Recent survey by Bain & Co. showed that most companies loose about half of their customers in 5 years without ever finding out the reason. They don’t know why and where they went.
Some companies try to avoid this situation by conducting customer surveys and asking for feedback. In addition, it is necessary to train employees who deal with customers directly, to attempt to obtain feedback. This way you can get information which would never be included in a regular questionnaire.
If you conduct a customer survey, don’t forget the follow-up. Do you really change anything on the basis of the survey evaluation? Do you sometimes contact customers directly to ask them for a more detailed opinion? The biggest mistake of customer surveys is that once completed, managers will say, "Okay, we received customer feedback. So now let’s move on."
-th-