3 Ways to Gain Feedback to Improve the Customer Experience

In a recent article, Nancy Selby informs us that customer experience is so important for companies that it will become the number one differentiator for customers within the next five years. People want a great experience, and a major part of that experience is based on contact center performance. Selby provides sixteen tips for how contact centers can improve their customer experience:

1. Know your audience
2. Understand what an ideal customer experience means to your customers
3. Utilize an omni-channel approach
4. Provide preemptive support
5. Listen to customers, not just market analysis reports

Selby’s article goes on to list the remaining sixteen tips and elaborates on each one in her article. To read more about these tips to improve your contact center to provide a high-quality customer experience, please click the link below:

16 Surefire Tips to Improve Your Contact Center Customer Experience – Nancy Seby

3 Ways to Gain Feedback to Improve the Customer Experience

Do you assume you know your customers without seeking their input? Many companies do this, so don’t feel too bad if you can count yourselves as one of them. Selby’s article provides many tips to improve the customer experience, but her fifth piece of advice is possibly the most important: Listen to your customers! Many people in leadership positions plan their customer journey programs based on assumptions from “common sense” and “experience”. The big issue with this? Everyone is different and common sense and experience are not objective measurements to gauge how well you know your customers. The most valuable insights to help you improve your service will come from the people; Listen to your customers! The following are three ways to gain valuable customer feedback to help improve the customer experience:

1. Surveys: This classic approach still works when the questions are specific without being too numerous. Surveys can be given to customers immediately after they make a purchase from your website, emailed to your customers, or taken from outbound or inbound call center agents.
2. Focus Groups: This is a more intimate approach that welcomes your customers into your company. If the company creates a welcoming environment, focus groups help customers feel like they’re contributing to your success and that their opinions matter to your company.
3. Asking Agents: In addition to gathering customer opinion by asking them, companies can also get the voice of the customer from the people who work directly with them every day: call center agents. The employees trained to solve customer issues and serve as the voice of your brand interact with thousands of customers each day, so they know exactly what the customers think of you. Good, bad, and everything in between, your call center agents have heard your customers’ opinions in their purest form. While customers may respond to surveys and focus groups in a calm and theoretical state of mind, they’re much more likely to be brutally honest with call center agents. Asking your agents for the pulse of the customer allows you to know the gritty details so you can address the real issues and make legitimate improvements in the customer journey.

These three options are only a few ways you can gather customer feedback. There are many options available and companies should research and implement the ones that best suit their company’s capabilities. However, avoiding gaining customer feedback all together in favor of going with your instincts can bear detrimental results. The best source for how you can improve your customer experience program comes from the customers themselves.