to also make it quick and easy. I see so many companies that have these customer feedback forms and it's almost a bit like "Tada how long are the questions?"

And they fall into this trap ... Oh and it tends to get sent to them about two weeks or month or two months after they've kind of bought something. And they're like "Who are they? What did I buy from them? I don't remember anything."

So actually, don't design your survey just to benefit you, design your survey so it's of use to the customer. So it's building on their perspective and then you can then infer sort of things that are useful for you but make it that it so it's timely that it's in the moment, the moment of the experience is fresh in their head. But also that it's quick and easy for them to do.

But then the second part of the feedback is based on this idea that there's a thing called "silent complaints" that floats around. And it's all these little things that are just not bad enough for us to complain and for us to notice. We know what they are, we've all felt them. But they largely go unnoticed. But they get remembered and they kind of, you end up stock piling them, and you go "Oh there's just something about that company, it's all these little things that I'm just not going to use them anymore." And I call them silent complaints.

And I think there's a really valuable thing that companies can do is to go and investigate all the little bits of grit that exist in their service and experience, and to try and get feedback from the customers about what are the little things, however slightly they may have annoyed you or irritated you in the past, and if you can go ask your customers about those, they will tell you some wonderful things, where you can make these little kind of changes and then go back to them and go "You know that thing you told us? Well we made that change" and then they go "Oo you're listening, oh that's cool." And that builds on the retention and their loyalty and so on and so forth.

There are a number of ways that companies can get feedback from their customers, but I think it needs to be timely and it needs to be quick but also needs to focus on the little things as well.

Grant Leboff: So with the timely issue, I mean that obviously makes sense. So you don't send your survey out you know 4 months after someone bought something. But when is the right time? So I mean you know, being silly for a minute, you know if someone could buy something and as they're leaving "Oh by the way will you fill that in?"

You know so I mean, where is that sweet spot, if you like, where it's fair enough to ask and soon enough that they remember but also giving them a moment to reflect or whatever else?

Adrian Swinscoe: So I think you've got to test things to see what works. Like when I went somewhere, and I bought something or experienced something and as I was leaving somebody handed me something and said "Have you got a moment, can you fill that in?" I'm going to look that, does that tick the timely and easy boxes? Timely yes, easy probably not. Because you're actually having to give me something to do.

But if you get it right in terms of the format and how easy you make it for the customer to complete it, you can get some fantastic responses. There's been some broadband companies that produced a way via text messages, as a way of confirming appointments. You know like when you go somebody's coming in to install the phone or the broadband and they send you a text saying "Our engineer's coming round such and such a time", you wait in and they come and they fix it and then they leave.

But they added a feedback thing on the back of it, where as soon as the engineer leaves they send a message back to base and that jobs done, then another text message comes and says "Ah David's just going to finish his appointment, how did we do? Rate him 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or whatever the scale might be.

Now, normal feedback response rates, survey response rates - if you're getting into double digits you're doing really, really, well. Anything north of the like 5, 6 percent is generally very well. They were getting response rates north of 50 percent because it was right in the moment. And they got some fantastic sort of feedback. So that's just an example of doing something that's one very easy but also very very, kind of timely based on that particular context but I think that the important thing to add is that, there is no one size fits all. You've got to be willing to like ... You know we've talked about previously is that you've got to be willing to try something or willing to fail as you get on that journey of "How do I improve my service? How do I improve my relationships with my customers?"

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