Name the ways we can serve you: Importance of Customer Feedback

Kishore C.S. (March 2000)

In business scenario customer feedback is very important. Business Organizations cannot afford to neglect the crucial feedback that is necessary to make customer happy. This is very simple if you imagine owner of shop interacting with a customer by face to face communication the shopkeepers were intelligent and changed their styles/merchandise according to the needs of customer. The same will apply to business organizations that are small in size and very few people are involved. As organizations grow the gap between organizations owners and customers widens. One way to bridge this is owners to be physically present to understand customer behavior. Successful business organizations do this.

When this becomes impossible non-personal means of soliciting feedback should be resorted to. Complaints and Suggestion box is one way of inviting feedback. Let the customer say what he likes and what he dislikes. This culture is very predominant in Western Countries. The basic culture does not exist in Indian Markets. Very few organizations resort to this practice.

In Western organizations they use various means to solicit the feedback. For example, if you visit a restaurant at the time of waiting for your bill to arrive you can fill the feedback form and return the same. I have not seen this practice in India.

I give lot of importance to continuous improvement. It is very difficult to identify changes to be made in an organization by imagining what the customer needs. The best way to identify is ask the customer. Customers will be very happy to tell you what they like and dislike.

When we start asking for feedback we frequently get what customers disliked rather than what they liked. This does not mean everything we are doing is wrong. We are doing things well and some things that are doing badly over shadow the good things and spoil the overall image.

To cultivate this practice in India needs a cultural change. Spontaneity in communication has to be achieved. There is a cultural aspect of Indian that tends to be indifferent. We receive bad service and we ignore this and do not give any feedback. This bad service will be repeated to so many other customers. Only when we give spontaneous feedback we can atleast initiate atleast some change.

Implementing this Feedback Management has to be done with a clear goal of improving services and business. This should not be done for the sake of doing it.

Implement Feedback system to know what the customer has to say about you. Follow very simple system.

• Create a suggestion box
• Create a very simple format of feedback page. Give it to them when they are waiting for bill clearance.
• Consolidate Feedback and Action as frequently as possible
• Implement any change required
• Thank the customer

Keep doing this consistently. You will find customers happy to do business with you.