The best source of information about the quality of your products, service delivery, and processes is, of course, your customers. So you create a voice of the customer program to ensure you get that valuable insight. Sometimes, however, what customers tell you isn’t always easy to hear. Pardon the cliché, but that negative feedback is a gift. Customers who value you enough to tell you the hard truth are ones who will stick around—and most likely become evangelists—once you’ve addressed their concerns.

Here are two examples of how constructive negative feedback can be, directly from the people who received it:

Product Woes
A user of our software commented, “I just can’t find any value in this product” on our online user community site. Of course I was disappointed. Then other users chimed in and helped the person to find the value, how they use it, why they use it and so forth.

It’s the best feedback I’ve received, and here’s why…

1. I learn from others how they explain the product
2. Because people have choices, they defend their product decision and help others
3. It demonstrated that even if the feedback is not positive, people care – otherwise that person wouldn’t even bother to comment
4. We reacted and changed our home page to better explain what we do
5. It reiterated that a negative feedback may do more than a “satisfied customer” who just moves on without saying
6. We actually got additional users directly related to this incident – so it helped grow our user base

Listen up
I was asked once by a customer, in a very terse tone of voice, “Do you actually want to help me right now, because you seem like you don’t.”

It was in a face-to-face conversation, so he was reading my body language and inattentiveness quite clearly. I had entered the conversation distracted and was not really focusing on his questions and needs. I was honestly embarrassed and had to apologize. It was a real wake up call for me. Since then I have always been more attentive to being in the moment when dealing with both my customers and my employees.

This experience has also been a vital lesson I pass along in training and mentoring others. I have always been of the opinion that our mistakes give us the most opportunity to improve — if we pay attention.

Now what?
As these two stories illustrate, uncensored feedback can be tough to hear, but can trigger positive changes that not only solidify that one customer relationship, but can cause a ripple effect that improves relationships with other customers as well.

It’s easy to get defensive or ignore negative feedback. Neither will help move your business forward or improve customer relationships. In fact, quite the opposite. So, don’t ask for feedback unless you intend to follow up on it—whether it’s what you wanted to hear, or not.

About the Author: Ginger Conlon is editorial director of 1to1 Media.

While doing my Christmas shopping this past season, it seemed most every store had a survey they wanted me to take. Their clerks dutifully circled the survey website with their pen and told me about a juicy incentive to get me to fill it out. Since I’m in the business I decided to take all of them to see what they wanted to learn from me. Not so surprisingly, virtually all of the questions dealt with customer satisfaction and little else.

Before we go much further, let me state unequivocally that measuring customer satisfaction is a key data set of any customer feedback program. However, it is becoming apparent that many companies are leaving a lot of valuable information on the table – information that can help your sales department, drive innovation, and provide competitive advantage, increased revenues and profitability.

I outline below a list of possible topics to explore with your customers. This list is by no means comprehensive. Feel free to add other topics in the comment section of this blog.

Topics to consider:
1. What can we do today to improve our customer satisfaction score tomorrow?
2. Better yet, what can we do to turn our customers into “walking billboards” – touting us to all their real-world and online friends/colleagues? For tips, go to http://www.allegiance.com/solutions/total-engage.php.
3. How did the customer first learn about our company?
4. What made them decide to come to our store and buy today?
5. What caused them to buy the product they purchased on the day they purchased it? (buying behaviors)
6. Of a list of possible enhancements to our product or service, which do our customers value most?
7. What additional product or service can we offer that our customers are willing to buy?
8. What level and type of communication do our customers want from us? And in what form (post card, email, text, etc).
9. What are they saying about my competitors that I can learn from?

Soliciting this type information obviously presents its own unique set of challenges. Best practices on how to design, ask, and what medium to use is the topic for a future blog.

But having recently embarked on this quest myself, I know first-hand that customers, in most cases, are very happy to tell you what they think on more topics than just customer satisfaction. If you are interested to see where your company resides on the feedback progression scale, check out this blog: http://blog.allegiance.com/2009/12/where-are-you-on-the-feedback-progression-scale/

Capitalizing on customer feedback requires more than the occasional sending of surveys in response to ad hoc business needs. It requires a strategic and ongoing dedication to hearing, listening, understanding and acting upon the VOC through a formal program built upon actively listening to customers and regularly taking a pulse of their level of engagement.

That is the premise of a new paper now available from Allegiance, Inc. and Peppers & Rogers Group., Titled Capitalizing on Customer Feedback: Creating Measurable Value from Voice of the Customer (VOC) Programs, the paper provides analysis on how to apply business insights gathered from customer feedback to achieve sustainable growth throughout the enterprise.

Included in the paper are specific principles to follow in order to realize a return on investment in VOC programs. These principles include attaining clarity on the business problem to solve, analyzing structured and unstructured customer feedback with text mining and other technology, acting on customer feedback, and embedding customer feedback into the company culture.

In the paper, the reader will be introduced to:

• New ways to think about customer feedback
• Top nine most popular customer feedback strategies
• Five steps of VOC evolution
• Four principles to realizing a strong return on your VOC program
• Two real life case studies demonstrating the concepts in action

To download your complimentary copy, visit http://allegiance.com/prgvoc.