There are many reasons for getting customer feedback. Some key issues are:
Innovation. Many, some would argue most, successful new products and services are the direct result of speaking with customers. Often, customers actually suggest the new ideas. Companies in fast-moving businesses, or those which rely on innovation, need to stay in touch with their customers to get their ideas and product/service feedback.
External performance feedback. Often, customers can spotlight processes which are working well, and others which are not. By actively contacting and speaking with customers, organizations can spot important opportunities for improvement.
Increasing customer retention. Learning what is most important to customers and how the organization is seen as performing, relative to competitors, can help to prioritize change efforts.
Recovering customers. The first step to recovering lost customers is finding them - the second step is finding out why they left. Many customers can be recovered with relatively little work by a company or organization.
Advance warning. Customer data can be used as part of a measurement system to warn the organization of upcoming trends, performance issues, or opportunities.
How to get customer feedback
The ideal way to get customer feedback is:
Using interviews rather than paper or electronic surveys, because a human interviewer can gain more in-depth information while often achieving greater honesty
Interviewing both your customers and competitors' customers, to explore perceptions and relative strengths and weaknesses
Linking customer information with employee and operational information, to discover which internal issues directly affect customer satisfaction, retention, and market share
Interviewing customers constantly, with regular updates so that trends can be established and closely watched
Obtaining customer opinions via indirect methods, e.g. using the Internet and Usenet
Hooking up the customer information gathering with a strong customer recovery effort, because regaining old customers may be cheaper and easier than finding new ones - and because a recovered customer can be far more loyal than a new one!
While this is the ideal, many organizations do not have the resources to do it. Depending on their resources and needs, they may choose to do some of these, but not all of them.
