Why two-way conversations are the key to quality feedback
With many organizations now having pivoted to digital/remote working environments, the need to capture clear and constructive feedback is more important than ever. Whether it be between your business and your customers or between stakeholders within an organization, feedback is the communication vessel of insight and information. Without it, growth stagnates and opportunity drifts by.
Feedback, positive and negative, is vital to the development of staff and customers alike. Real-time feedback provides clear expectations that staff and customers set on an organization, and vice versa.
This type of communication also helps to establish benchmarks and expectations that can be optimized into achievable targets for all involved. Feedback offers confidence to customers and staff, resulting in genuine growth. Both in culture and revenue.
Cutting through the noise of the digital world
Leaving a large gap in person-to-person interaction within the office, the majority of individuals now possess some level of residence in the virtual world. Our phones are connected to an indeterminate amount of apps, web pages, and algorithms. Each text message, email, and social media post vying for our attention and time.
This increasing amount of competition in gaining individuals’ attention means the amount of noise has risen dramatically. This noise is one of the key challenges businesses and organizations face in engaging people to gain insight.
When it comes to feedback, the drivers lay in three critical business areas, each one addressed with two-way communication channels.
Engagement
Businesses and organizations seeking feedback tend to fall into the first trap of feedback gathering. One-way communication for measuring success.
For example, in an attempt to quantify job satisfaction, you might ask, “Using the keypad on your phone, with a scale of one to five -- how happy are you with our internal communications?” While this angle seeks to achieve the desired outcome of information, it fails to reach its potential as a genuine employee engagement moment.
Asking the individual how they want to engage with feedback gives them the authority to illustrate what is important to them, and therefore, important to you.
Using multiple pathways that customers and employees can navigate through allows you to control what kind of feedback you gain, but also allows genuine feedback to be given.
Using the Whispir workflows studio allows you to create automated workflows with as many pathways as you need to propel your people through the right journey. Were they happy with their customer service? No? Then prompt them to fill out a contact sheet where one of your customer service consultants can reach out to them and address the problem proactively.
Performance
The high-value customer experience (CX) is proving to be a leading indicator of business/organization growth. As our value systems move away from commodity value to organizational/experience value, so too does the need for feedback on that value.
Using customized feedback forms and digital channels like SMS and email as the vessel for communications allow businesses and organizations to have a genuine two-way communication system where feedback is given, reviewed, and most importantly, discussed.
Retention
So often, the failure of customer service is to speak and not listen. Customers and staff alike often grade the business/organization they are engaging with based on reputation and their own experience.
Asking for their input can mean the difference between a one-time customer and a brand-loyal ambassador.
The same applies to staff. A lack of feedback opportunities means businesses and organizations lose the chance to avoid voluntary departures of their staff and lose out to the financial costs of talent search to fill the void left within the organization.
Smaller businesses tend to suffer higher negative retention rates. For instance, labor turnover for the year of 2019 in Australia saw the top 10 industries consist of: hospitality, real estate, administration services, utilities, construction, retail trade, wholesale trade, and varied professional services such as consulting firms.
This is where Whispir’s web-based forms facilitate the conversation of feedback. Which can help you create far-reaching communication workflows touching on every individual within your audience.
Learn how the Whispir platform is a modern, efficient way communication can be achieved in your B2B or B2C workplace. You can also download our guide to staff and customer feedback forms.
