Remember the days of when the doorbell would ring and there stood, with clipboard in hand, was a rep from Company X looking for people’s feedback on their latest product. Annoying as this sometimes was for the consumer, this primitive way of gaining feedback was vital for businesses and their owners to know what their consumers liked and disliked about their “thing”.

But thankfully, for everyone, times have changed, and technology has moved on. The surveying process has evolved to reflect the digital revolution, encompassing the likes of after-sales emails, online feedback forms and surveys. This makes it’s so much easier for businesses to send out surveys in a less interruptive and intrusive, (and cost effective), way.

Although organisations are spending time and money on their surveying processes the lingering feeling is that organisations could, and indeed should, be doing so much more – and it can cost a lot less than you might think!

The general standard of experience delivered by organisations is higher than ever, meaning that if your customer experience is “OK”, that really is the equivalent of what “Poor” was 10 years ago. As  business owners, you need to be closely monitoring how satisfied your customers are and establishing how/where improvements can be made, or the danger is you will stagnate and ultimately fall behind the improving competition.

On the opposite side, you will also get some encouraging comments and scores of things that are going well. Individual staff and teams are usually areas that get mentioned as customers don’t often get asked about how they were looked after, or who helped them. This can have a huge effect on team morale as staff love to know if they’ve done well and will encourage repeat good behaviour.

Remember, the best judge of your customer experience is – surprise, surprise – your customer. So regular customer surveying enables you to identify any problems that are emerging that could compromise the experience you deliver, or if something is going well that you can amplify and drive forward.

Also, if a customer has a bad experience, then they want to share it. Reaching out to customers to learn about their experiences is a good service. Giving customers an opportunity to explain their issues and reassuring them that if they’ve experienced a problem that it will be resolved which can reduce their frustrations and help you to keep their future custom. And if they’ve had a great experience you can use their comments as a trigger to ask them to leave a review.

If you’d like some help with surveys or getting some reviews then give us shout on 01323 406060.