Asking for feedback: do it right or don't do it!

A crucial moment for me as a consumer. Because imagine I get the order way too late or not at all. Or damaged. Then I may have had such a good online process, but then the whole customer journey scores a failing grade for me.

Integrate the online and offline experience

Asking customers for feedback. It's becoming more and more normal and therefore happening more and more often. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a good development, but more and more often I am irritated by the execution and follow-up. Such is the case with the example above. Professional deformation of a customer experience consultant, I know, but still. If you ask for an opinion, do it right. It is crucial for an organization to know and understand the total customer journey. You don't do that by asking a lot of questions at once, but rather by asking just a few questions about a small relevant piece of the customer experience. What do customers think about the different contact moments within the customer journey and where are the optimization opportunities per moment and channel? With ever-increasing digitalization, we see more focus from organizations on online customer journeys. Not surprisingly, but the integration with the offline part of the journey is often forgotten or insufficiently secured. The National Customer Drivenness Monitor shows that only 15% of the organizations in the Netherlands have fully integrated the online and offline contact moments from a customer perspective. So there is still a lot of room for customer-driven improvement there.

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Not words, but deeds

Asking for feedback and doing something with it are also two different things. So many organizations do question their customers, but find it difficult to act on the feedback. After all, where to start? What is urgent and needs to be addressed immediately and what is a longer-term priority? To determine that, it is important to record feedback centrally in the organization and to analyze and prioritize it across channels and departments. Only then will you be able to identify the overarching themes and determine the correct and most effective actions. Above all, start small! You can't change everything in two weeks, so don't aim for that. That will only frustrate you. Chop it up into small pieces and see each improvement as an important milestone. Celebrate your successes every week or every month! Above all, make something fun out of it. For example, put some customer quotes on the coffee cups or print nice compliments on the company restaurant napkins. And importantly; show your customers what you do with their feedback. Pieter Zwart, boss of Coolblue, regularly publishes videos in which he explains what they have done differently based on customer feedback. As a result, customers feel much more engaged with your organization and also start giving their feedback more often. Nurture this and take your service to a higher level step by step!

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