According to a recent report from the esteemed Center for Media Research, most businesses do not leverage their consumers’ experience. This is fancy language for not talking to your customers to see how you are doing. It is really quite amazing that so few businesses don’t take advantage of the first hand input their consumers could provide to them. Sometimes it is nothing more than a conversation with a selected group of customers that will yield a wealth of information.
Here are some statistical examples–
Nearly two-thirds of companies do not have a formal Voice of Customer program in place, and other key findings of the study include:
- 13% of companies have deployed real-time systems to collect, analyze and distribute customer feedback
- 74% say they receive customer feedback via e-mail, only 23 percent say they track and measure the volume and nature of these messages.
- 14.5% track word of mouth on the Internet
12% are using a word-of-mouth marketing platform to drive online”
In order to gain the accurate feeback you are looking for, it is necessary to engage your clients. It is therefore necessary to have the right people employed who are capable of engaging your clients. They need to be good at the interviewing process, even making small talk, in order to best pull from your customers valuable information. Certain background checks can be helpful, including the education verification, employment verification, and assorted professional reference checks that should be part of your preemployment screening program. You need the right people to not only acquire the information from your clients, but to properly analyze it and, most of all, put it to good use.
Qualified employees in this area are increasingly difficult to come by. But with the economic slowdown being what it is, perhaps this is the best time to be casting your employment recruitment net. Check them out before you hire.
