In my experience, Marketing folk tend to be less process oriented than other people in the enterprise, and when one talks to them about business workflow you can see their eyes glazing over. One gets the feeling that they would rather be watching a presentation on Paint Drying.But if you subtly rebrand workflow as "Feedback Management" and explain that it helps to keep promises to customers" the excitement visibly level rises. In simple terms, that's workflow in CustomerGauge. It stops you forgetting that Client X wanted his missing part sent that you promised. By the way, if you do forget this, you'll definitely turn he/she into a detractor.
Workflow in CustomerGauge
If you are a regular reader, you will not be surprised to learn that CustomerGauge has a built in workflow Feedback Management system (another clue is in our tagline: Measure, Understand, Respond). It works like this: The customer (or internal user) can trigger a workflow item - a message is sent to the relevant department saying an issue with Client X is OPEN and the item is put in a queue; they then follow it up and mark it CLOSED; the loop is closed by a report showing the age of any OPEN items in a queue. That way any customer issue (complaint or praise) can be put to bed.CustomerGauge has a template for a basic workflow "out of the box" which can be implemented rapidly (our design principle was "Just Add Water", or in this case "Just Add Customer Service Agents"). More extensive workflows can be built including a final loop with the customer asking "Did we fix your problem?" and so on.See a 2-minute presentation here (click for full size).
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You may not find it workflow exciting, but your customers will. Often, all they ask for is that you keep your promises. Remember, the reason that most customers defect is Indifference to Complaint.
Historical Note:
Actually the whole simple workflow thing came about because of a visionary Vice President I worked for at Sony in 2004. Until I met him, I worked under the Marketing Manager Customer Survey Standard Operating Procedure which is largely Ignoring Customer Feedback from Surveys or At Least Waiting Until Enough Time Has Gone By That It Can Be Safely Ignored It. I'm sure all marketing people know what I mean - yes, you! With your results from the 2007 survey locked in your desk with no responses - I'm talking to you!But VP Gildas P insisted to me that we follow up all 250 customer feedback items we had just gathered within a week! An impossible task - I told him. However, it wasn't. Of course it was possible (with some effort - we did it using Excel and scraps of paper). And it changed the way I thought about feedback. Dealing with the Voice of the Customer plus Net Promoter was the way forward. So that's why CustomerGauge has this stuff built in - because if you ask the Customer for feedback, and the take the time to give it to you, we think you should be polite enough to deal with it and make sure you acknowledge it! Did I tell you about our built-in email engine as well? Ah well, maybe another time...
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