Plenty of organizations ask for feedback and there are numerous ways to go about it.  Email surveys (post-purchase, pre-purchase, sent randomly), surveys on your website, phone calls with individual customers, calls with groups of customers, or asking questions to customers in-person.  You could also look at sales numbers, customer service tickets, or all customer interactions with your organization (what are they contacting you about and how often are they contacting you?). 

But what’s the point of asking for feedback if you don’t use any of the information?

There is an organization that routinely sends out surveys to its customers asking 20 or so questions.  One of the questions is: what other products would you like to receive information about?  The question literally asks customers which mailing lists they want to be on, if any.  When answering this question, the customer is clearly asking the company to send them stuff.  So, what does this company do?  It does nothing.  It sends them nothing.  Why waste the time asking if you don’t care about the answer?  And why should a customer spend their time answering if you aren’t going to do anything about it?

A similar type of business did the same thing to its customers.  On a survey, there was a box to check to receive more information.  A customer checked it, sent it in, and then received nothing.  The customer called in to the company and was told that they did not send anything out because they were a “green company.”  The customer said, “that’s great, but I’m asking you to send me something, please send me something.”  To this day, the customer has never received anything from them and not surprisingly took their business elsewhere.

Another company did follow up with a customer after a negative review, but their procedure involved forcing the customer to speak directly to the employee who triggered the negative feedback.  A customer should not be put in a position to reprimand an employee for poor service.  Organizations need information regarding gaps in service or product quality, but they should not put customers in awkward situations to get that feedback.  Yes, the business needed to know what happened, but it should have been a department head or store manager who contacted the customer, not the employee in question.

Surveys were all the rage at a different organization.  Senior leadership loved sending them.  But their customers rarely filled them out.  Leadership would pat themselves on the back when they received good reviews, but two customers out of thousands being satisfied with you is not something to write home about.  Why weren’t the other customers responding?  Shouldn’t that be the question?  Shouldn’t the organization work to find out why?  Silence does not equal satisfied.

Another business did try to uncover what its customers wanted from them, but with each repeated survey, it became apparent that they didn’t like the answers that they were receiving.  They must have thought that if they kept asking, that maybe their customers would begin to answer in the way that the organization wanted them to.  Customers shouldn’t give you answers that make you happy, they should be giving you honest answers.  Like the previous example, surveys aren’t meant to be ego boosts.  If you are using them that way, then you are doing it wrong.  Feedback can be the greatest gift that your customers give to you.  It tells you what needs attention.

Now, it’s not necessary to act on every comment or suggestion that a customer gives you.  An organization does need to read between the lines.  One bad experience for a customer may just be one bad experience.  But it may not be.  It may be a sign of some larger problem.  How do you know which it is?  By keeping track. 

If it is a large enough problem, chances are, others are complaining about it too.  Two different tech companies didn’t see the need to track customer service issues.  One of the founders believed that the product was so good, that the business didn’t need to keep track of what issues their customers were having because they were having so few of them.  Well, it may be true that there aren’t many customer issues, but do you know what your customers want from your business?  How can you claim to know if you never have contact with them?  Your organization needs to have some contact with its customers otherwise they will have no trouble leaving for the first competitor that appears.  The other tech company did have customer service issues but had employees that just didn’t see the value in documenting these types of things.  This organization suffered from poor hiring decisions more than anything.  Employees make a business work, but customers pay the bills.

If customers tell you what is wrong and you don’t do anything about it, then they will stop providing you with feedback because why would they waste their time?  So, you will be asking, but not getting answers.  And you’re not getting answers not because you’re doing so well, but because your customers have given up on you.  They realize that nothing is going to change, so instead of spending time answering your surveys, they will use that time to find a replacement for you.

Don’t think silence means you’re doing a good job.  Silence means that they no longer care.  And when someone doesn’t care, it isn’t long before they walk away.  Don’t push your customers away, they may not come back.