Obtain and review client feedback

Creating evaluation or feedback tools Importance of client feedback  The use of client feedback is very useful to ensure customer satisfaction with current projects, which is an important business goal. The bigger opportunity to improve what we do is another valuable spin off in obtaining and reviewing client feedback.  Although some people consider any negative feedback as criticism, there is generally a positive aspect to it. It is vitally important that we examine the criticism and identify the areas in which we can improve. If we cannot change and improve, then we will not succeed in our business no matter which sector or industry we are in. We should approach client feedback with the attitude that we can do better next time, especially if we consider feedback as being genuinely valuable.

Helping clients complete evaluations We write evaluation questions that we clearly understand. They make sense to us. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that other people will understand exactly what we mean. Even the mechanism for gathering client responses may sometimes confuse some people. Another important factor to consider is what instructions should we provide for completing qualitative type questions. For example, if you are asking a customer to comment on their use of a new technology, do you want them to comment on how frequently they use it, or how easily they can use it, or how helpful it is to their work? Can you see how giving instructions can be very helpful to structuring the information you receive? Remember that the quality of the feedback that the evaluation tool should encourage must be the primary focus of our question design. It isn’t difficult to write instructions for using our feedback tool because our intention is usually clear to ourselves. The important thing is to make sure we communicate our intention to the customers clearly.

Reviewing the feedback received Analyzing the data we receive may mean making a mental note of the feedback we receive if it is from our casual conversation with a customer. However, even this type of feedback should be recorded later. This should help us to keep doing what we do well and to change what we don’t do so well. It may even alert us to a problem that requires a more formal evaluation tool. When there is a need for a more formal summary, the information that we gain can be shared with others in our organisation. We can also do a more thorough analysis of the information.

Feedback What information can we deduce from these evaluations? There is a lot of information to be gained from these surveys. One important point to make is that you would need to take a considerable sample of evaluations (much more than three) to draw conclusions about how to change your service. However, from those shown above we might draw the following conclusions:  Customer A is satisfied with the solution provided.  Customers B and C are not satisfied with the solution provided and we may need to follow up their service to ensure we keep them as customers.  We need to investigate the differences in knowledge of customer service staff regarding software and hardware.  It seems that software issues are better handled that hardware.  We may need to provide some training on technical knowledge related to hardware. We may need to review a policy which says that customer service staff should not make recommendations on hardware purchases.  It seems the communication skills of the customer service (help desk) staff range from good to very good.  1 out of 3 customers (33%) are satisfied with the service they received.

Summary We’ve covered four aspects of obtaining and reviewing client feedback. We started with creating and distributing evaluation or feedback tools where we considered some examples; the types of questions; how to design them as well as some ways of conducting evaluations. Then we discussed how to help clients to complete evaluations by providing clear and easily understood instructions. This is essential because although you might think feedback forms are self- explanatory, often the clients won’t. Finally we discussed how to review the feedback we receive. There are a number of reasons for this. From client feedback, we can identify ways to improve our customer service as well as identify any training or support needs our customers might require.