ServiceDigiCulture Toolkit and Training

Cruising the problem area

COLLECTING AND ANALYSING CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

45-60 minutes/ non-specified as it can last up to a few days or be ongoing

Phone/meeting place/online platforms
Paper, templates
Pens
Voice recording devices or applications
Online and offline data collection methods, even sticky notes or social media

What is this tool and what is its purpose and benefit?

The aim of ‘collecting and analysing customer feedback’ is to ask current customers about their experience using the service and analyse this feedback. For example, a hotel may ask about customers’ experiences staying there. Feedback helps in defining the problem area to solve. It can for instance reveal what customers like, how they feel about services and products, what an organisation is doing right, but it also provides information about needs and modifications required by customers.

Customer feedback can provide valuable information for the problem area and narrow it towards the root cause to be tackled at the Research phase. Earlier feedback can also be analysed in order to identify the problem.

Steps how to use this tool in practice

The same steps apply when working individually, in pairs or in a group. Tasks can be divided when using it in pairs or a group.

STEP 1

Start by collecting feedback from your customers by choosing what kind of information to collect, from whom, and for which purpose.

STEP 2

Choose the most appropriate way to collect customer feedback. There are many informal and formal ways to collect feedback, for example interviews, online platforms, social media, online surveys, word of mouth feedback, feedback notes, templates to collect it at events, drawing pictures, taking photos of the service, or informal discussion. Select the methods that can provide you with the best information and start preparing the interviews including materials needed for interviews. You can choose for example 2-3 different methods to collect feedback. Sometimes one method is enough. You can find more information about different methods online. Make sure you have saved the feedback data and that you have access to all the feedback you have collected.

STEP 3

Categorise the collected feedback data by sentiments (i.e. like-dislike), key word or aspect (i.e. “discount”), or topic (i.e. web store functionality). You can use separate spreadsheets for each category so that you can compare the data sets. You can also write the categories on big sheets of paper or whiteboard and add different findings on sticky notes that you move around between categories.

STEP 4

Look at the data collected in each category, and identify which aspects and issues stand out the most from the data. For example, what are the customers happiest or most disappointed about? For each area of deficiency, analyse the root cause(s) taking into account positive and negative answers. This helps you to define what you need to focus on in research.

STEP 5

List your main findings for the following steps.

Tips and hints for using this tool

In addition to collecting feedback for a specific purpose, feedback should be collected regularly.
This tool can also be used in the research phase when asking about a specific problem that has already been identified.
If you have multiple sets of feedback collected at different times, you can identify and visualise changes in the data to see if there are any changes or improvements.
There are many digital tools that can help with data collection and analysis, such as Survey Monkey. Many of these enable visualising data which can be useful in understanding and analysing customer feedback.
Social media can also be harnessed to collect customers’ comments.
This tool may also be used for investigating how customers see you as a CCS sector professional. This helps to see if your own identity corresponds to customers’ perception.