Marketing & Management
Six Ways to Listen for Consumer Needs and Expectations
...by Lucas Conley
There are lots of ways to listen to your customers—and to do it well, you need to master and use more than one style. It’s like using a belt and suspenders to hold up your pants. The redundant systems reinforce each other, but hey do so in different styles with different strengths and weaknesses. Consider the following.
More and more managers are uncomfortable with the idea that the information they are getting is indirect. They want to know things directly and personally, to see and hear for themselves what customers are experiencing on the front lines. Such first-hand knowledge can provide the kind of insights, and make the kind of impact, that reading static customer satisfaction reports never can.
One health care executive we know of makes a point of spending on day a week on the front lines of his hospital, often wearing a volunteer’s anonymous coat to reduce the odds that people will slant what they’re saying because they know who’s listening. Interestingly, he says the customer he’s listening to isn’t just the patient. He listens to his people, too. His reasoning is simple: His personal customer isn’t the patient, it’s his people, because those people treat the patients, he doesn’t.
Maxin Clark, the CEO of Build-a-Bear Workshop, the unique business that allows children to build their own stuffed animals, visited two to three of the franchises per week, chatting up customers and touching base with employees. Clark says a key to her success as a leader is “never forgetting what it’s like to be a customer” of the store.1
Front liners and managers can learn a lot about he customer experience simply by being more observant. One hotel chain instituted a “follow me” program that had front desk clerks ask repeat guests if they would, for a discounted rate, allow the bell man to unobtrusively hang around and “watch you unpack and settle in.”
The program proved a major source of learning about the small, irritating “workarounds” that hotel customers faced, things like having to place the suitcase of a traveling companion on the floor because the hotel only provided one luggage rack, having to unplug and in a place for hotel-provided hair dryers when guests bring their own, and much more. By “listening with their eyes, “ hotel employees found ways to enhance the customer experience that guests may never have suggested on comment cards.
How many times have you had a front-lie employee tell you, “I wish you could have heard this complaint. We’ve been getting it a lot, and I think it’s something we really need to fix.” Layered group listening is a variation on the focus group technique that enables layers of the organization to listen to customers at the same time. In Figure 5-1, the Xs represent customers, the Os are front-line employees and the ^’s are supervisors and managers.
The listening process can be done in three rounds, each lasting forty-five to sixty minutes. In round one, the customers (Xs) are interviewed by a focus group leader. Front liners (Os) can only ask questions for clarification, they cannot explain or defend, and managers (^’s) cannot say anything, they only get to listen. After the first round, customers leave and the Os move to the center table, ^’s move to where Os had been and the second round occurs—front liners reacting to what they heard from customers; mangers only asking question for clarification.
In round three, front liners and manager spend a round problem solving based on what they learned together. Some organizations also find it valuable to bring customers back to participate in this third round.
The upshot is managers get a first-hand understanding of the frustrations, concerns, and plaudits that front-line employees hear customers voice every day. Sometimes it takes such exposure, hearing straight from the horse’s mouth, for mangers to truly grasp how service problems are affecting customers’ willingness to keep doing business with a company. On the flip side, it’s also heartening to hear kudos about the positive things your staff has done to win customers; loyalty or make them sing your firm’s praises to others.
Some customers will tell you what’s on their mind face-to-face. Some won’t risk the chance of confrontation or embarrassment, but will fill out simple “Tell Us, Rate Us, Help Us” comment cards. Tracking them can give you a continuing barometric reading on how you’re doing. More extensive contacts, like complaint and compliment letters, can be mined for detailed insights into past experiences and future preferences.
Make it easy to listen by making it easy for customers to contact you buy using 800 numbers, email, Web-based text chat and more. Most service-focused companies today have Web-enabled call centers that route, queue and prioritize incoming email from customers, enabling customer service reps to handle email and real-time Web requests as efficiently as calls to 800 numbers.
Don’t make trying to find an 800 number on your web site like a game of “Where’s Waldo?” Plenty of costumers have a good reason for wanting to contact you via phone versus sending e-mail or visiting your frequently asked questions (FAQ) page—either they can’t find answers to their questions using those resources or they need more detailed and nuanced responses than those avenues provide. List your 800 number boldly on every Web page.
More companies are listening to their customers by monitoring online discussion boards, chat rooms, and blogs to stay on top of what’s being said about their products or services. While they know they can’t control online word of mouth, and many of the rants may be unfounded they nonetheless see it as valuable market research tool. If companies come across a critical mass of complaints about some aspect of their performance, it may be a sign they need to follow up. Monitoring online commentary also can be a useful way of picking up new ideas for improving service, since offering such suggestions is one of the favorite past times of bloggers answers of online discussions boards.
Your best customers, the one who have been with you for years, represent not only a valued relationship but a source of savvy insight into your service operations. Use them like a board of directors for the front line. Your worst can also be an asset when you and active ways to listen. Emerald Peoples Utility District, a small public a power co-op based in Eugene, Oregon, gets customers involved in various committees and study groups. Arizona Public Services (APS), a much larger regional utility based in Phoenix Arizona has recruited some of the public interest advocates who once dogged its every step to bring their interest and energy inside the walls, where they can be applied in useful ways. Retailers have been known to use panels of customers to help them anticipate fashion trends, and electronics companies often tap knowledgeable customers for feedback on design, standards, and pricing of their products.
1 Lucas Conley, “Custmer-Centered Leader: Masine Clark,” Fast Company, October 2005.
Reprinted from Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service, Second Edition, by Chip Bell & Ron Zemke. Copyright © 2007 Chip R. Bell and Performance Research Associates, Inc. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission. All rights reserved. http://www.amacombooks.org.
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