Introduction
Customer feedback is an underused way of measuring staff performance. We’re so anxious to discover what customers think of our business, we fail to ask them precisely how our employees performed. It’s so obvious, we forget to do it.
Performance Standards Are Essential
You can’t ask customers about staff performance if you don’t have clearly measurable performance standards. In fact, unless you have such standards, you yourself can’t measure staff performance properly.
Feedback Not Form Filling
Many companies use a form to ask for customer feedback. No one likes filling out forms. Your customers are no exception. Think carefully about asking them to complete a form. Phone calls or brief personal interviews are much better than forms. If you must use a form for customer feedback find an attractive inducement that benefits customers so that they’ll complete and return the form.
Show Customers You Are Serious
Leaving a blank form in a “prominent” place and doing nothing else isn’t enough. It doesn’t matter that the form says, “We value your feedback”. Customers realize that you don’t really value their opinion. Form design is important too. It’s easier for customers to tick boxes than to write statements. But a telephone or face to face interview shows that you’re genuinely interested in customers’ opinions.
Ask The Right Questions
You want your customers to tell you four things
- what they enjoyed about dealing with you
- what they didn’t like about dealing with you
- how they believe that you could improve the transaction
- whether your staff met your performance standards
Whether or not your staff meet your performance standards may also be part of the response to the first three objectives.
Be Specific
However you ask your questions, be specific. Say “Did the technician wear a clean uniform?” not “Was the technician clean and presentable?” If you use a form, use Yes/No responses or seek “percentage” answers e.g. “If you were rating the serviceman on a 1-10 scale, what score would you give for keeping you well informed?” Avoid generalizations.
A Case Study
One of my clients runs a home maintenance business. They phone every client the day after a job is completed. They base their questions entirely around performance standards. Depending on the “quality” of customer feedback, the employee gains up to 10 points towards a performance bonus. The system works very well. And it reinforces to employees the importance of meeting standards.
Conclusion
We have performance standards because they make good business sense. They also help to ensure that customers get what they want. It makes sense to involve customers to help you assess staff performance. It also shows that in your business, customer opinion is a valued measure of staff performance.
What To Do Now
List the performance standards that customers should experience. Write a question relating to each standard. Be careful to include all standards even if they seem small. What’s small to you may be big to customers. Prepare a script incorporating the questions. A script is essential. Determine what you want to say, the exact words to use and the order in which to use them.
Let me know how you get on. Get on the phone and ask and what you think of my link between customer feedback and staff performance.
