How to Create a Culture of Listening to Customers

How do you listen to your customers? Do you have a way to consistently get feedback and implement it?

According to Microsoft 90% of customers want organizations to give them an opportunity to share their feedback. And a whopping 97% of customers are more willing to stay loyal to a brand that implements changes based on their feedback.

Curiosity about the voice of your customer should be baked into your culture. It’s not just a job for your customer service and sales departments. And it’s not just a one and done customer survey you send out post sale.

Your marketing, finance, and ops team should all want to know what matters most to your customers and where there is friction. This commitment to the customer starts with your leadership team. Are they curious about what their customer’s pain points are? Do they show desire for continuous improvement and seek feedback from others? Or are they afraid of what their customers may say that could be negative?

Taking time to seek out and address voice of customer across your entire organization sends a strong message to your customers that you value them.

And your customers input is fuel for innovation and your company’s long term growth.

Here’s what this looks like:

• Regular pulse surveys sent to both existing customers AND lost opportunities post sale
• A sales process that involves both sales and operations so both departments can hear the voice of the customer and understand what’s most important to them BEFORE they make a purchase.
• Sales and operations alignment and action on finding solutions to customer pain points that are uncovered during the sales process.
• A company-wide forum for employees to share qualitative customer feedback with senior leadership and follow up on previous feedback received. This could be a quarterly meeting, anonymous submission box, or smaller one-on-ones with managers. The important step here is to make this a regular practice and follow up on the feedback and circle back with employees to tell them how the company is responding.
• Project management teams who schedule regular check-ins with customers and seek regular feedback on the project during meetings.

Companies who have created a culture of listening and more importantly acting on customer feedback experience greater customer loyalty and retention. This in turn increases profitability because there lower customer churn and lower cost to acquire new customers. Feedback is not pointless and irrelevant. It’s good for business.