Everyone agrees when customers share their insights, employees should put them to use. So why is it so hard? Without a doubt, taking action on customer insights is the number one challenge of customer listening programs.
Here are three reasons why employees fail to take action:
First, they aren’t aware. In most companies there is so much happening and so many initiatives taking place that customer programs hardly get noticed.
Second, they don’t understand. It’s not clear how customer insights are to be put to use and people don’t understand what they are supposed to do with the feedback they receive.
Third, they don’t believe. Either they don’t think the feedback is accurate or they don’t think any action will make much difference.
The Hierarchy of Engagement is a framework that helps make sense of how customer strategists can prompt more action from customer listening programs. Good customer strategists do much more than gather insights and crank out reports. They promote customer initiatives, train users of customer insights, and show employees how it all makes a bottom-line difference. In other words, they prompt action.
Patrick, great blog. It’s simple, but elegant in content. As you said, having the best customer feedback is worthless unless it is acted upon. Too many companies collect data and have no intent on ever making any changes. And, unfortunately, too many customers say “why bother” to spend their time completing surveys when they are never told what changes will be implemented based on their valuable feedback. Richard Shapiro, The Center For Client Retention @richardrdshapiro