Obtain and review client feedback
Creating evaluation or feedback tools
Importance of client feedback
Types of evaluation tools
Types of questions used in evaluation tools
Distributing evaluation tools
Helping clients complete evaluations
Reviewing the feedback received
Summary
Check your progress
Creating evaluation or feedback tools
Importance of client feedback
The use of client feedback is very useful to ensure customer satisfaction with current projects, which is an important business goal. The bigger opportunity to improve what we do is another valuable spin off in obtaining and reviewing client feedback.
Although some people consider any negative feedback as criticism, there is generally a positive aspect to it. It is vitally important that we examine the criticism and identify the areas in which we can improve. If we cannot change and improve, then we will not succeed in our business no matter which sector or industry we are in. We should approach client feedback with the attitude that we can do better next time, especially if we consider feedback as being genuinely valuable.
Types of evaluation tools
There are many ways we could gain feedback from our customers. Some methods are less formal. These may be more difficult to document and provide less valid results. Other methods are very formal processes, and we might even employ the services of an independent consultant to carry out evaluations of our service.
Informal methods include asking verbal open questions of our customers either at the time we provide goods or services, or later. We might send an email to our customers and ask them to give us any general feedback about the solution we have provided. Indeed, we might just be talking with our customers casually and ask them how they are going with the solution. All of these means of gaining feedback will provide us with some useful information. However such methods produce results that are very difficult to objectively evaluate.
Alternatively, a more formal evaluation method may be used. In this case, we would develop some type of tool to gain structured feedback. Below are some examples of more formal evaluation tools. Figure 1 is a sample letter asking for client feedback.
Dear CustomerAs the manager of [COMPANY], I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you. Please help us serve you better by taking a couple of minutes to tell us about the service that you have received so far. We appreciate your business and want to make sure we meet your expectations. Attached, you will find a coupon to claim ...... from any of our branches. We hope that you will accept this as a token of our goodwill.
Sincerely,
[MANAGER_NAME]
Manager
19 August 20 __
Figure 1: Sample letter requesting client feedback
Types of questions used in evaluation tools
You can follow links to sample surveys, free survey templates and customer services satisfaction evaluations at the following websites:
- QuestionPro.com website at
- SurveyShare.com website at
Can you see that some questions in these examples are designed to provide qualitative user responses whilst other questions you are designed to provide quantitative user responses?
Questions that are designed to produce qualitative user responses produce subjective information about a user’s thoughts and feelings. Questions that are designed to produce quantitative information force the user to respond by selecting one of a range of pre-defined options. Quantitative responses allow all users responses to be accurately compared with each other. Each type of question has a value. By designing a tool with these strategies in mind you should be able to produce high quality user feedback that can be both informative and measurable.
Designing quantitative questions
You've probably filled inquestionnaires that asked you to rank certain aspects of a course or a training session on a scale of 1 to 10. Or you may have been asked to say whether something was excellent, satisfactory, good or poor. In other words, your answers were limited to pre-assigned response categories. This is an example of a quantitative evaluation method.
A quantitative question then, will have a number of predefined answers which should evenly represent the range of possible responses from the very positive to the very negative.
Designing qualitative questions
In some other evaluations, your answers may not have been limited to pre-assigned response categories. You may have been asked a question that did not presuppose an answer and that allowed you to elaborate on your answer, that is you may have been asked open-ended questions rather than closed questions. The information obtained from open-ended questions is said to be qualitative.A qualitative question then, will allow a free form answer that should provide more detail on why the person is satisfied or dissatisfied.
When you design a questionnaire or interview questions, you would typically use a combination of open-ended and closed questions. Sometimes a checklist is also used. It is important to note that the quality of the answer depends mostly on the quality of the question. Make sure that each question you ask is clearly expressed and has a specific focus.
Reflect
Why would you use a variety of questions in any evaluation tool you develop?
Distributing evaluation tools
Most often the type of evaluation tool you use will determine the way it is distributed. For example, if you use an electronic form which is designed as a voting system for people to distinguish a simple yes/no response, it would be logical to use email. If you want to use a written evaluation on a variety of areas of your service, you will probably send your customer a paper-based document. If you want to conduct interviews with your customers, you would probably either have a database form on screen (if conducting a telephone interview) or a paper-based form if you were conducting face-to-face interviews. The following are some common means of distributing your evaluation or feedback tools:
- Face-to-face – either interview or written responses from customers obtained at the time the service or goods are provided
- Face-to-face – either interview or written responses from customers obtained some time after delivery of the service or goods
- Snail mail – hard copy written responses from customers sent by post
- Fax – hard copy written responses from customers
- Email – electronic written forms from customers
- Email – voting responses from customers
- Web-based surveys – forms completed on line, and submitted to your database
- Telephone – using forms to gather information provided.
Reflect
Can you think of any other ways to distribute evaluation tools to customers?
Helping clients complete evaluations
We write evaluation questions that we clearly understand. They make sense to us. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that other people will understand exactly what we mean. Even the mechanism for gathering client responses may sometimes confuse some people.
For example, you may have completed a magazine quiz which asked you to rate your reaction to something (like a TV program) on a scale of 1 to 10. The first question we generally ask ourselves is ‘What’s the highest rating, 1 or 10?’ So, at the very basic level we need to give instructions to our customers on our intended meaning in any rating scales we might use.
Another important factor to consider is what instructions should we provide for completing qualitative type questions. For example, if you are asking a customer to comment on their use of a new technology, do you want them to comment on how frequently they use it, or how easily they can use it, or how helpful it is to their work? Can you see how giving instructions can be very helpful to structuring the information you receive? Remember that the quality of the feedback that the evaluation tool should encourage must be the primary focus of our question design.
It isn’t difficult to write instructions for using our feedback tool because our intention is usually clear to ourselves. The important thing is to make sure we communicate our intention to the customers clearly.
Reviewing the feedback received
Getting all this feedback isn’t much use to us if we don’t do something with the information we’ve got. We need to analyse the data we get back so we can turn it into useful information that is helpful to us. As we discussed earlier, we should be able to use the information to inform us on how we went at meeting particular customer’s needs. Good evaluation tools should also let us identify ways to improve our service in the future.
Analysing the data we receive may mean making a mental note of the feedback we receive if it is from our casual conversation with a customer. However, even this type of feedback should be recorded later. This should help us to keep doing what we do well and to change what we don’t do so well. It may even alert us to a problem that requires a more formal evaluation tool.
When there is a need for a more formal summary, the information that we gain can be shared with others in our organisation. We can also do a more thorough analysis of the information.
Reflect
Study thefollowing completed client satisfaction surveys and think about the information you may be able to deduce from the clients’ feedback.
CLIENT SATISFACTION SURVEY – Customer AYour feedback on our services is very valuable to us. Your efforts in completing and returning this survey would be very much appreciated.
- Why did you contact customer service?
- What method did you use to contact customer service?
- How satisfied are you with the time it took us to answer your question or resolve your issue?
Highly satisfied
Satisfied
Not very satisfied
Highly dissatisfied
- The customer service representative was knowledgeable and easy to understand.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- The customer service representative was able to handle my problem quickly and to my satisfaction.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- I was treated with respect by the customer service representative.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- The customer service representative was courteous and professional.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- How satisfied were you with the way your question or problem was resolved?
Highly satisfied
Satisfied
Not very satisfied
Highly dissatisfied
- What changes, if any, can we make to improve our customer service department?
CLIENT SATISFACTION SURVEY – Customer B
Your feedback on our services is very valuable to us. Your efforts in completing and returning this survey would be very much appreciated.
- Why did you contact customer service?
- What method did you use to contact customer service?
- How satisfied are you with the time it took us to answer your question or resolve your issue?
Highly satisfied
Satisfied
Not very satisfied
Highly dissatisfied
- The customer service representative was knowledgeable and easy to understand.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- The customer service representative was able to handle my problem quickly and to my satisfaction.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- I was treated with respect by the customer service representative.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- The customer service representative was courteous and professional.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- How satisfied were you with the way your question or problem was resolved?
Highly satisfied
Satisfied
Not very satisfied
Highly dissatisfied
- What changes, if any, can we make to improve our customer service department?
CLIENT SATISFACTION SURVEY – Customer C
Your feedback on our services is very valuable to us. Your efforts in completing and returning this survey would be very much appreciated.
- Why did you contact customer service?
- What method did you use to contact customer service?
- How satisfied are you with the time it took us to answer your question or resolve your issue?
Highly satisfied
Satisfied
Not very satisfied
Highly dissatisfied
- The customer service representative was knowledgeable and easy to understand.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- The customer service representative was able to handle my problem quickly and to my satisfaction.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- I was treated with respect by the customer service representative.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- The customer service representative was courteous and professional.
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
- How satisfied were you with the way your question or problem was resolved?
Highly satisfied
Satisfied
Not very satisfied
Highly dissatisfied
- What changes, if any, can we make to improve our customer service department?
Feedback
What information can we deduce from these evaluations?
There is a lot of information to be gained from these surveys. One important point to make is that you would need to take a considerable sample of evaluations (much more than three) to draw conclusions about how to change your service. However, from those shown above we might draw the following conclusions:
- Customer A is satisfied with the solution provided.
- Customers B and C are not satisfied with the solution provided and we may need to follow up their service to ensure we keep them as customers.
- We need to investigate the differences in knowledge of customer service staff regarding software and hardware.
- It seems that software issues are better handled that hardware.
- We may need to provide some training on technical knowledge related to hardware. We may need to review a policy which says that customer service staff should not make recommendations on hardware purchases.
- It seems the communication skills of the customer service (help desk) staff range from good to very good.
- 1 out of 3 customers (33%) are satisfied with the service they received.
Summary
We’ve covered four aspects of obtaining and reviewing client feedback. We started with creating and distributing evaluation or feedback tools where we considered some examples; the types of questions; how to design them as well as some ways of conducting evaluations. Then we discussed how to help clients to complete evaluations by providing clear and easily understood instructions. This is essential because although you might think feedback forms are self-explanatory, often the clients won’t. Finally we discussed how to review the feedback we receive. There are a number of reasons for this. From client feedback, we can identify ways to improve our customer service as well as identify any training or support needs our customers might require.
Check your progress
Now you should try and do the Practice activities in this topic. If you’ve already tried them, have another go and see if you can improve your responses.
When you feel ready, try the ‘Check your understanding’ activity in the Preview section of this topic. This will help you decide if you’re ready for assessment.
Reading: Obtain and review client feedback1
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