Managing feedback

I am not a regular watcher of Today Tonight but was on Monday because Geraldine Cox, the founder of Sunrise Children’s Foundation, was scheduled to be on. But today I wanted to write about another story they aired. The story was about a restaurant that responded poorly to negative customer feedback that was delivered by email. It is a great example of the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

The feedback was an uninvited email citing a recent poor experience. The response by the restaurant owner used poor English and rejected the feedback. On receipt of the email the customer forwarded the email to a few friends and the forward kept going until it came to the attention of Today Tonight. The restaurant is now closed.

The lesson to be learned is how to deal with feedback whether it is positive or negative. Providing a channel for customers to provide feedback and then dealing with the feedback properly improves customer satisfaction and loyalty whether it is a formal or informal process.

If people who provide negative feedback are thanked for raising an issue, changes implemented, and then those who provided the feedback are made aware of the changes, these initial critics are more likely to feel valued, might try your product/service again, and tell their friends about the positive experience.

I’m not saying that you have to jump on every word of negative feedback and make changes exactly as suggested, sometimes the solution is to educate your customers on why you do things the way you do.Let me give you an example. Your business is based on high quality products. Your prices are high to reflect this. You receive feedback that your prices are too high. But, your prices aren’t the problem, the perception of value for money is the problem. So, your solution is to educate your customers on the value they receive from your products, not to reduce the prices.

Positive feedback creates great testimonials and collateral to guide your marketing.

So have a look at your feedback procedures. Do you ask your customers regularly about their views? If yes, do you then act on the information you receive, whether it is good or bad? If you answered no to one of these actions then you need to change this, so your business doesn’t fall victim to poor word-of-mouth and close like the restaurant in the Today Tonight segment.

Cricket

Sorry for the long silence. I was first wrapped up in the tribal group of my family, and then the tribal group of cricket fans and what a summer it has been for cricket fans.

I was at every day of the Sydney test that caused so much distraction for the remaining tests. It was clearly poor umpiring and the Indians got more of them. The Australian players were overly smug and by Day 3 the crowd were cheering on the Indian’s more than the Aussies. Well, until the last hour when it looked like the Aussies would win, then they reverted to their native colours.

What was interesting more than anything was the divisions it created at that the actions of a few in a cricket team caused a response from India that we as a nation had slandered all Indians, while if you read much of the commentary in Australia the general public was more favourable of the Indian teams response and critical of the Australians.

So, I dig myself out of my cricket headspace and back into a more balanced world – both because the Australian and Indian cricket teams are back to playing cricket, and time and headspace wise for me. You will be hearing from me more frequently again.