marketing, hiring, painting contractor, business coach, sales

How to Get Honest Feedback From Customers to Improve Your Customer Service

Many times after we are finished with a project we would ask the home-owner how it went…

Most of them were very polite and said, “Oh, it went great.”

I could never get anything specific from them that we could improve on.

Of course, we always wanted to keep improving in every area, especially with our customer service and customer experience.

What we do now is use a variation of Jack Welch’s net promoter at the end of every job, instead of asking, “how did we do,” I ask two questions.

The first question I ask is,

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how was your experience with the team?”

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Notice, I didn’t say it about us or our company, I put it on them so that I could get an honest reaction or an honest reply from them.

The second question I asked was based on their answer to question one.

For example, if they gave us a 7, I would say, “thank you.”

You don’t get offensive and you don’t make any excuses, no matter what their answer is.

So you would ask them,

“Thank you. What would make it an 8?”

Now we are getting awesome feedback!

Some feedback that we would’ve never noticed, such as,

“One of the guys showed up late,” or, “the guys were on their phones all day.”

Or maybe one of them parked on the customer’s grass or flicked a cigarette on their lawn.

Whatever it might be, there is a whole like a bunch of fun ones that come to mind.

They are funny now, they weren’t funny then…

Here is what the scale means:

  • 1-6 means they would probably never use you again.
  • 7 or 8 means they’ll use you again unless they find somebody else a couple dollars cheaper.
  • It’s only a 9 or a 10 that we’ve actually absolutely crushed it and earned a raving fan and they don’t mind paying a couple more dollars for our service.

The key is customer experience.

We can’t offer top-shelf customer experience unless we know exactly what’s going on out there.

Take these scores back and track them, and give them back to your team and let them know in front of their crew.

Just say, “John, your crew scored a 9 with Mrs. Jones, way to go!”

If they don’t get some awesome feedback, then don’t put that out for the whole company to know.

Just reach out to your crew leader directly, “hey look, your crew was rated a 7. She said this is what would have made it an 8.”

Then you can just have a growing conversation about it, just to level up the leadership skills!

So those are the two questions that can help you get honest feedback from your customers so that you can keep improving on your customer service!

If you’d like more, pick up my book while it’s free, just pay for shipping, $6.97 and I’ll send you the book here. I’ll also include a copy of the DYB System here.

About the Author

As a newly single father of two from MI, he struggled to start over as a paint contractor in FL, going door to door. His situation was so bad, even the IRS had mercy on him.

 Feeling completely hopeless, he remembered the story of King Solomon praying for wisdom. Could it be so easy? 

He felt he had absolutely nothing to lose. So, as a bankrupt, divorced, high school dropout, single father of 2 young kids, now living 1250 miles away from all friends and family, started to pray for wisdom.
 And while he continues to wait for the wisdom to arrive, what did come was an insatiable desire to learn and read books… 
Thanks to God for giving him the burning passion to read books, and attend seminars, (oh and winning the wife lottery) he not only cracks the success code and overcomes the struggle, but also streamlines his painting business in less than 3 years, published a how to book, then sold the company. Now he leads a business coaching company for painting contractors so he can help other businesses, like yours, to do the same. Hear more... http://www.DYBCoach.com/01 Or JoinDYB.com