Leverage customer feedback to increase customer satisfaction & reduce churn

How do you leverage customer feedback to increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn?

Hello and welcome to Affogata’s podcast: Let’s talk customer feedback. We had the pleasure of hosting Ori Singer, Operations leader at Mixtles.

For the past 10 years, Ori has held various leadership positions in customer operations, of which 7 years were spent in New York. In his most recent role in NY, he managed Via's global customer service operations. A few months after returning to Israel, about 2 years ago, Ori Joined Mixtiles to lead the customer service team and build it up to scale. Ori recently moved into a new role, leading operations for one of Mixtiles' upcoming innovative products.

Companies must remember that “every complaint ignored is 26 customers lost”, so every conversation counts. It is crucial to never underestimate the power of customers’ voices.

A satisfied customer will stay with you. An unhappy customer will eventually find a better alternative and unfortunately, leave. Customer feedback benefits are significant. It helps you determine if your clients are satisfied with your service and detect areas where you should improve.

What will you listen to on this podcast?

1. Ori's opinion on the importance of gathering and analyzing customer feedback and why is customer obsession so crucial nowadays.

2. Fast-pacing companies such as Mixtiles have millions of external and internal data points for customers so we asked Ori how the company manages to filter the noise and really find the most relevant pieces of information to implement on their product and strategy.

3. We had a discussion on how is customer feedback translated internally at Mixtiles and how their product team evaluates product changes.

4. Lastly, we asked Ori how does customer feedback analysis helps increase customer satisfaction and he shared how does Mixtiles create the ultimate customer experience.

Audio version

Transcript

Host:

Can't wait to hear what Ori has to say about all this. So let's start. For our first question, in your opinion, why is it critical for companies to listen to the voice of their customers? Why does every company now want to become customer-obsessed?

Speaker - Ori Singer, Operations Leader at Mixtles

I think the companies understand today that listening to their customers and obsessing about the customer experience is essential and a real strategic advantage. I think that it's pretty well known and proven that happy customers will spend more with your brand. They'll come back and buy again. They'll recommend your service or products to their friends and family, of course. And if you do something really exceptional, like, for example, Mixtiles customer service, which is exceptional, we could talk about later, they'll even post about it on social media.

I think that also another aspect of it is that customer service can also help in sales. For example, in Mixtiles, a lot of the customer service questions come in even before people place their orders. So handling these questions really well is super important and has a direct impact on conversion rates.

Host:

Yeah, I agree. I would love to hear more about Mixtiles’ customer service later as well. So how does customer feedback influence your day-to-day job?

Speaker - Ori Singer, Operations Leader at Mixtles

Yeah, it's a good question. So since we know when the customer service feedback is critical when making decisions, we actually use it for making almost any decision, any important decision of the company. Because of that, we've built ongoing processes and systems to collect feedback from different sources and basically build a picture of what our customers are trying to tell us. What do they need? What do they want and so forth? We do it routinely, but it also helps us to make like, specific ad hoc decisions. For example, if you want to implement a new system or a new process, or a new feature, we also do it proactively. We know that a big percentage of our customers don't reach out to tell us about their experiences, so we proactively, send them surveys and solicit feedback from our customers. We also think it's really important that way you really touch customers that also maybe wouldn't naturally or otherwise come to you.

Like I said, we do it all the time. One example of how we use it is like from the customer service side, we recently launched a new chatbot for self-service, and the idea behind it was really to help our customers just get much quicker and better answers, mainly quicker without having to wait until the rep answers them, although most of the time we answer pretty fast. But it's just another channel that can often help. And obviously, when you launch something like this, it has a direct impact on your customer experience. And we wanted to make sure that it creates a positive impact.

So after we launched it, especially in the first few days and weeks, we really monitored our customer feedback around the chatbot and wanted to make sure that it's actually useful for our customers. And we actually created that feedback loop and very quickly implemented things that were based on what we heard from our customers to really improve the chatbot experience. And that was super helpful, and we still do it today. It's an ongoing process, but just one example of how we use customer feedback.

Host:

Yeah, I actually really like what you just mentioned, because I feel that sometimes companies only focus on being reactive rather than proactive. And I think that the fact that you balance it out between both, takes out the best of customer feedback. So I like that you really mentioned that as well. So do you think companies are doing a good job in general now at actually listening and I've seen their customer feedback?

Speaker - Ori Singer, Operations Leader at Mixtles

Yeah, I think that some companies are doing it, some don't, but I think the direction is positive. Generally speaking, I think that a few years ago it was rare to get great customer service. Today it's much more customer experience. Today it's much better and much more common and kind of becoming the standard. I think companies, understand the importance. I think the Internet and social media really helped here. If you think about it, it's really easy today to quickly see reviews and know which brands have a great experience versus not. Maybe that gave it a big push. And I think that when the competition is only one click away, people understand that they have to invest in their customers. Again, like I said, some companies do, and some don't. But I think again, the direction is to definitely give a lot of focus.

Host:

I agree. Now that the competition is so close and one little mistake is insane that you can just move the needle and then customers will just prefer someone else. So it is a very competitive landscape, right. So fast-pacing companies such as Mixtiles have millions of external and internal data points for customers. How do you manage to filter the noise and really find the most relevant pieces of information?

Speaker - Ori Singer, Operations Leader at Mixtles

Yeah, totally. So it's a lot like you said, for sure. But since we know how important it is, we invest a lot in it, a few examples of how we do it. So first of all, we have a data team with data scientists and engineers, and analysts. In fact, each department or function in Mixtiles has its own dedicated data analyst. So that's one way we built a team around the organization around it because we believe that it's that important, to have people that are their expertise. We also have systems that help us collect and manage feedback from different sources. Affogata is one example. And ultimately we build dashboards that help us see the big picture in one place. So that's like one thing we did because since like you said, we have so many different sources and so much information, it's also important to try to eventually take it all and try to kind of build one coherent picture that can give you an idea on what's going on.

As far as filtering the noise, I think that it's important to always use the data basically. Right. So, for example, you can filter based on how many customers, for example, have a certain issue or how much revenue you think you're going to gain or lose because of a specific issue or area you're trying to look at. So that's I guess a few examples in a nutshell, of how we deal with it.

Host:

Yeah, I think that's great. By the way, how is it that I do as an operations leader, transfer, for instance, all of this information to the product team so they can evaluate product changes? How does it work?

Speaker - Ori Singer, Operations Leader at Mixtles

That's really important, and it's part of that feedback loop that I mentioned. Right. So I think that since the customer service team at the end of the day is the team that has that day-to-day communication with our customers, we're in a really good spot to collect that feedback and to really be the experts on what our customers know. But eventually, it's not going to make an impact if that feedback isn't being transferred right into the different departments in the company and eventually dealt with, you need to drive the change.

Basically what we do is that we hold ongoing meetings with the different departments, marketing, product team, and so forth. And in every meeting, we show the data. Our data analyst shows the data, and we have a conversation about what's important, and what do we want to prioritize? And we basically drive the change. We're making sure that those things are being looked at and handled.

Host:

I agree. That's great because at the end of the day you are really putting the voice of the customer in the center of the organization and the decisions and that's really what I think makes Mixtiles really work. Right. And so how does customer feedback analysis helps increase customer satisfaction in your opinion? And how do you create the ultimate customer experience?

Speaker - Ori Singer, Operations Leader at Mixtles

So first of all, because it provides really important information and what to focus on and which decisions to make in your product and service and so on. I think the companies that want to create an amazing customer experience understand that it's not only one person's or one department's job, but it's also everyone's job and everyone has to work together to achieve it.

I guess some key principles that I can share that we've implemented in Mixtiles to achieve that kind of amazing customer experience. So first of all we define our communication principles. How do we see ourselves as far as how our brand and how we want to talk and communicate with our customers. So first of all define it and then implement it across all the points where there is some sort of customer interaction, whether it's your marketing, emails, or customer service team. For example for Mixtiles, some examples for our principles are we want to be and sound human, meaning like friendly and casual and empathetic. We're generous and we will go above and beyond to solve your issue. So these are some examples that we implemented then.

Another principle is to continuously collect and manage customer feedback. Like I mentioned before, I also believe that it's really important to be frontline obsessed, that you should also sit with their agents, and at the end of the day, they are the people who are like I said before, talking to the customers on a day to day basis. So sit with them, talk to them, and ask them what they think we could do in order to improve the customer experience. Often they'll have really great insights and context that you would miss if you just look at the data. So that's really important.

I would also say obviously again analyze data and understand and try to understand, kind of build an action plan out of it, communicate internally. Like I said to the different departments and finally be proactive. Like I said before, don't just wait and see what people tell you. Be proactive, try to go meet your customers proactively and talk to them and hear them out.

Host:

Definitely, this at the end of the day does create loyalty and customers do feel it and hopefully, that will reduce churn at the end of the day. So I have to agree with that.

Thank you so much really for taking the time to participate in today's podcast. It was super interesting to hear from you about the power of customer feedback and how we can enable customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Speaker - Ori Singer, Operations Leader at Mixtles

No problem. My pleasure. Thank you, Natalie.

Host:

And thanks all for listening. And don't forget to visit us at Affogata.com