Ways to Collect Customer Feedback

Gaining valuable insightful customer feedback is key to ensuring that your business continues to address consumers' needs.

Figures from a white paper titled "Listen and Learn: How Your Customer Feedback Can Build Your Business," compiled by Verint Consulting, found that 82 percent of organizations currently make the effort to collect customer data.

However, the report, which sought the views 250 customer management decision makers from around the world, found that the technique and quality of customer feedback activities undertaken was poor and sporadic in many places.

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More than half of respondents failed to carry out customer feedback activities more than once a month, with 15 percent admitting to never undertaking such exercises.

In addition to this, it was found that there was an overreliance on e-mail and phone-based surveys with small sample sizes, with just 13 percent of companies using automated technology that allows them to effectively assess larger samples.

Improving Operations Through Automated Feedback Technology

Telefonica O2 Ireland is one organization that has seen significant benefits from using speech analytics technology within its customer feedback operations.

The company claims that since deploying Impact 360 Advanced Speech Analytics, a product created by Verint Witness Actionable Solutions, the company was able to identify the main reason for calls to its customer services center and by acting on the findings reduced the number by 6,000 per month.

Initially the product was deployed within the company's billing department, but O2 has now taken the step to roll the technology out within its entire contact center, as part of the company's strategy to create €1 million (£845,000) of cost savings.

Using speech analytics technology, the firm is able to conduct automated searches through large numbers of pre-recorded calls to identify trends and changes in customer behavior.

Eibhlin Payne, O2 Ireland's head of customer care, says, "At O2 Ireland, speech analytics is accelerating the rate at which we're able to identify and take action on processes and other improvement opportunities. Making sure we resolve customer inquiries quickly is key."

New Feedback Channels and Initiatives

The increased use of mobile devices across the globe has opened up the medium as a potential platform for harvesting customer feedback. It is estimated that worldwide mobile phones now outnumber PCs at a ratio of five to one.

Confirmit recently added an SMS extension to its feedback platform, which it claims is particularly appropriate for short surveys "such as point of sale or customer service experience." The company, headquartered in Oslo, has offices in five cities worldwide and counts British Airways, Ipsos, HSBC and GlaxoSmithKline among its customer base.

Pat Molloy, chief strategy officer at Confirmit, said: "We see this as a natural extension to Confirmit, in a world that is increasingly mobile and in which instant feedback is often an important part of an overall research and feedback effort."

Those using the SMS platform provided by Confirmit are then able to integrate the results with those collected by other mediums.

The company has also worked on boosting the completion rates of online surveys through the integration of Flash technology. Through a partnership with Annik, the company developed SurveyFlashTools, which reduces the length of time and cost it takes to integrate Flash within a survey.

Molloy said: "Respondent engagement is now a major issue with online surveys. Tools that can make surveys more appealing and increase response rates are therefore a real advantage for our clients, helping them to differentiate themselves in an increasingly challenging market."