Internal Stakeholder Feedback is vital
Do you really understand what your internal stakeholder wants from your customer feedback programme? Whilst asking customers for feedback is relatively straight forward the challenge of converting that into action still remains, and misunderstanding your internal stakeholder customer needs can be a key barrier.
When there is not enough focus placed on understanding the needs of internal stakeholder customers we hear stories of research data being presented to management teams and then being frustrated that not enough is being done with the findings. Clearly this may be down to a lack of will or resource issues, but often we find it is more to do with “making it easy” for the management team. With recent focus on measuring the Customer Effort, there has been little focus on “Management Effort”! Make it easy for your management team to understand the feedback and make it easy for them to act upon it. So how do you do that?
You need to start with trying to understand what may have caused this situation? The number one issue may well be that no one has recently asked the recipients of the data what they need from it and how best to present it. Customer Champions’ approach has been to include a stage whereby key stakeholders are interviewed to gather their thoughts and requirements. What is it that they want to do that they can’t currently do? What is the one key question they are looking for this feedback to answer? What level of detail are they looking for, and what do they think their teams need?
Many customer feedback programmes have been in place for a number of years and the tendency is to focus on the mechanics of gathering and presenting the data – typically the role of a traditional Market Research Manager. What we are finding is that Insight Managers are much more about thinking how their stakeholders want to use that feedback so that change can take place. Understanding those stakeholder needs has to be an excellent starting place either for a new programme or the review of an established one.
If you would like to hear more about understanding stakeholder needs do get in touch.