Customer Care Made Easy

If you're in business, you have to be passionate about your work and the products and services you offer. As enthusiastic as you are about quality and service delivery, however, it is all but impossible for you to really understand the impact on your customers. While you are certain to invest a lot of time and energy in delivering a superior customer experience, you may not be as in touch with customer experience as you might think. Invest the time required to understand your consumers and you can take service delivery to a whole new level.

Customer service is an art form - even a scientific process - that can be measured for success. Esteban Kolsky is a world renowned Customer Strategy Consultant of thinkJar and according to him:

• Only 1 out of 26 displeased customers will take the time to let you know 
• 91% of dissatisfied customers will not return to your business 
• Customer acquisition is on average seven times more expensive than retaining a current customer 

If only 1 out of 26 displeased customers will take the time to let you know that they feel then your products or service is lacking, you must take a proactive approach to gathering timely customer feedback.

While your initial goal in generating feedback is to change the minds of dissatisfied customers, it also allows you to do much more than identify poor customer experience. The benefits of service inquiries are many and will also help you to:

1. Capitalize On Your Strengths — Sometimes you know your strengths but you probably have at least a few unique products or services whose value you underestimate. By identifying a larger range of desirable traits, you can build upon your strength with conviction.
2. Expand Your Product & Service Offerings — As you search for ways to improve, expanding and creating new products and services, your customer feedback should be a driving force behind development. In fact, this feedback is likely to serve as inspiration for at least a few new innovations.
3. Test New Products & Services — When launching or testing new innovations, consumer feedback will prove invaluable in optimising and improving what you have to offer.
   
4. Identify Trends — Consumer experience can be broken down in to multiple categories which will vary from one industry to the next. The service-related data you gather should be analysed and compared across time periods and on an annual basis if possible; maybe even by weekdays and weekends, daytime and evening hours. What you are searching for are trends that can help you address everything from staffing to throughput.

There are multiple means of gathering customer feedback: you can ask for it directly, you can provide handwritten surveys or you can devise a method of documenting volunteered feedback. However, each of these options is difficult to organise and track. An excellent way to track, manage and organise your consumer feedback is with a Hexis Plus app. Each of our surveys can be custom tailored to gather both general and in-depth service feedback. The app allows for anonymous feedback which is ideal for your non-confrontational consumers and the electronic completion provides a quick and convenient method of communication.

Exemplary service should be one of your main aims. If you really want to know what your customers think about your product, services and staff, satisfaction inquiries are a must and our surveys make this process easier than ever!

By Joanne S