Kitchen & Bath Business - July/August 2017 - 28

Better Business

Listen
and Learn
Improve your business with
customer feedback
THERE'S A CLASSIC BUSINESS ADAGE you've probably
heard before - listen to your customers. Whether
you are in sales, production or you own your business, you can take advantage of this advice. Listen
to your customers, and they will tell you how to
improve your company.
Here at Tundraland, we pride ourselves on providing an excellent customer experience. From day
one, we built that customer focus into our entire
business model. The system we use to do that is
actually remarkably simple - with three processes
in place, you can actively listen to your customers
and grow your business with their feedback.

"Ask Everyone How You Did. The first step to listening is asking a simple question; you need to
ask every single customer how you did. A small
portion of customers will share their insights
without you even asking. By actively seeking
out your customer's advice, though, you will
get much more consistent results. Good, bad or
ugly - you need to know what's happening on
every project, so be sure to ask.
"If You Didn't Do Well, Fix It. Some design professionals struggle with asking for feedback because
they are worried about customer negativity. We

BRIAN GOTTLIEB is the owner
of Tundraland in Kaukauna,
Wis., one of the 50 largest
kitchen and bath remodeling
companies in the country.

work in a complicated trade with many moving parts, so mistakes will be
made - embrace that. When mistakes are inevitably made, fix the problem
in a timely fashion. Communicate with your customers so they are in the
loop as you are making things right. We absorb the costs of any additional
work as a portion of our marketing budget, and that is money well spent.
You would never even know there was a problem if you didn't have a
process to ask for feedback. That is the ultimate source of review anxiety
for many of my colleagues in the remodeling business. Save yourself the
stress of not knowing by asking for feedback proactively.
"Ask Your Customers to Share Their Stories. Now you have a process to request
feedback and a process to fix any negative experiences that crop up. That
leaves you with a pool of satisfied customers, so ask them to share their
stories. That can be as simple as creating a referral program along the
lines of a 'friends and family' program to encourage word-of-mouth
referrals. It should definitely include asking for online reviews, which
are increasingly central to growing your business. You can even go a
step further and reach out to especially satisfied customers to share their
stories on camera. We have a number of excellent video testimonials, and
customers often mention those videos to our staff as a reason they chose
to do business with us.
A customer base of enthusiastic supporters is a great foundation for your
presence in the community. You have all the tools you need to grow that foundation - all you need to do is be systematic in listening to your customers. 

Kitchen & Bath Business / JULY-AUGUST 2017 / KBBONLINE.COM / The official publication of KBIS (KBIS.com)

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Kitchen & Bath Business - July/August 2017

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