Feeling Heard through Feedback

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Everyone says they’re committed to 5-star service. But how are they actually proving it?

Today I’m going to share how to rise to your commitment, set expectations, and collect the testimonials so everyone (who’s not yet a client) can see how epic it is to work with you.

As a bonus, I’ll even share my favorite tool so you can start to collect those amazing testimonials.

Everyone just wants to be heard. We want to know that our partners, our employees, and our service providers understand us.

Most importantly, your Clients want to know that you understand them and are going to do everything in your power to support them.

When we create channels for communication and feedback, this is an immediate signal that we are open to listening.

However, this gets lost when the message is shared with the “appropriate” person in your organization (just like in the game of telephone).

The Ritz Carlton, one of the most famous hotel companies in the world that is known for their service, has designed a complex guest tracking tool that empowers any employee to submit feedback and/or preferences so that everyone can have access to it.

This system, the CRM tool combined with superb training and listening skills, is one of the (many) components that creates the allure for their world class service.

There are many tools available to collect feedback from your clients/guests.

The most common ones you see are those thank you emails from your local coffee shop with a 😬 or a ☹️.

After pressing them, a text box prompts for more information.

Another one is through Google Reviews, which enhances your SEO and trust.

The tools are not as important as the strategy (which we’ll dive into the customer journey in another post).

It’s important to know that clients are experiencing your promise.

And if there not, giving them the opportunity to voice their concerns so you can make it right.

Short answer: Just ask them to

Long answer: Although clients are willing to share their thoughts, sometimes they do not know how to. When we ask people to “Share their thoughts,” the range of responses can be so vast that in the end they are not useful for us in understanding what was amazing and what can be improved.

When asking for feedback, be sure to include specific questions about how working together helped achieve a specific result.

Sometimes you can incentivize them to share their thoughts with a gift card. (Although this might be sending the wrong message)

We can strive to create such an amazing experience that people will want to share not only with us, but with everyone in their network.

Here are a few (not boring) sample questions that you can use:

When clients share they have had an amazing experience, we ask if we can use their exact words as testimonials on our site.

Sometimes, we invite them to record a quick video (nowadays, videos are trending).

Our favorite tool to collect video testimonials is testimonial.to

It allows us to centralize all of the text/video submissions, and also allows us to snip LinkedIn, Google, Yelp, and any other third party review sites to put everything in one place.

It’s truly magical. (see below for our wall of love)

These testimonials can be used externally for marketing purposes and internally for storytelling purposes to rally your teams.

It’s always great to see how our clients are thriving through our contribution

The world is moving fast (and only getting faster).

People are busy and they don’t make time to share their thoughts.

Although 90% of your clients may never leave feedback, you are still responsible for understanding their experience.

Perhaps this is an invitation to focus on the 3 critical touch points you are currently focusing on.

Every company is on their own learning journey.

If you have any questions on how to get started with Feedback, drop them below