The Golden Rule of Customer Feedback

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The golden rule of customer feedback
10-13 minutes
This guide is about how to unlock the many benefits that come from
doing customer feedback right.
It’s not enough to simply ‘collect customer feedback’.
Think about all the times that you, a customer, have been on the
receiving end of a company who were trying to collect customer
feedback with a multi-page survey which will ‘only take 30 minutes’,
thrust randomly into your inbox, or a ‘TELL US WHAT YOU THINK!!’
popup when you visit a supplier’s website.
The companies who thought it was a good idea to subject you to this
aren’t doing customer feedback correctly, and as a consequence they
aren’t seeing many benefits.
But just because it’s often done badly, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a
right way to do customer feedback. A way of doing feedback which
makes people say:
In the first three months we increased our Net Promoter Score from
38 to 63. Customer satisfaction continues to rise in all areas.
Suzy Rand, Utilitywise
Our customer focus has increased job satisfaction for our team,
made the business team more confident in selling our service and
created an esprit of service in our team.
David Sheehan, Chartboost
Or even
We are achieving 95%+ CSAT in Europe and we look forward to using
future feedback to help identify areas for improvement in service
delivery in the US as well as in Europe.
Lindsay Boullin, Swiftpage
Every other section in this guide gives you specific advice on how to
set up a customer feedback program that gets things right and delivers
the same benefits that Suzy, David and Lindsay see, but this section is
the most important: It deals with the underlying principle which applies
to every step of the project, our golden rule.
If you take nothing else away from CustomerSure, take away the
golden rule. Once you’ve mastered it, you can pretty much work
everything else out for yourself…
What’s the golden rule?
The Golden Rule: Customers First
The golden rule is simple. Put your customers first. Always. If your
customer feedback project ever puts the needs of Sharon in Finance or
Waylon in Marketing above the needs of your customers, it’s going to
fail.
Your customers are real people with busy lives, overflowing inboxes,
daily commutes, favourite coffee brands, dogs, instagram envy,
exciting vacation plans, secret recipes and skincare routines.
If you can bring a little more sanity to their lives, they’ll love you forever.
So, when you’re designing your customer feedback program, and you’re
trying to work out the best way of doing things, constantly ask yourself
“what would my customers want?". It may help you to put together
some personas and keep them on your desk, so you can constantly put
yourself in your customers’ shoes when you’re answering questions.
This entire guide is based on this golden rule. The answers to all the
common questions we hear, about survey scales, prizes, and
benchmarking all have their roots in the golden rule. If you’ve got a
question that we haven’t covered, you should be able to answer it by
applying the golden rule… But of course, if that’s the case, we’d love you
to get in touch so we can learn from your experience!
The other golden rules
Wait, what? More golden rules? I thought only the winner gets gold?
Fine. The silver rules, if you will. The Electrum rules. The winners of the
runners-up.
These three rules are important, and deserve their place here, but they
ultimately all stem from the golden rule.
They’re the fundamentals that you need to get right before you start
thinking about the details. If you get these right, you’ll see decent
results no matter what else you do. Get them wrong, and you may as
well not send surveys at all.
Rule One - Make it very easy for customers to give feedback.
This is not as obvious as it might seem – making it easy is about

timing and psychology as well as the design of satisfaction surveys
and the process of collecting feedback.
To make it easy you need to ask at the right time, in the right way, with
the right questions. And that means 'right' from the customer's point of
view.
To decide the best time to collect customer feedback, ask yourself the
question "If I was the customer, when would I want to give feedback?"
It's unlikely they would answer "Once a year" or "When the directors
have asked for a customer satisfaction scores".
If a customer has just bought from you, you need to let them give you
feedback as soon as is practical, so they don’t have the frustration of
struggling through your phone system or finding the right email
address to reach the person they need.
In the same vein, asking in the right way means “asking in a way that’s
convenient for your customers”. This is not just about designing short
surveys rather than multi-page monsters (though it certainly includes
that). It's also about the psychology.
If you have a good relationship with your customers, they might feel
awkward criticising the member of your team who they’ve been dealing
with, especially if they want that person to be equally helpful the next
time.
So you need to let customers know you will welcome their comments,
even comments that are critical. If you indicate that you're desperate to
know any way you can improve their experience with you them, they’ll
know they’re helping, not criticising you
You're giving them permission to tell you what you need to do to keep
their business.
Which is what you, and they both want.
To sum up:
Check for satisfaction at appropriate times.

Keep feedback forms short, fast and easy.
Only ask questions about things that are important to your
customers.
Make sure your customers are in no doubt that you welcome their
comments, good and bad.
Rule Two - Act promptly on all feedback
Feedback is a double-edged sword. If you invite it, you can really

impress your customers with prompt follow-up.
However if you invite feedback but don’t act on it or respond, then it

sends a signal that you've ignored it. And that’s worse than not asking
at all because you’ve raised an expectation with someone then failed
to meet it.
These rules should help you get it right every time:
Follow up promptly and appropriately on whatever the customer

says. It builds trust, makes them more likely to recommend you to
others, and spend more with you themselves.
Make sure roles and responsibilities are clearly defined for
processing feedback. If you use CustomerSure, make sure that
everyone in the business knows why you’re using it, and who does
what - from responding to feedback, to sharing comments with
team members, to circulating scores around the business.
Put regular reviews in the diary to not only check the process is
working, but also analyse the data you've collected over time and
see whether there are any recurring problems that need attention.
Rule Three - Show the feedback to everyone
This is the key to unlocking business benefits. If the first mistake is to

ask for feedback and then do nothing about it, the second mistake is to
get valuable customer comments but only let a few people see them.
Customer service is everyone’s responsibility – not just so-called 'front

line' people. Most members of your contact centre team are likely
highly-trained in delivering great service. But can you say the same for
your delivery drivers, your receptionists, your over-eager payment
chaser in accounts, your sales manager, or the recruiter who fails to
understand that the candidate is also a customer?
Everybody has the ability to give a customer a bad experience.
So everyone stands to learn by seeing the customer feedback and

finding out what your customers like and don't like about their dealings
with your company.
So the last golden bronze rule is:
To improve customer satisfaction show customer comments to

everyone. When they’re positive, it makes for extra motivation and job
satisfaction. When they're not so positive, it means the best person
gets to see and fix any problems. It’s the best way for everyone to learn
– much more effective than hearing the feedback second-hand or not
at all.

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customersure.

The golden rule of customer feedback

It’s not enough to simply ‘collect customer feedback’.

Suzy Rand, Utilitywise

David Sheehan, Chartboost

Lindsay Boullin, Swiftpage

What’s the golden rule?

The Golden Rule: Customers First

Rule One - Make it very easy for customers to give feedback.

This is not as obvious as it might seem – making it easy is about

Which is what you, and they both want.

Check for satisfaction at appropriate times.

Rule Two - Act promptly on all feedback

Feedback is a double-edged sword. If you invite it, you can really

However if you invite feedback but don’t act on it or respond, then it

These rules should help you get it right every time:

Follow up promptly and appropriately on whatever the customer

Rule Three - Show the feedback to everyone

This is the key to unlocking business benefits. If the first mistake is to

Customer service is everyone’s responsibility – not just so-called 'front

Everybody has the ability to give a customer a bad experience.

So everyone stands to learn by seeing the customer feedback and

So the last golden bronze rule is:

To improve customer satisfaction show customer comments to

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