The importance of Feedback
We got some bad news recently … one of our clients has passed away – or perhaps I should say, one of our former clients has passed away. Although it is always possible, (and it is one of my recurring nightmares), to date we have never “lost” a client on one of our tours or a guest staying in one of our hotels.
I was once conducting an “appraisal interview” with one of our managers, and in response to the question, “How do YOU think things have gone in the last year?”, he replied, “Not bad, I think we have met all the difficult situations we are likely to meet and have systems in place to cope them and are ready for anything.” It was mean of me, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to ask, “Really, when did one of our guests die? I must have missed that.” The look on his face showed that he realized his mistake – he hadn’t even thought of that as a possibility and how he would cope with it.
Although we have faced many difficult moments, we have at least been spared this particular experience … so far.
In this case, the person who died was one of those rare clients that keep in touch after a tour. . Many people, after completing a tour with us, seem to disappear of the face of the earth, and we never hear from them again. This is not surprising, nor unreasonable … after all, although we hope to see them again, in the following years they probably want to visit other places. Occasionally, however, a client does continue to keep in touch after their tour is over.
On some occasions, clients strike up a really good relationship with guides and drivers so that if they do return to Kyrgyzstan, they make a special request to have the same personnel for their subsequent trips. Some offer an open invitation to look them up if we ever visit their country and some have even been known to invite their guides to visit them for a holiday.
It is really nice to hear from former clients how they are getting on and where they have visited as well as getting feedback about the tours they have taken with us.
Feedback is very important to us … even when it is “negative”.
Although it is always nice to get “good reviews” and, like most people, we love to be told that we have done a “wonderful job” … that everything was “excellent”, however, when something does go wrong or has been less than satisfactory in some way, then the feedback we receive can point us to areas where we have to pay attention so that we can try to ensure that the situation isn’t repeated, improve our performance and provide a better experience for clients in the future.
Sometimes, however, these “negative” points can refer to things that are outside our control … such as the state of the roads, or the toilets, in Kyrgyzstan, but still they are useful and help us in our discussions with service providers, (hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, etc.) and government officials.
(Actually, the roads in Kyrgyzstan are not that bad on the whole – most of the main roads are asphalt but because of the extreme temperatures and heavy traffic the surfaces can be uneven and make for a bumpy ride. The toilets, on the other hand, can be pretty dire. Although we try to warn clients about this, it can still come as a bit of a shock.)
Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get feedback from clients.
We have developed a number of feedback forms, or comments forms, which we give to clients and ask them to complete. We hope that it is not an onerous task and to help make it easier the forms contain a simple tick-box section and also some free space in which to write comments.
As in the case of most surveys, however, the response rate is not as good as we might hope for. When I was teaching statistics, pupils were always surprised to learn about the low response rates to questionnaires and postal surveys … maybe just 10% or 20% of the forms distributed are completed and returned. Even when the comments forms are returned, they often appear to have been “rushed” … short, one word, comments are common – for example, “toilets”. In way, this isn’t surprising. Although we have tried to make the forms simple and easy to complete, filling in a comments form is not compulsory and so it is often put off until the last moment. When, on the other hand, we do get detailed comments and, better still, constructive suggestions about what would have made their holiday experience even better we do find them very useful.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when I recently read of a survey run by a large hotel chain based on the United States. They sent out an email to the all their guests for whom they had an email address with just two questions:
- On a 0 – 10 scale, 10 being the highest, how would you rate your overall experience at xxx (name of the hotel chain)?, and
- On a 0 – 10 scale, 10 being the highest, how likely are you to recommend xxx (name of the hotel chain) to a friend?
Unfortunately, the author didn’t say how many emails they sent out, but he did say that in six months they received over 50,000 replies – which is quite impressive for such a survey. This compared with virtually no direct customer feedback for the whole of the previous year. What’s more, “50% of those guests have provided us with detailed comments that help us to continuously improve our operations and realize our brand promise of exceeding our guests’ expectations.”
Bishkek