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Should You Be Dialed-in to After Call Surveys?

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Customer Services RepresentativeIf you have ever been asked to provide your opinion or give feedback after you complete a call, you have just been involved in an after-call survey.

You may wonder if these surveys provide any value to the business, especially if you were one who elected not to participate.

Do they have any value in today’s business world? If so, what do you need to know to make them effective?

Know What You Want to Learn

There should be a reason for everything you do in business, and after-call surveys are no exception.

You should know what information you want to find out, how you will learn this information and what you will do with it. If you do not have answers to all of these questions, you don’t need to take a survey.

Creating a goal doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, for these surveys, you should keep it simple.

Learn which call agents receive the best marks in customer satisfaction. Find out what percentage of customers have their problems answered when they call.

Keep your goals to one or two points to ensure that you get the information you are looking for.

Know What to Ask

Even if you know what you want to find out in these surveys, you won’t get the information if you don’t ask the right questions.

Make sure the questions are straightforward with enough options for the customer to answer accurately, but don’t overwhelm the person.

You cannot get feedback for complicated issues in this manner; keep your expectations simple and your questions easy to answer. You will use these surveys to gauge perception about general topics.

This may include finding out if the customer had a long wait time, if his or her questions were answered and if he or she was treated courteously.

Know How You Will Use the Data

Customers don’t mind filling out surveys or answering questions if they know their answers make a difference. They want to see that you make changes in your business based on the information they provide.

You should know before starting a survey what actions you will take with the results.

Obviously, if everything comes back positive, you won’t need to make changes. If you have less than desirable results, you should have a plan of what you will change.

As the article, “After Call Surveys: Are They Really Effective?” mentions, you should have a plan to follow up on any negative feedback.

You may even want to implement a mailed survey or contact specific customers if the reaction is strong enough.

The goal of any survey should be to make your business stronger, better and to improve customer satisfaction. When you accumulate information directly from the customer, this is your best weapon to improving your services or product.

Take your survey results seriously and they will be a valuable tool to help ensure that you retain customer loyalty so that your business thrives.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

About the Author: Joyce Morse is an author who writes on a variety of topics, including customer service and technology.

How to use online reviews to boost your business

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By Diana Gomez

For small businesses, the world of online reviews can be a scary place – and that’s understandable.

I have friends who cringe as they open their company’s Yelp page, afraid of any negativity they’ll have to face regarding their beloved business. However, what you’ll often find is more compliments than you expected, plus you’ll discover ways to make the reviews help and grow your business.

So you see, reviews can be good for you, no matter how bad they are.

feedback notebook

Here’s what you can take from your online reviews: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Reviews can:

Provide Credibility

People trust reviews. In fact, an online, unbiased review is more trustworthy than a personal recommendation. And believe it or not, readers are often more trusting of a place with both negative and positive reviews rather than one-sided views.

Create Awareness

Building customer awareness is a great advantage of online reviews. At no cost, sites like Yelp and Google Places let customers brag about you to the world. It’s also a platform for current customers to engage with one another with suggestions that could lead to more product purchases.

Give Free Feedback

Occasionally, you’ll have to face the fact that no one, even your business, is perfect. It may be your favorite employee who has caused a customer to take to Yelp and unleash a tirade about their bad experience. But look at it this way: rather than having secret shoppers rate their experience to you, you’ve got regular people doing this – for free. Say two customers in a day complained about a restaurant hostess and her bad attitude. You can make that right. Same goes for any complaint.

Benefit Buying Choices

Knowing what is really working for your business can help navigate you in the market. A negative comment can help tell you what people don’t love as much, just as a positive review can tell you what people want more of.

Improve SEO

If content is king in today’s online world, then reviews should be welcomed by businesses. Google does take reviews into account when ranking, so whether they’re positive or negative, they’re doing you good in the search engines’ eyes. Merely showing that people are actively engaging in your business is proof enough that you’re relevant, and this can only help your ranking.

What should you do if the reviews are negative?

Take care of business – and fast.

Immediately address it online. Ignoring customers’ comments makes it look like you just don’t care. And letting the situation sit and simmer doesn’t help matters either. Address it as quickly as possible for the best possible outcome, and show that you and your company are considerate and well-mannered. Showing that you’re classy will raise people’s opinion of you, which can only be good for the business in the end.

Apologize.

Apologize for their bad experience, and assure them that you’re addressing it appropriately. If it’s super negative with a ton of details, try sending a private message as well. This adds an extra personal touch. Request that they try your product or services again, and once they do, ask if they’ll remove or update the review to reflect their latest, and hopefully positive, experience. If the situation can’t be resolved, be sure to publicly comment on all the steps you followed to address the issue and ensure it won’t happen again.

Fix it.

Don’t just say you’ll remedy it – do it! It’s one thing to get a couple of bad comments on one employee in one day (bad day?), but if a mountain of negativity piles up regarding one person or one particular product, you’ve got some work to do. A large amount of customers can’t be wrong. In this situation, you can actually thank the complainer for helping you maintain a business that satisfies.

Solicit good reviews.

Though a negative review can be beneficial, it can do much harm if it’s your only review. That’s why you have to do your part in gathering good ones by asking your best customers to review you. And yes, that one negative comment will then look far more credible than a business with nothing but rave reviews.

What if the reviews are positive?

Say thanks.

Of course positive reviews can help you out tremendously. Thank the person who’s taken the time to compliment you. Then use their comments to your advantage. Reviews can confirm what you’re doing right and help you look at say, menu items that no one seems to mention at all.

What negative review, in-house or online, helped your business recently? Please share your experiences in the comments!

Author’s Bio: Diana Gomez is the Marketing Coordinator at Lyoness America, where she is instrumental in the implementation of content marketing strategies for USA and Canada. Lyoness is an international shopping community and loyalty rewards program, where businesses and consumers benefit with free membership and money back with every purchase.

Good, Better or Best?

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By Lisa D. Jenkins

How do you invite customer feedback on the products or service you offer?

Whether it’s through an online form, a digital survey or a personal conversation, the way you frame the request for feedback can affect the way your customer answers you — and the quality of the feedback you receive.

A story about food … and feedback.

cold cocktail glass

It’s no secret I’m a foodie. I’m always on the lookout for new experiences with food and drink, so when I noticed a relatively new restaurant had opened up near my neighborhood, I was all in. I’ve been there several times to try out different brunch and lunch items.

The unique menu isn’t overly large because the owner/chef makes it a point to prepare everything from local sources. The ketchup is made in-house, the coffee is roasted just four doors down from restaurant and the staff is genuinely interested in whether or not we’ve enjoyed our meal.

The servers are attentive but not in a hovering way. They take our order, serve our meals, then disappear for a couple of minutes. I’m not sure how they time it but they return after everyone has had at least two bites of their meal to ask, “Is everything delicious?”

Not “Is everything tasting okay?” or “How is everything?” or “Is there anything else I can bring you?”

They ask if everything is delicious.

And they wait for an honest reply from everyone.

If something isn’t delicious, polite but pointed questions are asked so the server can get to the heart of the issue as quickly as possible. What kept this dish from being perfect? Was it temperature, spice, or texture? Too savory or too sweet? What isn’t working?

Over the past months I’ve seen a couple of item descriptions change ever so slightly. I’ve also seen a few items disappear.

Because I’m friendly with the staff, I know this is due to customer feedback. If an item isn’t received as delicious 90% of the time, it’s adjusted according to the feedback servers get or it’s removed entirely. As a customer, I feel incredibly valued.

In this way, the restaurant has been able to stay true to its mission and vision while providing a better experience for the diners who ultimately keep the doors open.

It’s simple and brilliant.

Which brings me to the point.

When you ask for feedback, do want customers to help you be good at serving your market, or to be the best at serving your market?

Author’s Bio: Lisa D. Jenkins is a Public Relations professional specializing in Social and Digital Communications for businesses. She has over a decade of experience and work most often with destination organizations or businesses in the travel and tourism industry in the Pacific Northwest. Connect with her on Google+

Simple Sentiment Analysis for Small Business

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Stop reading this post right now if you’re rolling in cash, have a team of more than 10 people involved in your marketing efforts, or if your social media headquarters looks anything like this:

Social listening command center

OK, now that those lucky folks are gone, let’s talk reality for most of us.

Are you relying solely on Google Alerts to find out what your customers are talking about? Maybe you took it one step further and set up a Hootsuite column to track Twitter mentions. What are you doing with that information as it accumulates?

Welcome to the club.

But we can all take it up several notches this week, by implementing a few simple routines.

Step One – Start Proactively Listening

Use the free tools at your disposal and start seeking out mentions of your brand, your company, and your industry. Both Topsy and Social Mention are great options, and will cover Google+ and Twitter, as well as blogs. I do this task weekly, gathering the resulting information into a spreadsheet.

What’s that you say? No-one’s talking about you? Not to worry.

Turn the tables, and evaluate sentiment about your big brand competitors. Find larger companies that are in your industry and see what people are saying about them. Is it positive or negative? You might uncover a great business opportunity, or a competitor weakness by doing this. Bonus: you might discover topic ideas for your blog!

Step Two – Self-Exams Are Useful Too

Particularly if you don’t have a lot of external social discussion going on yet (maybe you just launched, or you haven’t gotten traction yet), evaluate the contents of your email feedback or support questions. Analyze whether the questions and reactions you’re getting from your own customers are positive or negative. Talk to your colleagues and collect some anecdotal evidence if you don’t have a formal online feedback tool.

Step Three – Act on the Data

Now that you have some indicators of sentiment, get further value out of the exercise by engaging with those who mentioned you. For example, if Topsy revealed a Tweet that gave you a shout-out, you might reply to that person with a thanks. If you found that a certain person has been promoting your content consistently, you might want to reach out and look for some of their content that you can promote.

On the flip side, if you find someone who is unhappy with your services or who has mentioned your company in a negative light, evaluate whether you can address the issue and turn them around. This is one of the strong suits of social media—the ability to capture those negative reviews and the opportunity to respond to them.

Are you doing any sentiment analysis right now? How might you add this data to your marketing tool kit?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Turning Customers Into Advocates

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John Caplan, founder and CEO of OpenSky.com, shares his tips on how leveraging the web’s social tools to build a community around your brand and engage directly with shoppers can grow your business.  

As an entrepreneur, I know how important it is to build a community of people around your business.  As a business owner who is passionate about growing emerging businesses, getting your business online to leverage distribution and build relationships is an essential tool. 
 
At OpenSky, we strive to empower emerging brands to grow their businesses by engaging consumers.  We make sure to communicate and constantly listen to the concerns, questions and feedback from our merchants and our members, which helps us build a platform that works for people we serve.
 
Leveraging the web’s social tools to build a community around your brand by engaging and communicating directly with your shoppers can grow your business.  Here are some ways to help you achieve this.
 

1. Social media makes it easier than ever to connect directly to customers.

Establish your brand on social channels – Facebook, OpenSky, Twitter, Pinterest — where you can have active, real-time conversations.  It’s not only a great way to share updates but often times, it’s that real time feedback from customers that can help you resolve a problem before it impacts a huge number of people.  This will serve as an effective way to give people a great experience because then they share it with their friends and their friends share it with friends and so on.  There is nothing more effective for marketing than a truly happy customer.
 

2. It’s essential to listen to customer feedback on social outlets and respond right away.

  However, as it important as it is, make sure that isn’t the only way you’re getting direct feedback from customers about how you’re doing.  Ask for it anytime an opportunity arises.  From packing slips, to invoices, customer surveys and emails – there are numerous opportunities to ask your customers for feedback and offer a place where they can provide it.
 

3. In addition to blogs and social networks, invite members of your community from customers to partners and vendors into your offices, stores or workshops.

  Whether it’s for a party, focus group, or to demo a new product – creating the face-to-face connection can be invaluable for creating brand loyalty.
 

4. One of the most difficult and stressful elements of growing a business is expanding your products or services. 

Adding a new feature or service can strain your core business and potentially alienate existing customers, especially in the beginning. Open the lines of communication and bring your community into your growth strategy by talking to them during the process.  Working with your core customers early on to help them understand new products and services will keep you on the right track, provide valuable insight and make your loyal customers more forgiving of any mishaps in the road to success.

Author’s Bio: John Caplan is the Founder and CEO of OpenSky, the social network for shopping where members shop with their friends for unique, artisanal finds. Prior to OpenSky, John was the CEO of Ford Models. In five years, he rebuilt the agency, tripling its size and value while expanding it to include Ford’s artist divisions and digital media business. During the late 1990s, John served first, as CMO of About.com leading the brands growth and later as President of the About Network before selling the company to Primedia in 2001 for $500+ million. Caplan has made numerous appearances as a business expert on television shows including CNBC, MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, Reuters TV, TODAY Show, WNBC-TV and many others.