The Sound Of Silence: How Companies Lose Trust By Ignoring Customer Feedback

For all those companies that don’t acknowledge customers when they share feedback—good or bad—this article is for you.

There’s a business that considers me a good customer. I enjoy doing business with this company, and usually, 90% of the time or more, the experience is excellent. However, every once in a while, they trip, and the experience isn’t up to their usual standards.

The company sends a satisfaction survey about three times a year asking about my most recent experience. As I said, they are great about 90% of the time. I always joke with my friends and family that they never send me a survey after a bad experience. But the last time they did.

By the way, I like their surveys. They are short. Typically, there is one numerical question and one open-ended question. They are collecting quantitative and qualitative data. The first question was: On a scale of 1-10 (with one being not likely and 10 being very likely), how likely would you be to do business with us again based on your most recent experience? I gave them a four.

The next question was simple: Why?

And this was my response:

I love you guys. Usually, the experience is great, but this time, you made several mistakes. Of course, I’ll continue to do business with you again, but if I were a first-time customer, most likely I’d be looking for someone else who could do better. Here’s what happened. (And I shared the details of the issues and what happened to warrant the low score.)

There was a final question that I don’t consider as part of the official survey, which was: Is it okay if we follow up with you?

They then asked for my contact information. Of course, my answer was, “Yes,” and I shared my email address and phone number.

So, how quickly do you think they responded? I’ll give you choices as if this were a survey:

A. Within an hour.

B. Within 24 hours.

C. Within 72 hours.

D. Within a week.

E. Within a month.

F. Never.

And the correct answer is … Never!

Of course, I was surprised that I didn’t hear from them. More than that, I was disappointed. They asked me to give them some of my time—which I’ll never get back—to share my experience. I was very detailed, and it was obvious I cared enough about our relationship to give them the insights I hoped they were looking for.

My annual customer service and CX research (sponsored by RingCentral), has a section devoted to surveys. Under the heading of Customers Don’t Believe Their Feedback Is Valued, here are two findings that align with my experience:

· 72% of customers say they don’t ever hear back from the company or brand after filling out a survey.

· 71% assume the company or brand won’t make changes after receiving the feedback.

Even if all they sent back was an automated response, at least I would have known that they received my feedback. And after the detailed feedback I shared, and the fact that I am a “very good” customer, one would have thought that the follow-up would have happened almost immediately.

Maybe they received the feedback. Maybe they had a meeting about it. Maybe, they even made some changes. I’ll never know. And I’ll never fill out another one of their surveys.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and customer experience expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author.?Learn more about Shep's virtual?training programs and follow #ShepHyken for more customer service and experience insights.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Check out Shep's latest research in his Achieving Customer Amazement Study, Sponsored by RingCentral.