Do Your Customers Know What You've Done With Their Feedback?
posted by: Nick Roman on 2/9/2010
In my job, I travel rather often, which means that I’m inundated with requests for feedback on my hotel stays. Partly because I work for a feedback management vendor, and partly because I believe that done well, these programs work, I tend to respond to the request.
In particular, I’m keen to see how companies respond to my feedback. In its research, Gartner has noted that while 95% of companies collect customer feedback in some form, only 10% do anything with the feedback and only 5% bother to tell their customers what they’ve done with the feedback.
So recently I stayed at two hotels, one in New York, and one in Washington. Both requested feedback on my stay.
At the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, I had been the beneficiary of an extremely good experience, where an employee went out of her way to find something I’d left in my room upon checkout. She personally took responsibility to deliver the item to me just before I headed out to the airport to leave town. I was extremely happy, and named the employee in my feedback.
At the DC hotel, I’d had some problems with meal orders, both in the restaurant and with room service. I noted both poor experiences in my response.
The day after I sent my reply to the New Yorker, I received a personal e-mail from Elizabeth Grande, Customer Service Manager, thanking me for my feedback and telling me that she’d shared it with Josie and her team.
This is a real win-win, since not only did Elizabeth reinforce my positive experience, but she also created a positive employee experience at the same time. I have confidence that if I’d reported a negative experience that it would have been dealt with in much the same way.
Months later, I’m still waiting to hear back from the DC hotel.
What they probably don’t realize is that they’re sending a message, even by not sending one—this message reinforces the lack of response to my complaints while at the hotel. They don’t care about my feedback and they don’t care about my value to them as a customer.
I’ve stayed at the New Yorker several times since, and I recommend it to my colleagues. The DC hotel gets neither.
Look at the numbers that Gartner quotes. There’s a big opportunity to differentiate your business from your competition, simply by closing the loop with your customers when they give you something very precious—their time and their opinion.
Do you close the loop on feedback from your customers?
Let us know.