For the second year in a row, Allegiance was honored with the 2010 Service Leader Award for Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) by CRM Magazine. It especially gratifying to receive this award since customer satisfaction is one of the top criteria. Click here to read the full article.

The winner is selected through an extensive three-month process and proprietary rating formula that involves industry analysts, financial and corporate information, product and functionality assessments, and scores reflecting customer satisfaction.

Allegiance was rated highest among its competitors in helping businesses to perform surveys and collect feedback from multiple channels, including e-mail, Web, phone, print, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and social media. In addition, with the acquisition of Inquisite’s online survey software, we raised our already high score in the category of depth of functionality from the prior year.

But we are not resting on our laurels. We are busy planning the launch of an entirely new set of features and functions to help companies capitalize on customer and employee feedback. I hope you will plan to join us at the Allegiance Engage Summit in May 16 – 19, 2010 to hear all about it. For more on the summit, click here: http://engagesummit.com/

Working with Allegiance clients, I have discovered that the decision to implement a feedback management solution usually stems from the desire to show the company as caring and interested in the feelings of employees and customers. This is a good thing, altruistic in a way, and it always looks good when a company can say that they care… and mean it.

However, if you want customers and employees to participate in your company’s efforts to listen and respond to feedback, here are a couple of important steps to take as you roll out a new feedback management solution:

Analyze your feedback history
Have you asked for feedback before? Was there a previous method of gathering feedback?  Customers and employees may become a little wary if this comes out of the blue. Therefore, if you haven’t solicited feedback before, you may need to integrate this rollout as part of an overall company strategy or plan to ‘care more’ about their opinions, etc. Otherwise, it may just appear as the latest company albatross.

If you have used previous methods for gathering feedback, were they successful? Did you respond to concerns? Or do customers and employees have an apathetic attitude that nothing will be done, so why bother? Overcoming apathy may be difficult, so again, if this is incorporated within a corporate mission statement and overall company set of values, it will be much easier to gain acceptance.

Prepare your staff
A funny thing tends to happen when you solicit feedback…. people actually give it! That makes the early stages of a feedback management launch the most critical.  For example, one of my clients recently implemented a new “Voice of the Customer” product, and after the first month complained that, “there was no way we can keep up with the feedback!” The point here is that you are opening up a channel for people to voice their opinion, so get ready!

You should have already prepared your staff for the potential deluge of feedback that may be coming their way. Allow adequate resources and be ready to follow up! A catastrophic thing can happen if you implement your feedback solution and then do not follow through on responding to feedback—people will stop using it. For instance, when reviewing some survey responses from a company interested in garnering employee feedback, one employee left the survey blank except for an open-ended comment that simply said, “Why fill this out?  I know nothing will happen.” Be prepared to respond to all so that they will believe in your commitment to caring.

Analyze, prepare and be committed to follow through. It may not guarantee success, but it will go a long way to ensuring a positive outcome!

I was recently interviewed by Tom Hoffman of the 1to1 Blog about the growing use of smartphones and how it is affecting the collection of customer feedback.

In the interview, I mentioned that it is important to first realize that today’s customers are in charge of the conversation. They want to speak to the company in the channel or medium of their choice. The smartphone is becoming the platform that people use to run everything they do in life. Therefore, a growing number of companies are looking at using the smartphone to gather feedback and perform customer surveys.

When a company asks Allegiance whether they should implement mobile feedback, we respond in the same way we do to other channels or mediums. You first need to look at your demographics. If your customer base is using mobile, there is a good chance that they would be receptive to giving you feedback through a mobile interface. The customer experience is what is going to be driving that decision.

There is no question that smartphone adoption is exploding. Many companies are finding that by connecting with customers this way, they can tap into new and unexpected markets. Allegiance helps companies on a one-to-one basis by doing a needs analysis and use case scenarios. We help them understand if the time is right for them to use the mobile medium. A major goal of the analysis is to be able to correlate survey response rate and customer experience against overall customer retention and purchase volume. This is something we help companies to measure and map out.

With mobile feedback, it is not a question of if you should do it, it is a question of when. We advise companies to be open to new channels, but help them think it through and make a thorough analysis on paper first. If it makes sense, the next step is to test with a small audience. If that goes well, it can be rolled out on a larger scale.

To listen to the full interview, go to:
www.bit.ly/bH84AW