The Value of Customer Feedback

We all enjoy being told how great our products and services are. how useful is this to the business and its quest for continuous improvement?

We tend to receive lovely thank you cards from wedding clients and from guests who organise larger events such as Conference Dinners. However, obtaining feedback from smaller, regular delivered buffet customers can be more tricky. So how do we go about this?

The typical question often asked in restaurants is: “Is everything all right for you”. Being a closed question its probably only going to be answered by a straight Yes or No. This does not give the business enough information to make relevant changes, small as they could be to their offer. Only if the food or service was either sub-standard or simply excellent would the guest be likely to give further feedback which could then be used constructively.

So how can we gain more valuable insights into what our guests and clients really think about our food, menus and service?

For a number of years we have had wonderful advice from Andy Hanselman Consulting.

Andy has suggested some questions which are likely to give much more constructive feedback than the typical closed type enquiry. Here is a selection:

1. why do you buy from us? 

2. when do you buy from us? 

3. what would you do if we weren’t here? 

4. what one thing could we do better? 

5. name one individual who has particularly impressed you 

6. if carlsberg ran our business, what would it look like?  

7. name one thing that we do or don’t do that irritates or annoys you? 

8. who can we learn from? 

9. what would you say to someone else who asked you about us? 

10. what is the one thing we should never stop doing? 

By trying to change the emphasis of the language within the questions we ask to reflect some of these more open questions we have been able to gain much more valuable insights. Often it starts a conversation which allows us to find out more about what issues the customer has and how we can help solve them. Amongst other factors we have learnt that our clients often do not realise the full range of services we offer, perhaps have higher budgets than we assumed and we have gained knowledge about future requirements.

Our on-line booking system has automated some of the process involved in seeking guest feedback and the results are interesting:

It would be easy to simply pat ourselves on the back and be happy with our average score of 4.9 out of 5. Apart from the opportunity to thank the guest this would not particularly move the business forwards.

However, interestingly the most useful feedback were the two least good scores of 4.5 and 4.75. This is because the guests on these occasions outlined what would have increased their score to a five. In these cases we were able to review our offer, make changes and then get back to the client to not only thank then but explain how useful their feedback had been. In both cases the client felt listened to and as a result our relationship was actually strengthened. Without having given them the opportunity to feedback the opposite would likely have been the case.