I recently posed this question on LinkedIn: Who in your organization receives the results and feedback from your Voice of the Customer program? The conversation it sparked among my peers was enlightening but it was the response from our client that I found to be most valuable for my network.
As the Vice President of Customer Success, our client offered key insight into why sharing customer feedback across the organization is critical for her company’s success. She pointed out that every employee (not just customer-facing) receives a readout from the survey so they can have a direct understanding of what customers value as well as the impact they have on the customer experience. This, she said, has been extremely impactful to the Engineering and Operations teams who don’t regularly interact with customers. Importantly, they feel a sense of pride when they hear how the products they have built have positively impacted their customers.
Why Customer Feedback Matters to Your Organization
Customer feedback gives the most accurate glimpse into what your customers really think about your company, products, and services. And the payoff is huge when customer feedback is socialized with all your internal teams. That’s because it provides an important lens into how and why your customers use your products and services. The effect on service, sales, and non-customer-facing team may all be a bit different, but each team can experience benefits from hearing their impact through the voice of the customer.
Most customer experience professionals understand how important it is to identify your Net Promoter Score and collect feedback, but what you do with customer feedback is the big differentiator.
Why distribute customer feedback to Service?
Sharing customer survey results and verbatim feedback with service teams helps them to understand the impact of how they interact with their customers every day. Positive feedback builds morale and encourages others to follow in the path of the associate who provided an “amazing” service. This can create a sense of community, a friendly competition for the best feedback, or foster an environment where ideas are shared regularly on how to support customers that fall outside of the “norm.”
Negative feedback (consider anonymizing so as not to embarrass anyone) should also be shared to help teams identify gaps in service or support levels, training opportunities, or provide an opportunity to improve efficiencies. All of this is a “win” and at Satrix Solutions we have seen the sharing of information lead to higher retention because of the positive impact that sharing knowledge and recognition has with service teams.
Why distribute customer feedback to Sales?
Sales teams are another group that actively asks for customer stories to share in the field with prospective customers. If your organization is not regularly sharing stories with sales, you’re missing a valuable opportunity. When sales professionals learn how your organization impacts customers directly from your customer’s mouth, it leads to several positive results:
- It builds confidence in the support community and the product or services that you, as an organization, provide.
- It helps sales understand how your product or service truly affects a customer’s day-to-day business or bottom line.
- It also gives sales a chance to relish in the sale that they made and provides recognition of their success.
Beyond sharing success stories, sales should be invited to join client meetings or calls. Alternatively, invite a client panel to share insight during the sales team meetings. Sales will gain a unique perspective, which they can share with prospective customers.
Why distribute customer feedback to non-customer-facing teams?
Here is the wonderful nugget that I mentioned from the start. Our client shared how distributing customer feedback to non-customer-facing teams ensures they have visibility into the customer experience. Replicate her efforts and share customer feedback with your operations teams, engineers, R&D teams, and any other non-customer-facing community.
Why? These are teams that are sometimes a bit removed from direct customer interaction. They don’t often get the opportunity to hear directly from your customers. What happens when you share customer feedback with them? This feedback provides much needed insight into what your customers really appreciate about your product or service and what they need. They get to see, firsthand, the positive results of their hard work. This provides a form of recognition to a group that may not receive as much as they deserve. They can also get a better idea of what worked and what improvements are still needed, which could help drive your roadmap.
Socialize Customer Feedback
What’s the important takeaway from my LinkedIn post? Don’t overlook the critical audiences that should be granted access to customer survey results, feedback, and stories. Share it with your entire organization. Build a sense of ownership of your customer. Let everyone understand the impact their job has on the end customer experience.
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