Delivering great customer experiences is a team effort, and is rarely the work of just one person, but sometimes, many of the people involved work behind the scenes in non- customer facing roles, and don’t hear or see what clients experienced. For example, the gardener at a holiday park doesn’t necessarily hear feedback about how immaculate the gardens are and a junior team member may not hear a client’s thoughts on their contribution to a project or piece of work. The best way to connect your staff with business outcomes is by connecting them with what customers think, the good and the bad.
We know of some organisations who shout a box of beers or a voucher for any mentions of staff names in reviews. This does two things — ties staff performance to a business goal by providing a customer experience which they want to rave about online, and incentivises staff to encourage customers to share reviews and feedback.
Your staff are likely dealing with customers out of your sight. “Until I started gathering customer feedback I didn’t have a lot of data on staff performance when I’m not in the salon. Now, customer feedback is a key part of monthly performance reviews, reviewing what worked well and what needs improvement.” says Jaqueline McFayden, director of Cleaver & Rouge Hair and Makeup Salon.
“We are very transparent with the entire team about what feedback we get and how we deal with it. We don’t often get negative feedback, but by regularly sharing how we deal with feedback, both positive and negative, means if someone in our team finds themselves in that situation with a customer in the future they have an understanding of how we expect to deal with it then and there, and some tools to address it.” — Daniel Fleming, King and Queen Hotel Suites.
Feedback means the most when it’s current and relevant so you can tie it back to the event that gave rise to the feedback. Maybe there are actually two sides to the story? Can you remember situations where you gave feedback and just couldn’t remember what it relates to? The easy solution to this is to share feedback within days, not weeks or months.
