Customers Tell Listers What They Think!

Lister Trade Frames have just completed their latest ‘Customer Satisfaction Survey’ with their trade customers. With the current economic downturn in mind, and fingers crossed, they were hoping that the relationships that they have built up over the last 34 years were still as strong as ever. It is vital to look for ways that to make and keep customers happy. Listers know that one of the best ways to do this is by asking customers to tell you how they feel. Phil Warren, Listers Sales Director, was happily surprised with the latest response they received: “It’s always a little perturbing when you ask customers to complete a written survey on how your business is performing, but we feel that it is vital to do this on a regular basis.” Says Phil. “It may give you a bloody nose sometimes, but without feedback from your customers you may be unaware of just how they feel. Even worse, you may lose their business without ever knowing why!”

Listers survey contained two sections; the first part being multiple choice and the second asking for customers views on various aspects of the business from product quality to marketing support. The results collected showed that customers were highly satisfied with product quality, in fact, not one negative response to this question was received. Other areas for praise were staff helpfulness and delivery performance. One interesting result was that while Listers had areas for improvement, the overall performance across all areas of the business had shown consistent improvement over the last three years.

Phil Warren says that they welcome bad comments along with the good. “The truth is that Listers aren’t perfect. We make mistakes just like everyone else. What makes us different is that we invite customers to tell us where to improve because we want to do things better. We have now made several changes to our service because of this survey and this is already paying dividends with our customers.”

Asking customers what they think of your company is only part of the trick. Listening to them and then changing what you do and how you do it demonstrates that you really value their comments.