According to this B2B Marketing customer feedback article: “Not winning a client does NOT equal losing a client. Losing a client is flat-out severing a relationship. Not winning is being in the running but just not the winner. To retain the new client connection, keep in touch with them; after all, they just provided your team with valuable information, do not let that relationship go astray.” Can you hear the voice of the customer?
In other words, if you lose a client there are often multiple points of opportunity to keep your relationship beforehand, rather than resting on your laurels when you’ve completed the deal or delivered your product or service. And if you do lose a client it is hard to win back that faith.
How to approach customer feedback tactics
It is vital to keep the lines of communication open – and these have to be multi-channel in order to engage with your customers in their preferred way.
Think about both passive and active forms of gaining customer feedback, so that you are prepared to react as much as you are planning to request views and opinions at certain points.
Consider delineating the products and services within the entire customer experience so that you can have actionable insight (from separate questions) into certain areas of your business that may benefit from constructive feedback. This can start with your website usability to understand how your prospects find you, how easy it is to make contact or order from you.
All these customer touch points can be turned into triggers where you are asking them “how did we do?”
Asking to hear the voice of the customer
So in addition to having a customer service team using phone, web chat, social media and email for both inbound and outbound support resolutions; you need to put in place proactive points in the customer journey to encourage communication.
Because a customer is “touched” by multiple teams within the company (ie marketing, sales and customer service), request for feedback is often led by one team with a set of tools for that purpose and so is confined to one part of the journey; i.e. “how did the product meet your needs?”, “did the delivery arrive on time?”. By overlaying the tactics across the experience to tie in with all touchpoints regardless of team, the customer’s view is more rounded and as a business you are more likely to receive more relevant feedback.
So how can you perfect your feedback requests?
In this “Are you really listening to your customers” blog, Ian Golding shares some top tips when constructing customer surveys (in addition to the point of having a real conversation rather than solely relying on surveys):
- Keep it short
- Use branching and logic
- Use appropriate language
- Ask open-ended questions
- Close the loop
Help is at hand with Voice of the Customer for Microsoft Dynamics 365
Because Microsoft Dynamics is an integrated business solution that spans multiple teams, the use of “Voice of the Customer” survey functionality can work with the customer without ever leaving Dynamics CRM and losing productivity by switching between tools. Respondents can take your branded, personalised surveys on a phone, tablet, or computer. You can see your customer’s feedback history as you work a sale or resolve a service case.
When a customer completes a survey, you can use rules to trigger follow-up actions that occur immediately. For example, if a customer answers a survey question that indicates an interest in one of your products, the system can generate a quote request and assign it to a salesperson. Or, if a customer replies with a complaint, the system can create a new service case and route it to the right queue for prompt handling. You can also send a survey automatically when a service case closes, to track how satisfied your customer is with the service they received.
The survey analytics included with the Voice of the Customer for Microsoft Dynamics 365 solution help you use customer feedback to identify gaps in service, run targeted marketing campaigns, or send offers to increase sales.
For more information, watch the video, visit our website register for the webinar, and contact Prodware about integrating your customer feedback tactics into your holistic approach to improve client retention.
Watch a Microsoft Dynamics Voice of the Customer video
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