The CX Blog

Oh the Voice of the Customer.  How and when to get it, and what to do with it once you have it…that’s the question.

Just had a great conversation with Lonnie Mayne of Mindshare.  Mindshare does CS surveys through multiple channels combined with a strong reporting component.  We’ve used Mindshare on a couple of projects and I’m looking forward to another one soon.

Mindshare has a smart perspective on both making sure the customer is heard and that what the company hears is acted on.  One cool CX story Lonnie shared with me was:

We do surveys for a lot of athletic and sporting fields, including Wrigley field.  A couple of years ago, one of their visitors who had a seat in one of the suites ordered Chicken Fingers.  It was delivered, and she signed the receipt that would bill the suite.

At the bottom of the receipt in big letters was access to phone, web, or email to give feedback–our Mindshare system.  Unfortunately, the Chicken Fingers she ordered wasn’t very good–it was cold, not very tasty, just wrong, so she called the number and gave her feedback.

Her feedback and low rating sent an immediate alert to the VP of Ops who was of course onsite on game day.  He could listen to the MP3 file which was attached to a profile which allowed him to know who she was and where she was sitting.  He had the staff remake the order, took it himself to the suite and presented it to her, apologizing for the previous order.

This all happened in the space of 15 minutes.  The customer looked around the room for video cameras, wondering how they knew so much so fast–she was impressed and thrilled.

Kind of story companies love to be able to tell, and kind of story customers associate with magic–how’d they do that?

During our conversation though, Lonnie was quick to point out an important aspect that is key to their approach: actionable feedback–both negative and positive.  To me that’s important and here’s why:  often, surveys are done by those who have a grudge or complaint–the survey is hard to find or use and usually filed by those with enough angry determination/motivation to give feedback. Like the story above, the solution–the action-, while maybe not always easy, is pretty obvious for those who care about their brand and customer.

The other action that he focused on was internal positive action.  Getting good feedback, using it to rally the troops, raise the bar and model behavior is just as important as making things right for the customer.  When the customer says something was perfect, the whole team needs to know and especially the associate directly involved.

Using the Voice of the Customer works both ways–externally for brand and loyalty, and internally for motivation and modeling behavior.  Mindshare has an excellent focus on both with real-time, actionable reporting and strategic planning for how/when/what.