Customer reviews and employee accountability

When employees know their performance is being measured by customer feedback, they'll be more diligent about satisfying those customers

Customer reviews and employee accountability
On the September 7 episode of my Lykken on Lending radio show, I had the opportunity to talk about customer feedback platform Social Survey with Scott Harris and Craig Pollock. The platform helps loan originators capture customer reviews and instantly leverage those reviews as marketing pieces to build an organization's brand image. The marketing benefit of customer reviews is quite obvious. But during our conversation, I became aware of another benefit of capturing customer feedback.

As managers in the mortgage industry, it can be difficult to know how well our people are treating our customers. Most people who have a bad experience don't report it. They may tell a few friends, but they rarely let the company know about it. The problem is that if we don't know what the problem is, we can't fix it. If our employees aren't satisfying our customers, we can't take the necessary measures to retrain them (or possibly replace them). That missing information can be vital to our survival.

Customer reviews can provide a strong sense of accountability. When our employees know their performance is being measured by customers in a concrete way, they'll be more diligent about satisfying those customers. Moreover, we'll be able to see where the issues lie so that we can fix them in time for the next customer that comes around. Negative feedback can be turned into a positive if use to improve our customer service.