Customer Feedback: Show Your Company Listens
Jackie Huba, of Church of the Customer, and author of Creating Customer Evangelists
Please watch as Jackie describes what happened:
Summary of the Video:
Jackie buys goat milk from Whole Foods, and the milk needs to be shaken each time before use. However, when she shakes it the milk flies all over the place because the carton lacks a tight seal. The next time she visits Whole Foods she notices the milk carton has a cap, and has text right near it stating “Customer Requested”.
The company could have just added the cap and left off the “customer requested” label, but they are showing that they listen to their customers AND expressing that it made a difference, and that’s a great PR victory for that company.
The time and place of that label is also important. The company put it near the actual changed area (the cap), and a customer sees it at the right time to make the decision to buy. I’ve discussed the importance of delivering the right message at the right time in the past.
The Lesson:
Next time your company institutes changes to a product or service, based on feedback, think about how you can show your customers that you listened AND make it clear that it was a direct result of their feedback. This is sure to encourage future feedback from your customers, further improving your product.
Did you have a similar experience where a company let you know it changed a policy, product, or service because of customer feedback? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.
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January 21st, 2009 at 8:56 am
Hi there~
I loved your video blog post. Very cool! I especially love your example! Great work!
Kathy,
Welcome to my blog, and thank you for your kind comments!
January 21st, 2009 at 10:35 am
Good post! Unfortunately, even these days, not all companies care about managing their online and offline reputation, when a single negative review from a disgruntled customer leaked onto the web can start a riot in the blogging world.
January 25th, 2009 at 9:41 am
I notice a lot of blogs changing to adapt to their readers and them talking about it through a post. Most brick and mortar companies aren’t as willing to change for their customer because it’s hard. I think your example is a great way to announce to the world that a company does listen and we will keep listening.
@Karl: Great input. I think the whole web culture spurs more of a “we serve the people” feeling among online companies because they know their customers can go to a competitor in just a click, whereas in person you have to physically get to a competitor.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
This is a great blog post. And the topic certainly rings true for our company as well as for the businesses that we work with.
Because of what our company does (i.e. provides customer and employee feedback management solutions), we spend a lot of time talking to customers about their voice of the customer programs and the many ways in which they use customer feedback.
Throughout the course of these conversations, we’ve heard a lot of great examples of how companies are using customer feedback and our feedback management solutions not only to show their customers that they’re listening, but to also let their customers know when and the various ways in which their feedback has resulted in change.
For example, I spoke with a company a few days ago that is using our solution to actively solicit and gather feedback from their customers on items such as the company’s technical support, pricing, service center, training, product, billing, sales, etc.
Once the company gets all of this feedback, it then use this information to make internal strategic decisions. And, whenever the company does implement a customer’s suggestion, it use our system to let the customer who made the suggestion know that their suggestion was implemented (as all of that data–who made the suggestion/provided feedback, when they made it, and what their suggestion was, etc., is trackable in our system).
Since most people/customers expect to send feedback and never hear anything back from a company, the company that I spoke with said that the fact that they do get back to people creates a positive and lasting impression with their customers–and has made a big difference to their company, as well as increased the amount of feedback that they get.
As our customer put it, people are so blown away when they find out that they submitted a suggestion to the company and that the company took it to heart and implemented it, and then let the person who made the suggestion know about it, that they almost don’t know what to say.
I mention this mainly because it is a terrific example of how some companies are actively listening to their customers, taking their customers’ suggestions, compliments, complaints, etc. to heart, and using that information to improve their products and services. And, as a result of doing this, those businesses are simultaneously increasing their customer loyalty and satisfaction, and deepening the relationship that they have with their customers.
It’s definitely the wave of the future.