BPC, Articles and Glossary

Enterprise Feedback Management

Definition: Enterprise Feedback Management is the process of systematically collecting, storing and using customer feedback data at the enterprise level to enhance business objectives and overall profitability.

Traditionally, customer feedback has been collected by companies in a fairly informal way. A need for customer input would be identified; a survey would be drawn up and then executed; and the results would be analysed within the department which had originally identified the need.

Proponents of Enterprise Feedback Management argue that this process is inefficient and loses much of the potential gain to be derived from customer interaction. They advocate instead that there should be a single point of contact within a company for collecting customer feedback information. Departmental requests should be funnelled through this single conduit. Otherwise, data collected from customers will not be fully utilised. Some departments may harvest the information, use it for their own purposes and discard it. At the same time, the information might have been useful to another department within the company which, nonetheless, never had the opportunity to see it.
Another danger arising from the ad hoc approach is that customers may be asked for the same information multiple times by different departments within the same company. This can lead customers to feel that they are being badgered by the requests for information and therefore make them less likely to cooperate with surveys.

In recent years a number of Enterprise Feedback Management software applications have emerged to help address some of the issues outlined above. Although some make use of innovative means of collecting customer feedback, such as interactive facilities on a website, not all do. Many still rely on tried and tested methods such as market research questionnaires presented in person or over the phone. For them, the key technology element comes through collating, analysing and making available the data that is acquired through traditional research methods rather than replacing them altogether.

Many Enterprise Feedback Management implementations, though, do attempt to diversify the sources through which feedback can be collected. Among these innovative approaches are : -

Forums – forums in which the company’s products or services are discussed, either specifically or as part of a broader range of products, are monitored and the discussion analysed and broken down into tangible metrics. Posts in forums can either be read by human beings with salient themes and recurring issues identified and recorded by hand, or lexical analysis software can be used to try and extract useful information from the mass of text automatically.

Website - Another innovative means of collecting customer feedback is through the company website. Customers can be presented with opportunities to make their feelings known either at the time of purchase or in subsequent visits to the website to request service or information, for example. Feedback may be entered either as freeform text or by selecting from a number of choices on a form.

Some Enterprise Feedback Management  software can alert customer service representatives when these web-based customer surveys indicate high levels of unhappiness in an important customer. Account managers can then be pro-active in their approach to dealing with the problem, perhaps offering unusually favourable arrangements to the customer to prevent the loss of the account.

Of course many companies wish to receive feedback not only from their customers, but from their employees. An online feedback system can be a great way to monitor staff morale, and to enrich upper management thinking by opening it up to a flow of creative suggestions from below.
Mobile Phone - Some Enterprise Feedback Management  applications even allow staff to request customer feedback via text messages to their mobile phone, which then permit the customers to  participate in a vote on some topic.

As well as harvesting data from planned surveys, good Enterprise Feedback Management software will provide some means of filing and cataloguing spontaneous customer communications with the company. For example, if the customer sends an email or fills out a web contact form to communicate with the technical support department, to file a complaint or to issue a service request, the Enterprise Feedback Management  application may allow the staff member dealing with the contact to file it both in that customer’s personal record history as well as in a more general database dealing with the product or service in question.

Many Enterprise Feedback Management  applications come with features designed to help users put surveys together. Usually, each ships with a large number of survey templates designed for use in different business sectors. Often a wizard-style interface walks the user through the creation of new surveys, either starting from scratch or based on one of the existing templates. Naturally, questionnaires previously developed within the company can be stored and made available for re-use. This helps maintain a consistency of tone across multiple surveys, and allows marketing research expertise to be focused in one place within the company and then made available to everyone.

Enterprise Feedback Management  vendors boast that their software can help companies deal with regulatory and quality standard compliance issues. Monitoring customer satisfaction levels plays a part in adhering to the ISO 9000 quality standard. Additionally, the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002 requires companies to monitor ethics in their workplace. Enterprise Feedback Management  vendors insist their software is ideal for these tasks.

Nearly all Enterprise Feedback Management  packages incorporate statistical analysis features so that users can make sense of the survey results data that has been collected, identifying important trends and breaking down the results according to the key characteristics of the responders. Help in sharing the results of surveys that have been undertaken is one of the declared goals of the Enterprise Feedback Management philosophy. Many vendors opt for a web-style user interface rather than a desktop GUI for both viewing a survey’s results and manipulating the software’s options. Naturally, this also makes sharing feedback data via a web or intranet page very easy.