Entrepreneurs can use feedbacks from customers to improve their product offerings and businesses if they know how to manage customer feedback for business growth.
People dislike feedback
As beneficial as feedback is in social engagements, people generally do not like it. Whether solicited or not, feedback is all right when it is a commendation or acknowledgement of status quo but not when it is a complaint, criticism or challenge to change.
People want to feel good but are averse to inconveniences, detours, pains and reviews. They treat feedback as a plan of action to challenge their status quo. As such, they undermine or relate with it at a distance even when they know that it is for their own good.
Don’t ignore customer feedback
Entrepreneurs should not set up businesses to attract customers for patronage and turn around to give them ‘I-don’t-care-attitude’ which suggest they want customers’ money but can ignore their feedbacks.
Ignoring customer feedback may lead to business failure. Yan Revzin said ignoring customer feedback is one of the major causes of start-ups failure.
“While it may seem obvious that a business should prioritise what its customers want and need, this principle isn’t always put into practice. Many entrepreneurs fall in love with their own vision to the extent that they put customers second. You may not even realise you’re doing this if you don’t consciously guard against it,” he said.
The £2 lemon water
A customer went to a cafe in England in December 2015. She left feeling cheated for being charged £2 (N525.00) for a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon. She took to the Internet to complain that the cafe was ‘absolutely awful’ and ‘dreadful’. She wanted the rude waiter sacked and said she would neither return there nor recommend it to her friends and family.
Ironically, the cafe manager lost the opportunity to win back an angry customer. His response, though described as ‘classic’ by some foreign and social media reviews, could be best adjudged poor in customer service parlance. He tutored the customer on the cost compositions of the service she enjoyed, rationalised the waiter’s perceived rudeness but lost the customer.
Chipped plate and sticky tray
In a quick service restaurant in Victoria Island, Lagos, Shira refused to be served with a chipped plate. The service attendant laboriously went through the stack of plates but all were chipped at varying degrees. Shira refused to ‘manage’ any of the plates. She would not use such at home and deserved a better deal.
Shira’s insistence became the attendant’s frustration. A long queue had built up behind Shira and they were becoming agitated. The supervisor saved the day. She produced a better plate, apologised to Shira and personally served her.
In a related development in another quick service restaurant in Victoria Island, Amos halted the activities of the service attendants to draw their attention to a sticky dirty tray given to him.
Amos had ordered breakfast. While the attendant was preparing his coffee, he picked up a serviette to wipe the tray. The serviette turned from white to dark brown. The supervisor had to intervene to caution the two attendants who were getting aggressive. He quickly apologised for service failure and ensured that Amos enjoyed his breakfast.
Customers who offer feedback
Contrary to popular belief, customer feedback is healthy for the entrepreneurs and their business. Customers who provide feedback want to stay with the business. They could have quietly walked away.
A survey of why customers quit revealed that 68 per cent would go away because of employee’s indifference toward the customer. Three per cent relocate, one per cent may die, five per cent develop other friendships and shift brand loyalty, nine per cent defect to competition and 14 per cent because of service failure.
It means 82 per cent quit for reasons that the entrepreneurs can control. That is good business if they can work with the feedback that customers provide.
Customers are royals not because they spend money but because they have power to provide feedback. These feedbacks are more valuable than cash and should be mined and not undermined if the business must thrive and grow.
Managing customer feedbacks
Businesses experience eureka moments when they obtain, analyse and use feedbacks from customers.
The entrepreneur should create a multi-channel platform to generate feedbacks. There should be a deliberate design to develop a feedback database from customers through service interface, questionnaire, one-on-one interactions, telephone, email, social media and other customer loyalty reward programmes.
The business should be configured to elicit non-verbal cues from customers. Also, there should be a purposeful training of employees to look out for customers’ non-verbal cues when they interact with the business whether physically or virtually.
In business, being omnipresent is not counterproductive. There is a need for owner’s presence of mind that is constantly observing how customers interact with the business to generate unsolicited feedbacks. Service errors can be promptly remedied before customers give feedback.
The entrepreneurs should cut bureaucracy that stifles innovativeness and become responsive to the customers. Feedback is a two-way traffic and customers cherish being informed in a timely manner.
