Register now or log in to join your professional community.
Customer response assessment involves gathering information from customers and determining which suggestions can be implemented based on the company’s best interests. To improve their services and better meet their customers’ needs, as well as to make vital improvements to their customer service methods, businesses mostly rely on customer information to. This information can be obtained from surveys, questionnaires and customer suggestions/feedbacks.
In the meantime, here are some of the techniques/methods used for customer response assessment.
a) Customer Survey - business use this technique to assess the needs and expectations of their customers. Customer survey includes email surveys, mailed surveys, phone surveys or take-home surveys attached to the customer's receipts after purchasing a product/service. These surveys request information about customer's latest interaction with the business specifically responses formed soon after interacting with a company.
b) Customer Service Questionnaire - it is a brief survey that customers take when they approach a customer service employee with a problem, which could either be short physical surveys, a verbal questionnaire from a customer service employee or a general assessment by the employee about a customer’s problem. This technique includes asking customers about complaints, asking them to take surveys about their shopping experience and asking them to fill out surveys about product problems.
c) Customer Suggestions - this technique offers businesses the opportunity to listen to customer opinions on ways businesses can improve their service and are different from surveys or questionnaires because the information is volunteered. A customer has to choose to fill out a suggestion form, call customer service or approach an employee to voice a concern. Businesses can use this information to determine what products customers may wish to purchase or learn about other services that customers would like to see implemented.
d) Customer Expectation - this technique used by businesses consider every customer response, making sure to avoid changes based on unfair requests. This includes angry customers making unreasonable demands, customer expectations that are too high or suggestions that are not in the best interest of the business. Businesses evaluate these issues by assessing customer expectation, determining if the customer has an expectation for service that is unreasonable or excessive.
e) Sales Level – denotes the actual intentions of buyers, it could indicate how well or bad a product or service is received. Poor sales could indicate negative customer response and vice-versa. However, strong sales doesn't mean satisfied customers as it doesn't tell which aspects of the product or service appeal to customers.
f) Mystery Shopping – this technique is considered to be an effective in monitoring services provided to customers and effective in monitoring staff performance.
Even if they know they can get something done cheaper, faster, or easier with someone else, they will still choose you. You no longer have to join the price wars with your competitors, because there was no contest to begin with. You’ve got their loyalty, but not before you’ve gained their trust.
a) Build TRUST - making sure that you show your customer that you deliver what you promise.
b) Create BONDS - signifies mutual goals and understanding with your customer and that you will work together to achieve them.
c) Empathize with others - stepping into the other person’s shoes before making your statement or decision.
d) Encourage reciprocity - in order to get a lot more than something, you must give away a little something.
In the meantime, allow me to share some ways how I gain the trust of my customers when I was still working as a Sales Executive in the Philippines.
a) Be established - I look like a professional because I'm giving out my business cards to my customers. Customers will think you’ve been around for a while and you will gain trust immediately.
b) Explain yourself - when I provide my customers a quote or proposal, I always make sure and tell them exactly how and why I will do what I do.
c) Bill what you quoted - I bill my customers what I quoted and not a dime more and keep my quality standards.
d) Be on time - I always make sure to be on time, otherwise, I give my customers a window of time when they will expect me to arrive.
e) Call them by name - I always make my customer feel more important when I call them by name as it shows that I care and they aren’t just an avenue for me to get more money.
f) Listen - I need my customers to feel like they can effectively communicate with me without being cut off or ignored.
Hope this answers your question.
Getting customer feedback is very important since it’s a way of knowing what your customers want and getting insights that you can use to improve your business, products and general customer experience. While there are multiple ways to get customer feedback, it is important that you assess and utilize channels where your clients are active, and have a higher chance of responding.
Some marketers give an offering (discount on next purchase, loyalty points, free delivery,) for any feedback a client gives. Mostly this prompts participation and engages the customer. That said, here are some strategies that would be effective within Qatar.
An active live chat support-it’s instant.
Social Media- it’s a quick and nice way of engaging one on one with your customers. Customers will always comment on what they like or don’t like. Some will even offer suggestions and solutions.
Personalized emails with a feedback form- personalization will help you get more responses. I would recommend this approach if you are looking for more detailed feedback that goes beyond the basic survey questions.
Surveys-Although email surveys are encouraged, few months ago my company conducted a manual survey that entailed each media consultant getting feedback from their clients during their meetings/appointments. In my opinion the results were better compared to a previous email survey we had conducted. Again this is greatly influenced by what industry you are in.
Website forum- excellent for feedback and new ideas, most online clothing stores use forums and online community to get feedback. Most customers even share photos wearing/using the items purchased from these sites.
Phone calls-This may be difficult as most people within Qatar lack patience with cold calling, the process may be tedious for respondents, some consumers are hard to access via phone and it may be hard to explain questions without visuals. However, if possible, you can give an aftersales service and use the opportunity to get feedback. Basically be smart.
Mobile Survey- this is very direct and can be distributed via text message. Mobile usage in Qatar is very high hence, it’s almost a guarantee that most of your customer will participate.
Monitoring web activity- Tracking customer activity on your website is a form of customer feedback that can yield some extraordinary insights yet it requires little investment from your customer. Hubspot offers exciting useful tracking features.
At the end of the day,identifying ways that you can use to get useful customer feedback is greatly influenced by what industry you are in.
In my opinion it would be a good practice to keep in touch with customers time to time instead of long feedback, that way customers feel themselves involved and exulted in their feedback while enjoying the services they are using.
Via email , by txting , by social media, by fax, On printed cards where you can fill 5 or 1o questions about the service.
