BE SURE: Customer Research from Tweed-Weber

Customer feedback. We’re told how essential it is to a successful business. At Tweed-Weber, we absolutely support that notion. Here are some common questions we get asked about obtaining customer feedback:

• How can we engage our customers in a way that will encourage them to provide us with candid perceptions about our performance?
• How do we obtain customer input that is objective?
• How do we know what to ask our customers about us?
• How do we obtain customer input that is easy to understand?
• How do we make the customer feedback we receive actionable?
• How do we obtain customer input in a way that is most cost-effective?
• How do we get satisfaction ratings we can benchmark over time in an effort to track our progress?
• How do we impress our customers with a genuine effort to understand their business issues?
• How can we identify specific opportunities for increased sales within our current customer base?
• How do we do a customer survey when we really don’t know how?

Many companies still mail a paper-and-pencil survey to gather feedback from their customers, thinking it will meet their most basic requirements for gathering their input. However, every completed paper-and-pencil survey that you receive represents a missed opportunity to have strengthened that customer relationship on a more personal level. Mail surveys are most effective when you are mailing to an enormous audience, like in consumer research versus B2B research, because the number of surveys sent out will hopefully garner a large enough sample that is returned to be meaningful.

For B2B customer surveys, we highly recommend online surveys or telephone interviews. Online surveys are more engaging, and the entire process of online surveys can be managed, implemented, and tracked in a much more targeted and efficient manner. Customers also love incentives, so online surveys with incentives can help increase response rates.

We believe telephone interviews offer the best way to obtain in-depth customer feedback. If your customers were willing to take the time to complete a survey without you being present, just imagine what they would be willing to share if they were asked purposeful questions by a person who was offering them his/her undivided attention. The amount of feedback that can be gathered and interpreted from telephone interviews is far more fruitful than other methodologies.

In the past, we've talked about survey methodologies. Every research method has its appropriate place and time, and we invite you to learn more about how you can gather customer feedback in the most effective manner. At Tweed-Weber, we specialize in designing and implementing customer surveys, so we can help you create a process that’s right for you. Listening to the voice of your customers will help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).