Jackie Huba from Church of the Customer, cites a study that concludes that customers that feel listened to are more likely to spread positive and unsolicited word of mouth. The study was done by Communispace, a company that creates and manages online communities. Key findings:
•82% of community members said they were more likely to recommend the company's product's than before joining the community.
•54% said they were more inclined to purchase the company's products since joining the community.
Though we've done no studies to prove it, we find the same thing to be true with our PromoterZ clients. Those companies that use the service to ask for customer feedback consistently generate more referrals than those that don't.
So do your customers feel like you are listening? Asking is certainly the first step, but I have personally completed a number of customer surveys and never felt like anyone was listening.
In my mind, the critical step to show you are listening is to respond. Simply acknowledging that you have received their feedback and are considering it will let your customers know that someone really is listening--and they in turn will start talking to others....
I do agree that the person whosoever mails or replies back to the marketer must be acknoledged but that acknowledgement should not be auto generated. There should be some human touch to it.
If the response from the client is mentioning that he want a reply a in 8 hours then auto generated mail saying 'we will get back to you in 24 hours' is of no use. The client will get annoyed.
Instead, if something like 'Our system is not designed to take action in 8 hours so be patient. We will try to act as soon as possible' will be more beneficial.