Feedback is essential for any account manager who wants to retain and grow their key accounts. But how do you solicit and act on feedback from your clients effectively and efficiently? In this article, we will share some best practices and tips to help you get the most out of your feedback process.
Before you ask for feedback, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with it. Do you want to measure customer satisfaction, identify pain points, discover new opportunities, or validate your value proposition? Depending on your goals, you will need to craft different types of questions and use different methods of collecting feedback. For example, you might use surveys, interviews, focus groups, or online reviews.
The timing and frequency of your feedback requests can have a significant impact on the response rate and quality of the feedback. You don't want to annoy your clients by asking too often or at inconvenient times, but you also don't want to miss important insights by asking too late or too rarely. A good rule of thumb is to align your feedback requests with the key milestones and events in your account lifecycle, such as onboarding, renewal, upsell, or issue resolution. You can also use triggers, such as changes in usage, satisfaction, or behavior, to prompt feedback.
Not all feedback is created equal. Some feedback sources are more relevant, reliable, and influential than others. Therefore, you need to segment and prioritize your feedback sources according to their importance and impact on your account strategy. For example, you might segment your feedback sources by decision-makers, influencers, users, and advocates. You might also prioritize your feedback sources by account size, potential, or risk. By doing so, you can focus your efforts and resources on the most valuable feedback.
The quality of your feedback depends largely on the quality of your questions and your listening skills. You want to ask questions that are specific, relevant, open-ended, and actionable. You also want to avoid leading, biased, or vague questions that might skew or limit the feedback. Moreover, you want to listen actively and attentively to your feedback sources, without interrupting, judging, or defending yourself. You want to show empathy, curiosity, and appreciation for their feedback.
Once you have collected your feedback, you need to analyze and synthesize it to extract meaningful insights and actionable recommendations. You can use various tools and techniques to organize, visualize, and interpret your feedback data, such as spreadsheets, charts, graphs, or dashboards. You can also use qualitative and quantitative methods to identify patterns, trends, gaps, or anomalies in your feedback. The goal is to find out what your clients like, dislike, need, or expect from you.
The last and most important step is to act on your feedback and follow up with your clients. You need to communicate your feedback findings and actions to your clients and show them how you are using their feedback to improve your service, value, or relationship. You also need to monitor and measure the impact of your actions on your account performance and satisfaction. And you need to thank your clients for their feedback and ask for their feedback again in the future.
I have found that customers who act on a request for feedback typically fall into two categories: they love you/ your products/ services and are happy to provide that positive feedback, or they have problems and welcome the opportunity to provide you with the details. While asking for feedback can "open a can of worms", this information is gold.
By soliciting feedback, you can gain valuable insights into how to improve not only products and services, but also your own sales approach and how you ensure that you're meeting your customers needs. Everyone wants to feel heard, so by requesting feedback, you provide that opportunity - and when you can actively work to find solutions to your customers' problems, you are building relationships, and that not just maintains the account, it builds sales!