Small Business: Retain clients with honest dialogue

Satisfied customers stick around. Dissatisfied customers take their business elsewhere, with the majority never even vocalizing their complaints or telling you the reason why.

If you want to avoid losing customers, you need to create an ongoing dialogue and generate honest feedback that you can use to help improve your products, services and boost customer satisfaction, say experts.

"If you don't know how your customers feel about you, you're taking a huge risk," notes Linda Berke, president of Taylor Performance Solutions, a Farmingdale-based consulting firm specializing in customer retention. "You're risking losing your customers and missing opportunities to enhance your products or services and stay competitive."

Generating feedback

You can't just assume your customers are happy, she notes. You need to stay on top of their wants and needs and develop a course of action for generating feedback, says Berke, who suggests the following five steps:

Define your objective for soliciting feedback, and the size of your survey pool;

Develop specific goals for what you want to do with the feedback;

Decide how you're going to implement suggestions once you get the feedback;

Identify how you'll acknowledge or thank the people who provide feedback;

Assess who will gather the feedback (i.e. self, outside firm).

Once you complete these steps, you can begin to solicit feedback, she notes.

One of the top ways to do this is simply to ask, says customer service expert Rosanne D'Ausilio, PhD, author of "How to Kick Your Customer Service Up a Notch" (Champion for the Human Press; $47) and president of Human Technologies Global in Carmel, N.Y.

Don't just rely on the sales agent who served the customer to gauge satisfaction, but rather get unbiased feedback from the customer directly, she said. "The customer may not be happy, but that's [the agent's] perception," explains D'Ausilio.

Call customers or send a survey or email to see if they were truly satisfied, she suggests.

Executives at Bridgehampton National Bank take this a step further and make frequent site visits to the various branches to speak with customers in person, notes James Manseau, executive vice president and chief retail banking officer.

"I find most clients are more than willing to give you feedback," he says. This kind of feedback helps them ensure they are "staying ahead of the curve," says Manseau.

The bank also uses electronic surveys to reach customers and recently sent one out to ask how well it was doing with its online banking products and services, says Manseau.

"It's very important that we're not making decisions in a vacuum," he notes, adding Bridgehampton will use the survey result input to make upgrades to its online banking platform.

Feedback tools

Surveys can be a good way to gauge customer opinion, says Randi Busse, president of Workforce Development Group, an Amityville-based customer service/retention coaching and training firm. You can create them yourself or use an online provider like SurveyMonkey.

Other feedback tools, says Busse, include:

A blog or other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where you can monitor what people are saying about your firm.

Making test calls into your own company to get a first- hand user experience;

Tent/table comment cards, feedback forms, focus groups.

They can all provide valuable information, if you're willing to listen. "If you're not going to listen to your customers, don't bother asking them any questions," she notes.

Customer Feedback Questions:

Would you be willing to come back?Would you refer us to other people?If we could improve one thing, what would it be?Was the person taking care of you knowledgeable, courteous and professional?How would you rate your overall experience?Source: Randi Busse