Improving the workshop experience with NPS feedback

“You’ve got to know what’s going on, if you don’t, then its like driving with a blindfold on.”

Q: Let’s start at the beginning, what is customer feedback?

“At its simplest, it’s having an open conversation with your customers so that you know what they think about your business. By knowing what your customers like and what they don’t like, you can easily see how to improve, you can stop losing customers unnecessarily and can catch any issues before they escalate or go online. Your customers are talking about you anyway – so you may as well know what they’re saying.”

Q: How can businesses use this to keep customers coming back?

“Feedback is the single greatest retention tool a business could have.  It often surprises people to learn that it costs up to 25x more to get a new customer than to retain an existing one – so it makes good sense to make sure your existing customers are happy. Happy customers become your best marketing by telling their friends and family about you and can even post online reviews – helping you to attract new customers too.”

Q: How can businesses get started collecting feedback?

“The best way to ask for feedback in the automotive industry is a post service text message requesting feedback. The message includes a link to provide feedback quickly and easily. Your workshop management system will likely have the ability to send the post service text message and you just need to add the feedback message and feedback link.”

Q: How can this help to bring in new business?

“Customer feedback is a measure of how likely customers are to recommend you and this feeds into your reputation. Once they’ve provided feedback, they can then be invited to post a Google review, and that helps to boost your online reputation.

When people are searching for a product or service, they often search Google and the search results will be ranked including best reviews. In fact, 90% of customers now trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. If you don’t have good reviews then you’re unlikely to appear on that first page and get that business. This impacts your ability to grow.

We have seen businesses achieve awesome results over a relatively short time by adding Google reviews to their feedback programme. One customer has grown their Google reviews by 175% in a few short months and another company has reported a two-fold increase in applications. So, it’s clear to see that word of mouth has gone digital and it spreads fast.”

Q: How can you use this to improve your team performance?

“The best use of customer feedback is to be transparent and share it with the team. When you’re in a team meeting, celebrate the great feedback and if there are issues, it’s good to discuss how to improve them together. It changes the conversation from the boss saying “this needs to improve” to the customer saying “this needs to improve” and it goes from being subjective to objective.”

Q: How can a business work out the financial risk of not taking feedback?

“Our customer experience report for the automotive servicing and repair industry shows that across the industry there’s an average of 9% in the passive and detractor audience.

When you consider your own business, if you knew that 9% of your business was at risk of not returning, would you act on it? I know I would.

To break it down for those new to Net Promoter Score, there are three types of customer groups.

First are promoters. These are the happiest customers who will likely tell their friends and family about your business – they are very valuable because they come back more often and spend more.

Then there are passives, who have had an indifferent experience and are unlikely to tell other people about your business. This customer segment could be easily swayed by competitors with a better offer.

Thirdly, there are unhappy customers who are called detractors, who are unlikely to return if their issue isn’t resolved. Even worse, they may be sharing their negative experience with friends and family or even worse – posting negative feedback online.

There is a great saying that you can manage what you measure and this applies to customer experience too. So if you don’t know what your Net Promoter Score is – it might be time to find out.”

Q: What recommendations do you have for a business not collecting feedback?

“It’s not too late to start. We recently published a customer experience report on the automotive servicing and repair industry.  I was quite surprised with how high the NPS score was, it’s higher than any other industry we work with. What this shows me is that those that are actively gathering customer feedback are really invested in growing their business. The challenge for those that aren’t measuring customer experience then is they don’t know how they compare.

When you’re running a busy business you often have blinkers on and sometimes, it’s those simple things that aren’t done that could really turn around the customer experience. You’ve got to know what’s going on, if you don’t, then its like driving with a blindfold on.