If you are not listening to your customers and acting on their feedback, your business won’t reach its full potential. Experts say that gaining customer feedback is the only way to truly understand and know your customers. And the greater the insight, the better the ability to fulfil those customers’ needs – and exceed their expectations.
The most effective way to access ‘voice of customer’ is to get ongoing feedback, whether that be through face-to-face focus groups, online surveys or via call centres. Gathering customer feedback allows an organisation to pinpoint customer likes and dislikes and garner their opinions on all aspects of a business. It is also a valuable tool for continual learning and improvement, and in today’s competitive marketplace, it is increasingly important.
“Customer feedback is about gaining customer insight,” says Bill Morgan, managing director of Cognition Research. “This word, ‘insight’, is bandied about a lot but fundamentally an insight is information that gives your business a competitive advantage – information that can be used to positively impact business decisions. A true insight builds better business outcomes, otherwise it’s just information.
“Ultimately, it’s about understanding what matters to people – whether it’s buying breakfast cereal or life insurance – and then working out what to do about it. That’s where the insight comes in. It’s an actionable piece of information that helps you leverage to a commercial outcome. Understanding people’s deeper needs and motivations is key.”
When customers feel they are being listened to and understood, they generally remain satisfied and loyal. One way of measuring that loyalty and satisfaction is net promoter score (NPS). NPS is a benchmark used by companies, globally, to gauge how willing a customer is to recommend a product or service.
ING DIRECT Australia has the highest NPS in the banking sector in Australia. Fiona Nicol, Head of Marketing at ING DIRECT, credits a large part of that achievement to the organisation’s customer-centric approach.
“ING DIRECT doesn’t just talk to the customer, we live and breathe the customer in terms of being a very customer-led organisation,” she says. “Our product development is an iterative process where we involve our customers every step along the way, taking in their live feedback, views and reactions to help shape products and propositions.
“We use customers as a real-life sounding board as we go through that process. We get direct feedback from customers about what they want and need, rather than what we think they want and
need. For example, we recently relaunched a new website and mobile platform and that was done in conjunction with a group of about 150 customers. We worked alongside them to test and develop the site. We see our customers as a fundamental element in anything we do. It’s key for us in any development process.”
Clearly, the customer-centric model is working. Nicol says that 40-50 per cent of ING DIRECT business comes via referrals.
“The advocacy that customer feedback and satisfaction builds in terms of customer referrals has been very beneficial for our business,” she says. “Word of mouth is extremely powerful. By treating the customer well and really listening to their feedback – and acting on that feedback – puts us in good stead, and business is generated off the back of that.”
Morgan says there are many ways of gaining customer ‘voice’ and feedback, including a balance of both quantitative (including surveys) and qualitative research (including focus groups). He says that while relatively new and advanced methodologies for gaining customer feedback, such as neuro-marketing, have huge potential, some of the traditional forms of research are just as effective.
“There are things that influence what we do that we are not conscious of – neuro-marketing and neuro-research attempt to access those things, effectively trying to identify activity in the brain,” Morgan explains. “Yes, this area has huge potential, but the reason why focus groups and in-depth interviews and surveys still provide a lot of value is you can get a long way to finding out what people want simply by asking questions.
“A lot of our research now takes place is co-creation focus groups, where you are no longer just trying to test an idea, but develop propositions with consumer involvement, whether that’s for first-home buyers in the home loan market, or buying a new car or breakfast cereal. More and more, focus groups are being used to help develop products and services rather than just test them.”
Carlie Lau, Head of Customer Intelligence at ING DIRECT Australia, agrees: “You can pore over quantitative data, which is great, but you have to have good personal interaction with your customers as well. Without that human interaction, business insights can fall flat. They lack depth.
“Focus groups welcome a range of voices and diverse opinions, which allows brands to validate and prioritise if experiences are shared or conflicting. You don’t just hold a focus group then develop a product; it’s a really iterative process. The best outcomes are when you have constant check-ins with the customer. And then once it’s launched, it’s not a matter of set and forget, but you constantly monitor and get customer feedback and look at how to refine.
“In any market research approach, the validity of insights is derived not just by listening to what customers say, but the ability to interpret findings and uncover the underlying insights. This is achieved by understanding truly who your customers are – their behaviours, psychographics, beliefs, values and principles.”
Social media is also proving to be a valuable tool for tapping into customer insight. Nicol says it offers a “completely transparent environment where there is no hiding”.
“Being a digital bank, having that human touch and being focused on the consumer is critical, and we engage a lot with our customers via our Facebook page,” she says. “We use that for real-time feedback and pride ourselves on talking and responding to customers very quickly. It is also a way for us to talk to them in a language that is not your typical corporate speak, but it represents very much the tone of voice of ING DIRECT – having a real, down-to-earth conversation and taking that feedback on board.
“We also use social media and feedback forums for research as well. There’s been a big shift in recent years – consumers today have access to a lot of information and are more in a position of control, calling the shots, if you like. What people are saying in this environment is increasingly being used to inform marketing campaigns and product development. And it will continue to have a big impact of what marketing looks like moving forward.”
Regardless of the methodologies used, keeping strong lines of communication open with customers to gain feedback and insight is essential to business success both now and into the future.
“Today we have to react to changing market trends and needs faster in this more competitive marketplace,” Morgan says. “So that’s put a greater emphasis on finding solutions that hit the mark. The cornerstone is to find out what really matters to people and then meet those needs.”
