Our recent experience has thrown up some very sharply differing views on the best way to gain customer feedback. We think there is a 'right' way and 'wrong' way.

In summary, the most success seems to be when you:

1. Keep it short (2-3 questions)
2. Make it real-time, or as close to that as you can get.
3. Feedback should be attributable - known customer, staff member, location, etc.
4. Volumes need to be high enough that the results are valid.

All sounds obvious? But many companies still rely on customer satisfaction or NPS measures that are long-winded, post-hoc, unattributable and low volume. If so, by the time you survey them the customer can't quite remember what they were either happy or annoyed about when they were served, you can't take the feedback to the staff member for coaching or continuous improvement, and anyway they won't believe the results ('that was just a bad day / customer').

By contrast:

1.  Customers are willing to respond to short surveys. All you need to measure really is satisfaction / loyalty. Otherwise it's customer research you're doing, not feedback measures.

2.  Real time feedback is rich in actionable detail, both emotional and factual. The customer knows vividly why they are upset or delighted. That feedback can be given back to the staff member or team involved immediately, and action or remediation can be taken. Post-hoc satisfaction surveys give results in the shape of a bell curve, i.e the customers are moving towards neutral. Real time results tend to polarise since emotions and facts are still fresh.

3.  Some organisations take wide customer surveys and give feedback to business units or teams about their performance. That's fine, but since it's top down and low volume, there's little the team can do about it. If every piece of feedback is individually attributable, then patterns and performance soon emerge for every customer-facing staff member, and that can be acted on, quickly.

4.  Volumes are important. 1 survey a month per staff member is not enough - we all get customers sometimes that just can't be satisfied. Staff therefore feel as if the feedback they receive is out of their control. Get several items of feedback a day and everyone tries a little harder!

In short - its feedback, insights and action you want. The NPS or satisfaction score itself is not much use on its own.