During the week of love and romance, have your customers and employees become “lovelier?”
Last month everyone but the most diehard cynic was thinking about love! At Fizzback, we wondered what impact this had on consumers and whether it changed the feedback they gave during the week – and in a victory for romance and amour, it did!
Analysis across US and UK retail clients found that overall satisfaction ratings increased for more than 80% of our clients. On average, retailers have increased their scores by 2.9 base points; this is a 3.8% improvement.
In order to see whether this was a specific Valentine’s trend or just part of a general week on week Fizzback-fuelled improvement in service (our personal love affair) we took a deeper look and analysed those customer comments that specifically mentioned Valentine’s Day. In these cases satisfaction increased by a ‘lovely’ 4.5 base points! This is a 6% increase showing that shoppers with love on their minds were generally better disposed towards the retailers they chose to spend their money with.
What’s more, where customers mentioned Valentines, they also commented on staff friendliness and gave higher satisfaction ratings than normal – showing how customer friendly events can increase engagement between staff and customers and improve customer service.
So, what does this mean for your business?
The key point of interest here is that your customer’s satisfaction with the service you give them is often influenced by events happening in the outside world; which are almost always outside of your control. So, what can businesses do to anticipate their customer’s moods and make the most of them?
Fizzback has put together some suggestions based on our extensive experience advising clients on the best way to engage with customers:
Do’s
Be proactive. Ask customers for their comments and suggestions, rather than waiting for them to come to you. Our research indicates that a significant proportion of consumers look more favourably on companies as a result of being asked to give their opinion even if they don’t respond to the request.
Dont’s
Make it difficult. Consumers will not usually go out of their way to pass on positive comments or suggestions. If it is difficult or inconvenient for them to give you their feedback (e.g. your process requires them to call customer services or write to Head Office) it is likely that you will only receive complaints and negative comments. The good feedback will be lost, and this may skew your perception of your performance.
Establish dialogue. Ask supplementary questions to get to the root cause of potential issues. You can do this by asking follow up questions when you receive customer feedback on a specific issue. If a customer refers to staff attitude, what type of attitude is he/she referring to? Were your staff friendly? Were they helpful? Did they take ownership of the problem? All of these qualities are important, but you need to build a detailed view of the strengths and weaknesses in your organisation in order to drive lasting improvements.
Make assumptions about what your customers care about. It’s easy (and often tempting) to form a view of the specific business issues you are facing and then structure the feedback questions you ask customers with these issues in mind. Although this may seem like a more efficient way to gather information, it is in fact a false economy. The most reliable source of insight on what is important to your customers is your customers themselves. It is vital to approach the process of gathering feedback with an open mind and give your customers the opportunity to tell you what’s really on their minds.
Collect robust data. There are numerous methods of gathering customer data, but in our experience the magic word is ‘representative’. In any organisation, there will be a certain proportion of customers more predisposed to give feedback than others. The real art to gathering robust data is ensuring that what you collect accurately reflects the views of the majority of customers who don’t respond to your market research. This is why Fizzback recommends reaching out to all your customers rather than just a sample.
Collect low volumes or poor quality data. Remember: Poor data is worse than no data, as it can lead you on the wrong direction! When times are hard, budgets for insight and customer research may look like an easy target. But in the long run, our most successful clients are the ones who consistently invest in listening to their customers and acting on the insights they provid
Be aware of context. Customer feedback is subjective and depends on a number of variables such as the stage in the customer life cycle, your type of customer, age, gender, the time of day they answer your survey, the weather, the region they live in or come from, the macro-economic context, and many other aspects. You need to understand the context of your survey results in order to derive accurate insights from your data. Fizzback recommends an ‘always on’ approach to customer feedback for precisely this reason. Let your customers decide when to provide feedback and allow them to respond to questions on their own words as much as possible. This will make it much easier to get to pick up variations in your customer’s attitude and identify any contextual factors you may have otherwise missed.
Assume that your customer’s perceptions stay the same between feedback cycles.
Consumers opinions about your company can and do change with the weather (often, quite literally)! Whenever you ask them for feedback you are only ever capturing a snapshot of your customer’s opinion in that moment of time; so if you only ask for feedback once a month, think of how much insight you could be missing!
