Are you an good listener? Hearing and understanding what's being said in a conversation isn't rocket science, most people can do it. However, not everyone can hear a complaint or feedback and understand how it applies to their organization or how to implement a solution. However, before those two steps, you have to be willing to accept maybe the customer feedback is right - and what you've previously believed is wrong. Here's an example of what I mean:
Over at Esteban Kolsky's A Passion For Customer Service blog, he gave his three secrets for effective listening:
1. There are two sides to the conversation. Esteban points out that not everyone provides feedback because they want to be listened to or be answered. Sometimes submitting a complaint just makes you feel better and releases some of the frustration you have with an organization's customer service. He suggests that you still listen to this feedback, but don't prioritize it above those customers who call for a specific action or change.
2. Focus on what's being said, not how. The channel someone chooses to give customer feedback shouldn't matter. Hopefully, you're trying to gather employee, client and customer service feedback through various channels - web surveys, Twitter, blogs, other social media, customer service calls, etc. Accept the methods customers and clients choose to provide feedback. To improve you need to be where they are and not always expect them to come to you.
3. Respond and act on feedback. We've talked about this topic before on this blog. Asking and accepting feedback sets expectations that you're going to follow up. It is tough. Like I said in the beginning, you need to be humble enough to admit you could do it better and the customer may know how you could do it better. Esteban points out that customer engagement increases dramatically when organizations "close the loop" and implement changes based on feedback.
I think it's important to question the feedback as well. I don't mean this in the sense that you should question the credibility of the source or decide the person isn't qualified to provide feedback. But you should ask why they feel this way. While they may be complaining about something small, it may be a much bigger issue. In this case, acting on their request just at face value wont be solving the problem at all.
There are a lot of people who complain about big companies' customer support queue because you have to enter in all your information, get routed though their system, wait on hold for hours (yes, I've waited on hold for hours) only to finally get to someone and have to repeat all the information. I know a lot of people complain, because when I've mentioned it to the customer service rep, she acknowledges she hears that a lot. Then when you search online, other people are voicing the same concern. So who's right? Since it's an on going issue, I would speculate it's a case where the big company thinks it knows better than consumers.
Over at Esteban Kolsky's A Passion For Customer Service blog, he gave his three secrets for effective listening:
1. There are two sides to the conversation. Esteban points out that not everyone provides feedback because they want to be listened to or be answered. Sometimes submitting a complaint just makes you feel better and releases some of the frustration you have with an organization's customer service. He suggests that you still listen to this feedback, but don't prioritize it above those customers who call for a specific action or change.
2. Focus on what's being said, not how. The channel someone chooses to give customer feedback shouldn't matter. Hopefully, you're trying to gather employee, client and customer service feedback through various channels - web surveys, Twitter, blogs, other social media, customer service calls, etc. Accept the methods customers and clients choose to provide feedback. To improve you need to be where they are and not always expect them to come to you.
3. Respond and act on feedback. We've talked about this topic before on this blog. Asking and accepting feedback sets expectations that you're going to follow up. It is tough. Like I said in the beginning, you need to be humble enough to admit you could do it better and the customer may know how you could do it better. Esteban points out that customer engagement increases dramatically when organizations "close the loop" and implement changes based on feedback.
I think it's important to question the feedback as well. I don't mean this in the sense that you should question the credibility of the source or decide the person isn't qualified to provide feedback. But you should ask why they feel this way. While they may be complaining about something small, it may be a much bigger issue. In this case, acting on their request just at face value wont be solving the problem at all.
I was reading through Bruce Temkin's 
If you're a beer fan, you may have noticed Magic Hat has begun giving their mystery beers a more "traditional" name. In the past, they've named their one-off mystery beers with numbers, by the batch number. The mystery beer now is called Odd Notions and includes the year and season. Some of these mystery beers are released to be a regularly offered beer. When that happens how do they name their new beers? An avid beer enthusiast and I got to talking about this recent change. He suggested that they must do market research to come up with the names, and I thought maybe they ran contests. After visiting their website and some heavy investigation, we found how they do it. Feedback forms! With a description of the beer (including color, body, bitterness, malts, hops, etc.), they give website visitors the opportunity to give feedback on the beer - including suggesting a name! I can only assume the customer feedback is used when deciding whether to release the beer full time. 
Sometimes I feel like I'm always wearing my marketing hat. I watch TV and comment on commercials and their cohesion with the brand. I receive a sales and marketing email and critic the message. I go to a website and wonder how it could be more user friendly. I go on Twitter looking for help after a company offers terrible phone support and am irritated at their lack of presence in the social media realm. I'm always wearing my marketing hat. If you're like me, you probably are always wearing your hat too, whether it's marketing, customer service, HR, sales, the list goes on. 
You may have heard about Facebook introducing a targeted polling system to its ad model, presented during a demonstration at the World Economic Forum. Rumor was that Facebook would begin to sell user data to market researchers later in the year. The social networking site tried to squash the suspicion and denied that polling would become part of their advertising options. 
