Lee Halpin, Technical Manager, @sipp
For the last year, you will no doubt have noticed that the emails you receive from us offer the option to give customer experience feedback. With one-click from a simple 4-point scale (Red, Amber, Green and Gold) you can tell us how you think we are doing.
There is also the option to leave additional comments, but that is totally at your discretion.
This type of feedback survey is, of course, not unique to @sipp. On the contrary, its use continues to increase across most sectors. To illustrate this point the particular survey tool we use (- customer thermometer) has over 10,000 users – from bakeries to multi-national banks.
With our one year anniversary of launching this tool approaching, we thought it appropriate to share how we believe we have put the feedback received to good use and, in turn, clearly illustrate the continued benefit of giving us your feedback.
Positive feedback is naturally always good to hear, and the vast majority of feedback to date is of a positive nature.
But for us, the real benefit of such feedback is that it provides a real-life example of what good or great service looks like and allows us to set clear, perceptible benchmarks for all of our staff to aim for in their day-to-day jobs.
As would be expected, it also helps us to recognise and ultimately reward our staff for going the extra mile. Clearly, for any employer, the ability to retain such staff can only be an obvious mutual benefit for all stakeholders.
Inevitably, not all feedback is positive in nature.
But having the ability to receive real-time feedback gives us the ability to take appropriate, timeous action. Where we have not met your expectations, for whatever reason, this type of early warning system has, quite simply, enabled us to be responsive and has typically allowed us to put most things right quickly and with as little hassle as possible.
Whether you primarily use us when dealing with a commercial property transaction or because you see a clear benefit in the savings a fixed price pension wrapper gives over the long term, or something else in between, underpinning this has to be fantastic customer service.
We hope that you would agree that the ability for the customer to decide what is good, bad or indifferent, is what really matters, as we prefer not to attempt to judge these things in a vacuum. Ultimately, what will determine our success is how we react and respond to our customers and their needs.
Thank you for all your feedback to date. We hope as many of our customers as possible proactively engage with us (we will be listening!), and we hope our adoption of the customer thermometer has given a simple and easy way of doing this.