Growing up in a household with parents who were golfers, I was exposed early on to the concept of follow through. In this case it meant following through on the swing after you struck the ball. In the realm of market research, especially customer satisfaction, follow through has an equally important role.
It is all too easy to focus on what is going well. After all that is what feels good. Yet, in marketing especially where the customer is concerned it is those moments of truth where our processes interact with customer expectations that we can learn our greatest lessons. Knowing that a customer has had a poor experience gives us the opportunity to reflect on how we delivered our service. This is where process improvement begins.
I was reminded of this during a recent experience with a hotel chain. There were several interaction points where my expectations were not met and I took the time to share these feelings via their post stay survey.
This raises two key points. First, the surveys we deploy in a service environment must be broad enough to measure satisfaction with the key touchpoints. This aspect could benefit from pre-launch qualitative research designed to make sure all areas where the customer interacts with us are covered in the survey. Second, we need to make sure we respond to both the positive and negative comments and ratings the survey generates.
This can be achieved with triggers that notify key personnel when someone has provided a negative score or a highly positive one as well. In the case of my hotel experience the general manager reached out to me shortly after my survey was submitted asking specifically about those areas of greatest concern. Follow through like this has the capacity to rectify lingering negative feelings and allows the customer to feel like they are being heard.
After all isn’t that what we want.
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Listening Actively
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