Taking Action

The quality-versus-quantity strategic debate is decades old and still doesn't have a one-size-fits-all answer. But there's one decision rule the winners all follow: pick a position and be ruthless about it. Wolters Kluwer's CX regional manager Janine Scott on why service innovation matters as much as product innovation, and how to choose between the two paths.

5 Whys is the most cited and most under-used quality tool in customer feedback. Done well, it converts "interesting verbatim comment" into root causes and action plans. Done poorly, it stops at symptoms. This 30-minute on-demand webinar covers what 5 Whys is, how to apply it to customer feedback, and when it's the right tool, versus when something else is.

Once customers have given you feedback, they want to see something happen — and most companies quietly skip that loop. Closing it the right way doesn't just increase loyalty; it lifts the response rate next time too. Here's a short video on how to show customers you've heard and acted, with the B2B and B2C variants laid out.

Aberdeen's 2012 Customer Feedback Management report draws the obvious conclusions about successful versus laggard companies, and a meta-analysis of the same data quietly says something more useful. The biggest differences aren't about collecting feedback. They're about what successful firms do with it. Here are the five specific moves the leaders make that the laggards don't.

Your customer loyalty survey is only as good as the list of attributes it asks about, miss the things that matter to customers and the data is quietly wrong. Here are three ways to build that "big list" properly, drawing on staff knowledge, desk research and customers themselves, so the survey collects feedback on what actually moves loyalty.

Most new product development is done by guessing what customers want, then surveying them at the end to confirm. Customer co-creation flips that. After 18 months working with a financial services client that ran an online conversational community alongside focus groups, here are four ways to involve customers in NPD that lower risk and lift relevance.