How member feedback helps to improve retention – directly & indirectly

Customer feedback is becoming more of a focus for every business and in every industry. The annual survey is so last year, and while Net Promoter Score is still relevant, the score itself is losing value compared to the comments and feedback that customers are supplying through survey tools and also through social media channels.

The feedback itself should be reason enough to seek out member interaction, but there are a bunch of additional benefits that we’ll explore through this series of posts.

Soliciting feedback all the time from all members is good, but sometimes impractical and difficult to analyse or make use of. A better idea is to ask for feedback at key points in the member journey, e.g. after joining (or not joining), after the member’s first appointment or class, or after leaving or cancelling membership.
We’ll follow this post with some specific examples, along with what we’ve learnt from analysing member feedback.

Asking for regular feedback by using triggers (simple joining anniversaries, or after programme reviews) is a good way of getting members in the habit of giving feedback. The survey form should be as simple as possible – one or two questions ideally, and no more than 5. More questions simply mean less responses. Ask for a score or a Likert scale (named after its inventor, Rensis Likert), and an open question that people can type text into. Tools like MyCustomerLens will help you to group, segment, and tag comments once you have hundreds of responses.

It’s also important to monitor social media, and possibly request feedback through social channels too, ideally in the same format. You’ll undoubtedly get some feedback on review sites, through email, and verbally in club too, so try to capture this and add it into the mix for analysis.

This is the second in a series of posts on customer feedback. Subscribe or come back for the next instalment next week.