This was the question raised following our discovery that a massive 47 per cent of Brits would lie by claiming everything was fine when asked by a member of staff about their experience in a shop, restaurant or hotel, even when it wasn’t.

As customer feedback experts we expected to find that we are a nation reluctant to speak our minds when faced with that awkward question “How was your meal sir?”. We’ve all been in that situation in a restaurant where the food is so bad you vow never to return, but when the waiter smilingly asks you those few words, you respond, “lovely thanks”.

The hairdressing salon is another setting where customer satisfaction tends to be gauged using face-to-face or paper feedback. But being asked to critique a staff member while they hold a mirror up to your head, or on a feedback card that is identifiable as yours, takes real guts and a resolve that many of us just don’t posses.

Being confronted with a question about your experience in this way can be disconcerting and prevent you from sharing your true feelings. It’s also very likely that you would later voice your bad experience online or share it with a friend, and you probably won’t be returning.

In last month’s blog we revealed how half of the people we polled said the opportunity to give feedback, there and then, would prevent them from sharing criticisms on social media sites or putting a bad review on sites like TripAdvisor.

Customer feedback is our area of expertise, we know that providing the opportunity for customers to feedback anonymously, using discreet and easy-to-use technology, is vital for ongoing business success. Strong feedback, that has been given anonymously using specially tailored questions to suit your business, can highlight minor and even major flaws in your service delivery or highlight staff training needs.

Companies should consider dumping old fashioned feedback methods and investing in a solution which allows their customers to vent anonymously without being forced to remove their good-old British reserve.

Contact one of the Customer First Solutions team on 0844 847 0851 to find out how we can help you gain honest feedback from your customers.

Given that we specialise in customer feedback solutions it’s no surprise we’re interested in what this means for businesses.

So, our curiosity got the better of us and we launched a UK poll to find out what motivates people to use review sites and whether they can be deterred from posting negative experiences. We wanted to know what’s really going on in the minds of our feedback nation.

Our poll of over 2,000 Brits returned some insightful results. Nearly half (43 per cent) of the people we polled had taken the time to review holidays and hotels, while 25 per cent log on to rate restaurants. It seems we are more willing than ever to share our hospitality experiences with others.

Perhaps most interestingly, we discovered that over half of Brits would be more likely to return to a hotel, restaurant or shop where they had experienced bad service, if they’d been given the chance to share or redress their concerns at the point of payment.

With a growing number of us turning to the web to share stories of stroppy waitresses or slow room service, it was interesting to discover that people can be deterred from leaving negative comments if they are given the opportunity to raise their concerns at the time.

It really goes to show that giving customers the chance to feed back could decrease negative online reviews, but could it also save businesses millions in lost custom?

Showing customers that you value their views will not only ensure they keep coming back but will also allow you to address any criticisms before they have a chance to get online. If you’re seeing negative feedback online, it’s too late.

The poll found:
- Britain’s male population were 10 per cent more likely to speak out about a bad experience with 60 per cent of men saying they would tell the truth
- Young Brits (16-24 year-olds) proved the most timid in sharing honest feedback with 58 per cent admitting they’d lie about their experience
- The over 55s were more like likely to give restaurant staff a grilling with just a third (37 per cent) likely to lie about the quality of their supper
- Across the regions diners in Norwich (37 per cent) and Liverpool (39 per cent) proved most likely to give honest feedback, while Cardiff (53 per cent) and Belfast (58 per cent) proved less likely to tell the truth

After establishing the blog in April, Martha begin posting a daily round-up of what she was served for lunch each day at school. In addition to posting a photograph of her plate she assessed the quality of her lunch by mouthfuls, a health rating, her food-o-meter and more comically the number of hairs she found in each dish (which thankfully were few and far between).

Interest grew in her daily journal and it wasn’t long before pupils around the world began following suit, sending her pictures of their own school lunches from countries including North America, Sweden and Japan. After being inundated she began comparing her lunches with international counterparts and the public interest soared, with the blog receiving over two million hits in just over two months.

But everything changed on the 14th June when Martha was pulled out of class by her head teacher where she was told she was no longer allowed to post photos of her meals on the NeverSeconds blog.

When I heard this, like countless others across the world, I held my head in despair. What followed was an unprecedented wave a public support for Martha’s blog, with the ban revoked by lunchtime and rather busy communications department at Argyll and Byte Council left to deal with the aftermath of the event.

A spokesperson at Argyll and Bute claimed that outward criticism gave the school and council a bad image. But this was a missed opportunity to engage with the customer, the school children that purchase their meal each day. While a pupil complaining about the meals might raise concerns about quality, Martha was activity providing constructive comments about how school lunches could be improved.

Feedback like this is a fantastic opportunity to boost customer satisfaction and I would argue that negative reviews are infinitely more valuable than good ones. Whilst positive comments may momentarily boost morale and make you aware of one happy customer it doesn’t mean you don’t need to improve the service you provide, it means you just don’t know in their eyes how you can.

What became a rather embarrassing episode for the council, who failed to embrace the feedback in the good nature it was intended, demonstrates why negative feedback should be welcomed. And rather than viewing such comments as a threat the school and the local authority should have viewed them as two distinct opportunities.

Firstly the chance to better understand their customer and ensured whatever experience they may have had could be turned into a positive one. Secondly, to use this information to remedy the problem area to ensure future customers won’t encounter a similar problem.

Even then this approach only works for the customers you can actually hear. Clearly Martha is an exceptional individual who went to great efforts to have her voice heard but you can’t expect this from all your customers.

The only way to improve your customers’ experience is to actively ask them what they think and listen carefully to their response.

For many organisations this idea completely conflicts with gut instinct – surely the last thing you want is for consumers to see negative reviews from other customers? Let me explain why this is exactly what you should be doing.

It’s all too easy to use a satisfaction score to test the temperature of customer satisfaction and think your work here is done. Perhaps you complete your customer research and discover a 95 per cent satisfaction level. A great result which most companies would rightly want to celebrate and can be a morale boost internally for hard working staff.

But let’s reflect on this for a moment and consider the 5 per cent of customers that aren’t satisfied with the service. Those customers that have been let down by a poor experience and you don’t know how or why?

Equally why should your customers care about how well you have performed in the view of other consumers? The most important experience to them of course is their own.

Reevoo highlights the 89 per cent of customers say they don’t trust reviews or feedback where there are no negatives listed. They are sceptical about a business who claims that it never receives any negative or challenging feedback. So why not be open about the ways you are dealing with constructive criticism to make changes your customers want.

As a consumer, I am interested in speaking to real people about my experience, not in listening to a corporate marketing team telling me what they think I want to know. If I walk into a shop and see a service update from the local manager explaining what changes they are making to improve my customer experience then I will take notice and feel more positive all round.

From my years of experience working in retail and in particularly as a specialist in customer experience I can tell you that I’m not the only one that feels this way. Customers know that no business is perfect all of the time.

I also understand that when gathering real, in-the-moment feedback the biggest challenge for many businesses isn’t in telling customers where they are doing well, it’s where they are working hard to improve but it doesn’t have to be difficult, expensive or time-consuming.

Put simply, bad reviews can be really good for business. At a local level they allow you to understand what your real, regular customers actually want. These are the voices of the customers that could be visiting hundreds of times a year, not a faceless mystery shopper or ‘sample‘ of customers who have probably never visited your town or high street.

For a truly local insight into your service, get in touch with us and be amazed by what we can show you!

Much of the news surrounding customer service lately has been centred around ‘social’ and how companies are handling consumer feedback through Twitter and Facebook.

The concern is that whilst it is positive that customer service teams are making the most of the value of an interactive social media presence, it is important that this supplements real world feedback strategies rather than replacing them.

Twitter is a useful platform to handle customer complaints, but its main purpose can be split into two key areas: defusing an irate customer who has received substandard service or using a customer’s message as a perfect opportunity to develop their PR.

Equally, there is also visible growth in automated customer care systems that can resolve simple queries quickly. This, however, isn’t a way of managing customer service. It is a way of resolving questions that haven’t been answered through traditional communications channels.

Such an approach doesn’t necessarily allow a company to monitor where customers may be unhappy or where important information isn’t being communicated effectively. It also lacks that vital human interaction that can be what is required to manage a dissatisfied customer.

Both these approaches are useful in managing the extremes but lack the detail that day-to-day monitoring can provide. Focusing time and resources solely on complaints and comments that come through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are a great way to manage disgruntled customers and build a community amongst brand advocates. But you miss out on engaging with the large number of people who might not use social media and a huge customer base that are relatively satisfied or ‘okay’ with the service you provide, but might provide valuable insight if someone just asked them.

These indifferent customers are less likely to demonstrate loyalty but are a very valuable source of information. Asking these customers what they think about your service makes it possible to detect subtle trends that could indicate an underlying business issue that might be easily addressed. In most cases the root causes behind these satisfaction trends can be remedied quickly and easily – you just need to identify what they are.

Most importantly taking the time to listen helps show your ‘okay’ customers that you care about their experience might be just what they need to transform them from just being simply satisfied to loyal customers.

On the face of it, this description is drawing attention to the fact that we have come a long way from the traditional view of the computer being a grey box that sits on a person’s desk at home.

Technological developments and the ever increasing intensity of day-to-day life mean that most of us have grown used to having access to the world in our pockets and the ability to have our say instantly.

Considering this, it is astonishing that a number of establishments base their entire feedback strategy on the hope that customers will go home and comment on their experience online, or even more worryingly by filling out a paper form and popping it in the post.

Web surveys are great for collecting in-depth comments, but are at their most useful when combined with solutions that allow customers to give feedback quickly in store.

This way a company can build an accurate picture of what the majority of their customers feel, whilst at the same time offering people the chance to expand on their answers once they get home.

At CFS we believe it’s vital customers have the opportunity to have their say there and then. Not only can you collect a much larger sample of feedback, but also get an instant response which allows you to identify potential problem areas quickly and easily.

One of the ways that customers can do this is on the types of handheld devices they are used to using on a day-to-day basis. This is why we developed the PrismApp which is designed for the iPad and other tablet computers. This has already proved to be a popular choice alongside our other solutions.

Building on this, I would like to present the case that listening to your staff is an activity that shouldn’t be confined to your HR department.

Your employees are your eyes and ears. They are often on the frontline delivering your products and services to customers and can offer a different perspective on how certain aspects of your businesses run.

So, in addition to simply using surveys as a temperature check of staff satisfaction, let me challenge you to consider whether your employees hold the key to valuable revenue-generating insight. All you have to do is ask.

The Daily Mirror recently reported a prime example of employee engagement carried out well whilst having a strong positive impact on the company’s bottom line.

When British Airways asked staff to suggest ways its company’s operations could be improved one engineer’s idea saved them an astonishing £600,000. How? Simply descaling the fleet’s pipes to reduce weight, save fuel and reduce emissions.

This was just one of the many bright ideas that were responsible for efficiency savings estimated at over £20 million all as a result of one survey.

The act of opening up to your employees’ views can also have a profound effect on staff morale. By involving the whole team in the decision making process you show them you value their input.

But there is no reason why such an exercise needs be a one-off. Considering the positive impacts it can have for your company it makes business sense to be listening all year round.

Wrong, since 2009, we’ve recorded a fourfold increase in the number of customers leaving feedback in response to our clients’ satisfaction surveys. This rise in customers engaging with in-store feedback devices has in fact been sharper since the UK high-street started to struggle, as businesses can see the value in becoming more customer focused.

Retailers that were generating nearly 1.3 million responses annually three years ago now achieve 6.8 million in a like-for-like comparison. This means that in 2011 we were recording a response every 4.6 seconds for one of our clients

Despite the challenging economic climate we believe these statistics show that businesses are recognising the ever increasing importance of listening and responding to their customers’ views. This has been evident in the number of companies that have been keen to work with us to develop their customer strategies. More and more are offering simple ways for their customers to tell them what they think.

Technological advancements, like the development of our SmartBox and iPad apps, make it easier for customers to respond to surveys and equally simple for companies to analyse and act upon the data they collect. Unlike traditional paper surveys, in-store devices allow for a range of five critical questions to be answered in 15 – 20 seconds, so customers are more inclined to have their say.

Often we have found that the smallest changes make all the difference to the in-store experience and it is these improvements that can ensure customer loyalty. Technological developments in online reporting systems allow staff to monitoring satisfaction down to the day, hour or even minute, making it easier to identify problem areas and resolve them.

Even though retailers are facing greater challenges with tightening budgets it is promising to see that many firms are rightly making customer satisfaction a top priority. We firmly believe this trend is set to continue as more companies looking to their customers to find ways to improve and recognising the impact this can make to their bottom line.

At a glistening ceremony at the London Marriott Hotel in Mayfair, we received a finalist position in the prestigious Institute of Customer Service’s, 2012 Customer Satisfaction Awards in the Kcom Customer Feedback Strategy category.

We were commended for our work with Argos to support the delivery of its impressive vision to become a customer focused organisation. Over the last three years CFS has worked with the company to enhance customer experience as part of a wider customer focused strategy.

As well as developing a bespoke online system called Tell Argos, we work with the retailer to capture and analyse feedback using in-store point of experience technology. The shift towards Argos being more customer-centric now sees our feedback devices collect on average 165,000 responses to our customer survey every week.

Managing director of CFS, Helen Pearson, said: “We are very proud to see our work being recognised as being at the forefront of customer service best practice. Giving customers the chance to have their say can help businesses pinpoint where improvements could be made and often it’s very simple changes that can make the difference to customer experience.”

Rob Hiden, Front of House Manager for Store Operations at Argos, said: “We are delighted to be announced as a finalist at the Institute of Customer Service’s, 2012 Customer Satisfaction Awards. It is a reflection of the hard work and commitment shown by our stores, field teams and store operations.

“Our feedback programme has been an essential part of our service journey over the last two years and we are proud to be recognised by such a professional body.”

At the awards CFS and Argos were acknowledge alongside Debenhams, Virgin Media and BMW.

• Ensure senior management are involved
• Communicate previous results
• Keep surveys simple and as short as possible
• Keep it anonymous
• Look for creative ways to engage colleagues in the survey
• Avoid meaningless questions

These are all valid points but I would ask, why only once a year? Once a year allows for numerous factors to influence results. It may well be that there are certain periods in the year when colleague morale is notably higher or lower. Capturing feedback at these times can significantly alter outcomes of the survey. Colleagues quite often think of the present when completing surveys, not what was happening 3, 6 or 9 months ago.

Why not talk to colleagues more often using the BuzzBox or SmartBox from CFS. These can take a regular ‘temperature check’ to ascertain the level of colleague morale? Once a quarter for example would keep colleague feedback high on the management agenda and can help to identify and resolve issues at the earliest possible opportunity. It may even highlight issues that would ordinarily pass without a comment during an annual survey as they’ve been forgotten by the time the survey occurs.

Regular ‘temperature checks’ do not need to be long winded, or expensive. They can be a short, pertinent 4-5 question quick survey. A longer survey could still run alongside with the same questions incorporated for a more thorough comparison. A longer survey could also be placed for colleagues to complete ad-hoc whenever they wanted to go into potential issues in more detail.

Annual surveys can also suffer from long turnaround timelines, especially if they are complex. Too often colleagues are issued with the findings 2-3 months after a survey and it can take the senior teams even longer to filter down their resulting action plans. It is imperative that there is limited lag between surveying colleagues and delivering feedback so that all parties can become engaged in meaningfully proposing solutions to arising issues.

… and the results of a ‘temperature check’ survey can be available as early as the next day. If anything seems a concern it can then be examined in greater detail.