Customers are talking about you whether you like it or not — a simple truth in business. The real question is: are you listening?
I’ve spent years studying customer service and experience, and one thing remains constant – conversations about your brand are happening everywhere in coffee shops, on social media, in text messages between friends, and online reviews. These conversations shape your reputation and ultimately impact your bottom line.
The challenge for most organizations isn’t getting customers to talk about them – that’s already happening. The real challenge is capturing those conversations in a meaningful way that allows you to learn and improve.
Where Is Your Feedback Coming From?
When I work with companies on improving their customer experience, one of the first questions I ask is about their feedback collection methods. Many rely solely on post-purchase surveys or customer service follow-ups. While these are valuable, they represent just a fraction of the available customer insights.
Consider these common feedback sources:
- Direct surveys and feedback forms
- Social media mentions and messages
- Online reviews (Google, Yelp, industry-specific sites)
- Customer service interactions
- Sales team conversations
Each of these channels provides a different perspective on how customers perceive your brand. Limiting yourself to just one or two means missing valuable insights that could drive meaningful improvements.
View this post on Instagram
The Silent Majority: Who Aren’t You Hearing From?
Perhaps even more important than who you’re hearing from is who you’re not hearing from. This is a critical blind spot for many organizations.
Think about it – for every customer who completes your survey, how many don’t? For every person who leaves a review, how many remain silent? For every complaint that reaches your customer service team, how many frustrated customers simply walk away?
The customers you don’t hear from typically fall into several categories:
- Those who had a mediocre experience (neither great nor terrible)
- Customers who don’t believe their feedback will make a difference
- People who found your feedback process too cumbersome
- Customers who took their business elsewhere without explanation
Getting a complete picture requires proactive efforts to reach these silent customers. This might mean shorter, more targeted surveys, focus groups, customer interviews, or even monitoring conversations happening about your brand on platforms where you don’t have an official presence.
Delivering Insights Back to the Organization
Collecting feedback is only the first step. What happens to that information once you have it? Too often, valuable customer insights get trapped in departmental silos or buried in reports that few people read.
For feedback to drive meaningful change, it must be:
- Consolidated from multiple sources into a cohesive view
- Analyzed for patterns and trends
- Prioritized based on impact and feasibility
- Shared with relevant stakeholders throughout the organization
- Acted upon with clear accountability
The organizations that excel at customer experience don’t just collect more feedback – they’re better at turning that feedback into actionable insights that drive improvements.
Creating a Holistic View of Your Customers
My goal when working with companies is to help them develop a complete, 360-degree view of their customers. This means understanding not just what customers say directly to you, but what they say about you to others, what their behaviors reveal, and even what they’re not saying.
This holistic approach requires breaking down internal barriers between departments. Marketing, sales, customer service, product development – all these teams have valuable pieces of the customer puzzle. When they share information freely, a more complete picture emerges.
Remember that customers are talking about you whether you’re listening or not. The question is whether you’ll use those conversations to improve or remain in the dark while your competitors gain the advantage.
The most successful companies don’t just wait for feedback to come to them – they actively seek it out from all possible sources, especially from those customers whose voices might otherwise go unheard.
