In a recent blog article, we wrote about the importance of communication, especially at a time of crisis. Communication with your customers, employees, and stakeholders is an essential part of reputation management. It allows you to control the narrative and prepare for a post-crisis world.

But it is easy to forget communication is a two-way street. You have to listen as well to receive any of the benefits. And you have to accept that you might not like what you hear.

Many businesses will say they listen to their customers. They send out surveys, ask for feedback, run focus groups. And with good reason.

Listening to your customers will:

1. Determine how your customers feel about you;
2. Help you improve and develop your products and services;
3. Gather business-specific data to highlight issues and problems;
4. Identify details about your products and services you might not know about; and
5. Make your customers realise you care, are appreciated and are empathetic to their needs.

After all, a happy and satisfied client is a retained and loyal client who is willing to refer you to their colleagues, family and friends.

Yes, the customer is not always right: Their memories might distort events, they might not know what they want and, if your survey is not handled correctly, you could only be listening to the screaming minority.

Of course, with professional customer feedback management, these issues can be handled. And you will be left with sentiment analysis, NPS and CES ratings and customer satisfaction scores. So, what happens if you just don’t like what you are hearing?

Are you willing to actively listen and then make the changes (sometimes dramatic) to your plans, products, services, staff, processes, pricing that they are telling you about? 

Are you guilty of not responding to customer feedback because you can’t face changing the way you work and what you offer because that’s how it’s always been done? Or because you simply know better?

What happens when you stop listening?

One example of not actively listening is good old Blockbuster. In the article How Customer Feedback Could Have Saved Industry Giants: Adapt or Die, BigMouthSurvey detailed how Blockbuster (among others) could still be relevant today if they had actively listened to customer feedback:

Blockbuster could have avoided its downfall if the company knew right away that customers were leaving the stores angry that they could not access new titles. They dismissed their competitors (and Netflix did try to work with them) and didn’t understand their customers were looking at alternatives provided by modern technology.

Blockbuster’s inability to actively listen to their customers and make the most of their competitive advantage led to the growth and dominance of Netflix today.

Collecting customer feedback is an easy process with the right tools in place. Start from the moment your leads arrive at your resort for a sales presentation. Then carry on right through to when they check out after their vacation. Then adapt to what your customers want. Or Die. 

Trite as it sounds: Customer feedback is knowledge, knowledge is power, and that’s what you need to make a success of your business. 

As we highlighted in our previous article, customer feedback alone is not enough. You need to listen to the people providing your products and services and dealing with the issues every day. You need to actively listen to your staff. Here’s why it’s so important:

Motivation

If they don’t feel listened to or appreciated, employee motivation and morale is seriously affected, and staff retention rates are impacted. Productivity levels decrease and they’ll simply go somewhere else. Not bothered by this. Just think of the costs and time spent on hiring and training their replacements. And your reputation will suffer too.

Crisis avoidance

Fostering a culture of openness, where staff feel secure to make comments and report on issues means businesses can avoid catastrophes. They can highlight potential hazards and let managers know if something is wrong so early action can be taken.

Business growth

Listening to the insights, experiences and ideas of your frontline staff from every department will help you understand your customers better. If there is a better way to do things, your staff will tell you – if you let them. That can only help you improve your products and services. 

Staff welfare

The new generation of workers is fully aware of the importance of mental health and personal growth. Listening to your employees allows managers to identify gaps in training and skills, burnout, bullying, discrimination and unsafe practices. Simply saying that you, as a manager, are unaware of what is happening in your business does not wash anymore. It’s time to listen and act.

Start listening today

Learning to actively listen and act on what you’re hearing is a process we all have to learn. So, we have put together 15 top tips to help you – you’ll find them here on our website. These are based on the experience of our team who have worked throughout the timeshare and fractional industry in development, management, finance, sales and marketing.

We would enjoy hearing your experiences of active listening and how it has helped your business. Drop us a line at info@quickmerlin.com and share your thoughts.