A Change in Customer Feedback

I was going to simply write this as a post but I just know I'm going to go in to too much detail for that, so here's my article on a change we have made in getting customer feedback.

For over 7 years now PPSPower have been using one of the market leaders in online surveys to receive, analyse and react to customer feedback. This has been going ok and we have been extremely grateful for the responses we have received over the years. I have always personally stayed very close to this feedback and ensured that all comments were fed back to the teams and discussed with clients where appropriate.

However, I felt, the response rate compared to the amount of work we carried out daily was way too low. Over the years the response rate was less than the number of jobs we complete every month. I get it, we all get asked for feedback via email for pretty much every product or service we buy nowadays. I know I very rarely take the time to respond, even if I was left delighted.

The results we received over the years were great, best shown in the responses collated to the question 'Would you recommend PPSPower to a friend?'. Although the next question, which asked for the details of that friend, was often skipped!

So, whilst it is always lovely to get glowing feedback I'm keen to hear more from our clients and I really need to hear when it doesn't go well. That is where the true opportunities for improvement lie.

So we've made a change and although I'm only a few weeks in to the new way of collecting this feedback I felt compelled to shout about it. I can assure I have no vested interest in their success but I have been impressed with the system and back office support so far.

The opportunity to look at this system came about as we have been a long term customer of Exclaimer (an email signature agent that controls our Outlook communications via cloud based signatures). The add-on for this cloud based system is called Customer Thermometer. With this installed and set up it places smiley faces (or icons as we have done) for clients to give us feedback via one simple click. This is similar to what you will have seen when you walk out a retail establishment and you slap you hand on the smiley face button as you leave. So straight away by easing the way in which we look for feedback the response rate has rocketed.

I'm just getting used to the added benefits but I now get an email immediately after anyone says we are 'Excellent' but more importantly if anyone selects the 'Poor' option. This now means that I can jump on dissatisfaction at the point in which it was felt. To date no one has selected this but I'm really looking forward to the moment when someone does, so that we can demonstrate that we jump straight on the case and deal with whatever has happened proactively. I'm a big believer that it is in the moments, when a customer is unhappy, that we can really cement the relationship and show who we are and how much we care.

In addition to this I now have league tables for individuals and departments, as it knows who's email signature has been clicked when giving the feedback. Like I have said it is early days. But I felt the need to communicate my excitement and demonstrate how seriously we still take customer service, even after we have been told for years that we are doing great.

One of our key values as an organisation is to deliver a service that surpasses expectations and this is proving to be great tool to enable us to do so.

Please do feel free to connect with me directly if you have any questions or indeed would like to experience the level of service PPSPower deliver.