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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.

Asking For Feedback From Clients: How and Why It’s Vital

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By Jennifer Escalona Dunn

Every business owner likes to think that his or her business is great and is operating at 100% efficiency. If your clients haven’t complained and your bank account is fine it’s easy to pretend that nothing is wrong. However, you could be setting yourself up for huge problems down the line if you maintain this illusion.

Undoubtedly, one or more of your clients has something to say about the services you’re providing. Whether or not they’ve told you personally is irrelevant; sometimes people don’t like to upset the apple cart and won’t tell you what you think…unless you ask!

Why Feedback is Important

This isn’t to say that your business is falling apart at the seams. It’s only natural that a problem might crop up from time to time.

However, one problem that occurs all the time may end up harming your business in the long run. Wouldn’t it be terrible if some little thing you could have easily taken care of irreparably damaged the work you’ve done over the years?

It may seem like you’re tempting fate by bringing these issues up in the first place. After all, if you’re asking about the problems people have, doesn’t this give them a chance to focus on what’s wrong?

This may be true, but you want these problems coming up when you can control them rather than out of the blue. If your problem is being late with assignments, one or two won’t kill you – a whole year of it, though, certainly won’t help your bottom line.

How to Get Feedback

Feedback is pretty important to the long-term health of your business, but how do you go about getting it? Is it as simple as just asking each client or should you use other methods?

Ideally you want as wide a sample as possible. As stated before, some clients may not be very receptive to freely giving out their opinions. Their ideas are still valid, though, so you need to provide an avenue for these people as well.

One idea is to make an anonymous survey on Facebook or a service like SurveyMonkey. This way all clients can provide their opinions without fear of backlash from you. Not that you would yell at them, but some may have trouble getting over their hesitation. Of course you can always email clients individually. In the email you can provide a link to the survey or they can just reply to your message.

One helpful tip is to have specific questions in mind. If you have concerns about your timeliness, for example, ask questions about this. Focusing your efforts can yield better results as it concentrates clients’ energy on that issue rather than fumbling around trying to figure out what might be wrong with your business.

Also remember: not every piece of advice you get is going to make perfect sense. In fact, you may receive flat out terrible advice from clients. Don’t immediately discount it, though. Try to figure out what they’re really saying and get to the root of the problem. It may end up helping you in the long run.

Have you ever received negative feedback from clients? Were you surprised? How did you rectify the situation?

Author’s Bio: Jennifer Escalona Dunn is the owner of Social Street Media where she writes about small business, tech and finance for sites like WePay and Outright. You can find her on Twitter @jennescalona.