How to share customer feedback with senior managers

Often, the complaint in many companies is that the higher up the hierarchy you go, the less real idea the senior managers have of the actual customer experience.

So it’s critical that the people at the top get a clear and accurate picture about what customers think of the services that they’re receiving.

Sourcing the information is relatively easy, either through post-sales questionnaires or via comments left on review sites like Smart Money People. Trawling social media can also deliver some genuine insights.

But the real question is how to deliver this information to the people in power in a way that they’ll take notice. Hopefully, this will also lead to actual changes as a result of the feedback.

So here’s a five-step plan to creating a report that should be effective to share customer feedback with senior managers.

1. Collate and organise the data

The first step is to gather all the feedback that you have and organise it into topic areas or themes. Unless you do this as a first step, you won’t be able to create a coherent report at the end of it. The more precisely that you can create the categories, the better.

2. Structure the report

Senior managers and board members are busy people with many different demands being placed on them. So they need information to be clear, focused and concise.

To achieve this, any report is going to need to be well-structured with a logical progression running through it leading to a definite conclusion.

3. Be brief but use professional language

When addressing senior personnel, people sometimes fall into the trap of using the sort of management speak they believe they’ll respond to best. This can be a mistake as it often equates to waffle that fails to make its point. So choose your words carefully, but keep them relatively formal.

4. Add visuals and other contextual information

Whether you’re presenting in-person or as a document, use charts, graphs and diagrams that help to make sense of the information being presented. These add context and can lead to a deeper understanding of the insights that you’ve been gaining from customers.

They also make it much easier for anyone speed-reading the report to extract some of its key points.

5. Review and edit before presentation

Review, review and review again, firstly to spot any typos or other literal mistakes that might have crept in. Then see if you can make the report even more concise without losing any of the content.

Summary

Work through these five steps and you’ll end up with a well-structured report that should meet your needs. As to how often to present a report like this, no more than quarterly is ideal.

This will allow time for changes driven by customer feedback to be made – which should always be one of the main objectives of the report in the first place.