Seth Godin's YET

A friend shared this with me and I really liked it!

In Seth Godin's blog he said...

"When you talk about your market or your peers, do you say, "no one is using it..." or "no one is using it yet"?

Yet implies inevitability. If they're going to use it, it might make sense to get there before they do."

The concept of yet implies inevitability is so powerful.

When we share how we help our clients collect customer feedback we are at time met with the word, yet. Our customers don't have smart phones "yet".  Our customers don't know what a QR code is "yet".  I don't know what a QR code "yet".

"Our comment cards work just fine..."

If you are not yet ready to use technology to gather customer feedback and share real time information with you as an owner or manager... remember that yet implies inevitable.  Will you be ahead of the curve or left behind?

Transforming the way customers feedback is shared and how organizations use it!

Comment Card - To Myself

Over the last few days I have not done a blog post.

Well the reason has been technical changes.  We are moving my blog from "blogger" to our web site www.feedbackrevolutionqr.com

I couple of months ago when I started this I didn't know what Wordpress was or how I could put in on my web site.

Well those days are gone and SOON this blog will be hosted on my site.

Blogger has been great and very easy to use and appreciate Google providing this great forum.

It will be a little on an off for the next few days while we get it all setup and rolling!

But it will be nice to have a new home for my thoughts on customer service, customer feedback and all things relating to customer experience improvement and measurement.

Transforming the way customer feedback is shared and how organizations use it!

Customer Feedback - Thank You Economy

Beyond the Comment Card

 If you have not found this book yet and customer satisfaction is important to you... you need to.

There is a great review of it in the New York Times.

The part of it that I see the most is how the internet affects feedback.  Back in the day the owner knew all of the customers and they all knew him.  If there was a problem or a guest wasn't happy they knew about it and fixed it.

The didn't sue comment cards or customer satisfactions surveys!  They knew by walking around.

After that businesses expanded and had multiple locations.  If a customer had a bad experience they went home and told their neighbors of friends at work.

Fast forward to today... customer has a bad experience and they let it rip on the internet.  They post it on Yelp, the put it on their blog, they post comments all across the internet.

The challenge is the business owner may never know that this was done but soon find their business dying a little bit each day.  People see the posts and soon try new places or just stop coming.

Think about it today when a person as a bad customer service experience they no longer tell 9 - 15 people they can potentially share it with thousands for years and years!

Good read and great information.

Transforming the way customer feedback is shared and how organizations use it!

Comment Card Words

Comment Card Words

I thought it would be fun to take customer feedback and make a "word cloud" out of it.  The larger the word is the more often it was used in the customer comments.

So often we look at customer feedback as words in a document or spreadsheet but I think when you look at it like this you can see what was used often and get a feel for what they are thinking and feeling!

Transforming the way customer feedback is shared and how organizations use it!

Customer Feedback - US Airways

After my flight I shared on my blog a note to the president of US Airways.  Well Saturday I got an email.  Of course it was not from him it was a generic after the flight electronic "comment card" asking for my opinions.

I decide to take it for giggles!

It was beyond disappointing!  None of the questions were about the flight that I had just taken.  All they wanted to know was demographics and 3 pages of early boarding questions.  Did I have children, do we early board, do I think early boarding makes it faster.

Once again some marketing person has hijacked customer feedback.  They do this under the banner of "We care" when it really should be "we want to know" and we are too cheap to pay you for your input.  What a terrible mistake this is.  When people use the name "customer feedback" as a way of hiding what they really want they do real damage.

The next time I get a survey from them my first reaction will be they don't care about the terrible service on my flight they want marketing data.

In all honesty I'm not sure what else they asked... after 3 pages I stopped answering and exited the survey.  Yes shorter is better!

Two other points... I replied to the email they send with a link to my previous blog post about my flights.  No one has replied... yes they really are about service!

Second... They don't even pay the extra $20 the URL said Survey Monkey.

Transforming the way customer feedback is shared and how organizations use it!

Comment Card - Extreme Pizza Boise

The other night my wife and were driving home and we were hungry.  It was Friday night and getting late... not too late!

We went to two different places and they were both closed.

My wife remembered a new pizza place that had opened near where we were.  As we drove up it looked open so we parked.

As we walked to the door we could see a full table of people but the other tables had their chairs up... so my wife stuck here head in and asked if they were still open.

They were closing but the owner said, sure... turn back on the oven.

This is exactly what businesses need to do if they want to make it long term.

I wish they had an easy way for us to share how we felt about our experience.

Transforming the way to share customer feedback and how organizations use it!

Are people afraid of customer feedback?

I was talking with friends that other night and we were talking about customer feedback and how important it was.  One person said that customer feedback was the only way to improve your business.

My question is this... Do most business owners really want to know what their customers think?  Do they want honest real time customer feedback?

For some people that may sound very odd but think about it... If you are working long days and nights to make your business a success.  You pour your heart and soul into it every day, do you want to hear negative things?  Do you want to hear about mistakes and things that could be done better?  Do you really want customer feedback?

Not that business owners don't want to improve and be successful.  I know they do.  Many love their business and will work so hard on it and in it.

The challenge is customer feedback can be painful at times.

Transforming the way customer feedback is shared and how organizations use it!

Free Customer Feedback

The major story across the country is the economy and jobs, jobs, jobs!

The United States economy is very shaky.  The President and congress can't create jobs.  Governments don't create jobs, businesses do!

I read the other day that if 1 out of 3 small business would hire one more person that US would be at full employment.

We want to do our part!  We are offering our Feedback Revolution QR service for FREE.

We know that if customers get better service they spend more and come back more often.  When people spend more it creates more employment opportunities.

If you want to measure your customer service and want real time customer feedback click the link and sign up!

http://feedbackrevolutionqr.com/Serial_Entrepreneur_Says.php

Transforming the way customers share feedback and how organizations use it!

Customer Feedback Wanted???

I was just at "The Grove" stand/cafe in the Houston airport.

I didn't have a good experience.  As a matter of fact it was very disappointing!

It was disappointing enough that I went online and emailed them to tell them.  As soon as I hit send I received a reply saying that they appreciated my comment and would get back to me within 48 hours.

If you really want feedback making people go online and find you is a big mistake.  You will only get the people that love you or are really upset.

Than to take more than 24 hours to reply.  That is a sign that the company is not customer focused.

For customer feedback to have value it needs to be real time and actionable.

Transforming the way customer share feedback and how organizations use it!

Comment Cards Made Easy

Collecting customer feedback is essential for long term business success.

The error that people make is they think that a comment card is a good way to collect the customer feedback.  The answer is it really is not a good way at all.

I checked into a hotel yesterday and they have really nice looking comment cards at the front desk and it said they wanted to know what I thought.

Do you think they really wanted to know?

They could not find my reservation and was more interested in talking with an associate about a memo that just had come out.

My comments would not have been positive and that could have been a good thing.  My guess is the manager or owner would like to know what the people at the front desk did but most people are like me and they will never waste their time filling out some form.  If I did would I have to turn it into the person behind the counter?

Comment cards are a very poor tool to use for customer feedback.  Almost like using a hammer to drive in screws!

Transforming the way customers share feedback and how organizations use it!

Listen to the customer - Customer Feedback

The other morning I was watching Good Morning America.  They had a person on talking about starting a business during the down economy and one of her points was to "Listen to your customers!"

She explained that you need to know who they are and what they want before you start offering products or services.

That is fine if you are a new business but as an existing business you need to listen now more than ever.  A big part of listening is asking for customer feedback.  You need to be proactive and encourage your customers to share with you what is working and what needs to be worked on.

In tough times people are even more critical of how they spend their money!

This means customer feedback is very important to survival.

Transforming the way customers share feedback and how organizations use it.

US Airways customer service

Doug,

I've flown your airline from the old America West days.  I remember free drinks and have been elite over 15 years.

Just want to let you know...your service is terrible.  I wish you offered our feedback solution so I could share this with you directly.

I forgot how bad the service is...

Please stop repainting planes and spend the money on hiring people that care about your customers.

I'd love to personally help you transform the way your customers share feedback and how you use it.  Please call, text, or email me!

Customer Satisfaction Survey is just the start

As we move forward with www.feedbackrevolutionQR.com  I'm constantly reminded of the importance of customer satisfaction surveys and getting valid and actionable information.

The challenge is customer feedback is just the beginning.  If you use a comment card or your provide customers a phone number to call and share their feedback is not as important as what you do with the information.

To us you need to get the feedback but the real value comes when the business adjusts to better meet or exceed it's customers needs.

It's a little like knowing you have high blood pressure and not making choices to reduce it.  Yes, it's important to know but it's even more important to make the necessary changes!

Transforming the way customers share feedback and how organizations use it!

Customer Satisfaction Surveys Should be Brief

As I surf the web reading about customer satisfaction I'm amazed by how much frustration and anger there is about the survey itself.

Customer are very frustrated by they surveys that say they are about "customer satisfaction" when in fact they are about marketing and market research.

If you want to know about my likes and dislikes and new products I may be interested in please invite me to a focus group!  Don't lie to me and say you want my customer feedback when in reality you want to know how to sell me more products.

Please be honest about customer feedback.  To me the biggest mistake a business can make in the area of customer satisfaction and customer feedback is to make people mad when they take the survey.

We are fans of under 60 seconds and they are on there way!

If you need one the status bars at the top of the survey to show how much they have completed... you have to many questions.

Transforming the way customers share feedback and how organizations use it!

Customer Satisfaction Survey - Mistake

When it comes to measuring customer satisfaction I'm shocked by how poorly most places do it.  I feel like they had a meeting that said they needed to do a "Customer Satisfaction Survey" so they got a committee together to create it!

Huge mistake!  Research by committee is the poster child for bad things are going to happen.

When you have a number of stake holders involved in the process you lose focus and end up with each person wanting the answer to their key question!  It's a disaster.

If you have been charged with getting customer satisfaction data that is great because at some level you want to improve.

The challenge is doing it intelligently and that means no committee...

Transforming the way customers share feedback and how organizations use it!

Customer Satisfaction Survey

What Customer Satisfaction Survey Was Use For This?

As I got on my second flight yesterday I snapped this picture.  This was on the side of our aircraft.  So Fortune magazine has Delta as on of the worlds most admired companies.

I had a hard time finding my seat I was laughing so hard.

All I could think of was what questions did they ask to reach this conclusion.

This can't have anything to do with customer satisfaction.

Fortune what were you thinking?  Really, Delta is one of the most admired companies in the world?

I can't even guess how they figured this.

Transforming the way customers share feedback and how organizations use it!

Comment Card - Delta Part 2

If you read yesterdays post I was given a card after my Delta flight and they wanted us to take a survey. I had to do it... customer feedback is my passion!

I didn't want my bias to affect the survey so I asked someone else to take it...

Here are the key takeaways...

The comment card had a number of codes and details on it.  The ranged from a serial number to the name of the airline.  The person taking the survey was frustrated by the time all of that was entered.  This is a huge mistake people make with customer feedback.  It's critical to make it easy.

By the time they reached question 12 they said "Are you kidding me?" and stopped taking it.  The question asked you to break down 100% into 9 categories based on how important it was.  It was long and not it went from customer feedback to a math test.

I took over and answered 5 more questions and than just closed it!  I have no idea how many more questions it had.  They had wasted as much of my time as I was comfortable with.

Please learn from these customer feedback mistakes!  Make it brief!  Make it easy!  Make it actionable!

Transforming the way customers share feedback and how organizations use it!