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Learn why customer feedback is always helpful – even if you think it’s negative. The right response strategy will help you resolve issues quickly.  

It’s not news to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) that customer expectations have changed, and their needs only continue to increase and evolve. Fortunately for your business, customer feedback can be the primary tool to better understand customer sentiment and improve the customer experience – all of which results in long-term customer loyalty.

Many businesses find it challenging to handle negative feedback. But the fact is, every instance of criticism is an opportunity to uncover hidden service gaps, refine processes, and boost customer satisfaction.

Having the right tools and technology can make all the difference. Create a customer bill of rights as a framework that you and your crew can use when reviewing customer feedback. This plan ensures that you’re always prioritizing customer rights and expectations. 

Moreover, a platform like Crewhu provides essential tools for gathering, tracking, and responding to feedback more effectively.

Implement a structured response process for negative feedback

First, your MSP needs a plan that follows current best practices for customer feedback management. In addition to using a clear step-by-step approach, you’ll want to automate feedback collection and assign ownership for responses within your crew. This will ensure that customer concerns are addressed quickly and thoroughly. 

Steps for responding to Negative Feedback

To ensure that feedback is handled appropriately, break down your response process into simple steps.  

1. Proactively seek and track feedback

Before you can start improving your company’s customer service, you need to have a feedback mechanism in place. Create opportunities for your customers to voice their concerns through surveys, email replies, or even phone call requests. 

Don’t forget to keep your surveys and requests short and sweet so customers will actually want to complete them. For example, keep the email subject line short and direct and send out one-click surveys for ease.

Crewhu provides an automated feedback collection tool so you can track feedback and even set up alerts for online mentions of your brand. You can also put a team member in charge of scanning discussion boards and social media sites for negative commentary about your company. 

You could even set up Google alerts to get notified when you’re mentioned online, so you can see any positive and negative mentions of your brand name. This gives you a chance to respond right at the source and shows other viewers that you are proactive and concerned.

2. Categorize feedback

Then, separate feedback into categories, so you can better manage it. For instance, you could organize labels for complaints by mild, moderate, or severe. By categorizing, you can prioritize feedback based on its need for an immediate response or action at a glance.

Implement a feedback log tied to these categories that all employees can access, so no comments or issues slip through the cracks.

3. Assign responsibility for quick responses

Part of prioritizing different levels of feedback is ensuring it gets back into the right hands. Have specific crew members assigned to handle different types of negative feedback. This ensures that the right people know what feedback exists and what to do with it. Assigning roles can help you improve your service overall.

This process also allows for faster response times, particularly for feedback that is less-than-ideal. For example, an employee may need to quickly review a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for confirmation in high-priority cases. This enables them to come back to the customer with a quick response and resolution.

Use negative feedback to keep improving

Remember that it’s not uncommon to get some negative feedback once in a while. Maybe a customer had a one-off bad interaction or was upset about a particular issue. However, consistent negative feedback is a sign of deeper service problems that need immediate addressing.

This is why it’s important to view any type of feedback as an opportunity. Always review internal processes when you get negative feedback. For example, what gaps are there in communication? Is your crew equipped with the right tools and training to provide excellent service?

Use negative feedback as a diagnostic tool to uncover and resolve broken processes or underperformance.

Three ways to use customer feedback to improve your processes:

1. Consider setting up automated reports to provide regular updates on customer sentiment
2. Keep improving your services by staying committed to making changes based on customer feedback
3. Create a feedback loop to continually address issues and implement the right fixes in order to improve the customer experience

A feedback loop keeps your customer feedback machine running at all times.

How Crewhu helps turn negative feedback into positive results

Turning negative feedback into positive outcomes helps your business improve customer retention and satisfaction. With a process focused on obtaining these outcomes, you can quickly respond, solve problems, and follow up with customers. By showing customers that you heard their feedback and acted on it, you improve the customer experience.

Crewhu’s platform can help your business measure service quality and improve employee engagement based on real-time feedback. The Crewhu employee recognition tools incentivize employees to respond to customer concerns in a way that will improve all customer outcomes.

Crewhu helps your MSP create a more structured approach to addressing negative customer feedback. It also allows you to use that feedback as an opportunity to train the crew or resolve a process issue.

Don’t just take our word for it – one client saw a 90% improved project closure CSAT score after implementing Crewhu for project and ticket closures. Another MSP saw a 20% increase in employee engagement and a 95% CSAT through using Crewhu’s gamification platform.

Feedback isn’t just about customer retention. It’s about improving service quality across the board, using insights to guide employee performance and deliverables.

Book a demo of Crewhu today to explore how our feedback collection and employee recognition platforms help reduce churn and improve service quality.