As reported by Gartner*, "Feedback management technologies will be the top investment made in 2009 to improve customer experience.”
Businesses invest in Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) to manage customer experience on two levels:
- Act on individual customer experience, e.g. reach out to customers that have indicated a high level of dissatisfaction.
- Act on aggregated customer experience, e.g. improve various customer programs and functions.
In both instances, the potential return on a business' EFM initiatives is linked to feedback trends: Are our customers more satisfied now than previously?
Typically, businesses measure and act on customer feedback, and use trend data to validate customer experience improvements.
But as businesses rely only on their own in-house trend data, have they really unleashed the true potential of their efforts to improve? How can they know that their own isolated performance is a good one?
In our view, it is essential that companies not only rely on trend data to gauge improvements, but also compare their own data with industry feedback benchmark data. Analyzing its own isolated trend data, a company may improve its customer experience, but still be way behind its competitors.
* Gartner, Inc. "Predicts 2009: CRM Customer Service and Support" by Jim Davies, November 10, 2008.
