Organisations in the service industry are quick to have a mechanism in place to capture customer feedback, whether through feedback forms or through online feedback kiosks. Most of us would have received a request from a polite stewardess, in one of India's major airline, to fill in a feedback form in one of our travels. In almost all the well known restaurants too, getting the customer to fill in a feedback form has become de-rigueur and part of the KRA of the serving staff.

As a customer, how many of us have wondered what happens to our comments and feedback once it reaches the service provider. A standard line in the form, "It may not be possible for us to revert to you individually" discourages us from seeking a response to our feedback. However from the companies' perspective such feedback could be a tremendous insight into customer expectation and satisfaction at their outlets / touchpoints, and hence companies need to not only analyse the feedback but also make it mandatory for the analysis of the feedback to be given back to the front end staff so that they constantly improve the customer service standards. For companies with a chain of outlets it may be very valuable to get the feedback forms analysed at the corporate level rather than at the individual outlet level, as such analysis provides for highlighting issues of consistency and customer satisfaction across the chain.

As a case study we had recently done an exercise for a fast food restaurant chain who capture feedback at their restaurants. Some of the key insights that emerged out of analysing the data for one city:

1. The customer was expected to fill in the location of the restaurant resulting in the field being left blank or customers mentioning the name of the chain. This results in wastage of data as, if the locations could have been captured it would be easy for the chain to score different restaurants in the chain and hence arrive at a store / unit scoring model which can then become a part of the KRA of the Manager of the unit. The solution for customers not filling in the field could be for the unit to either fill in or stamp the location details in all the feedback forms.
   
   
2. The fields captured helped derive a composite customer satisfaction score for each outlet. Over a period of time if the scores are monitored it will help evaluate the improvement or deceleration of customer satisfaction of the score of the outlet. This could easily replace the annual Customer Satisfaction Index survey that is done which comes at a considerable cost and has a lag in capturing the satisfaction. The satisfaction index derived from the feedback forms will be more real time and hence remedial action becomes more immediate.
   
   
3. The satisfaction index was computed on specific parameters like food, service, restaurant ambience and value for money. The scores in each of these parameters again highlight specific problem areas for improvement or areas where the high levels of satisfaction need to be sustained.
   
   
4. A worrisome takeaway from the analysis was that repeat customers were more dissatisfied than first time customers. This can lead to the chain addressing issues like increasing the items on the menu and ensuring that the ambience of the stores is consistently high.
   
   
5. The feedback form also highlighted specific items on the menu which received high or low scores and this could help the restaurant to modify its menu.
   
   
6. If the feedback surveys could be supplemented by the actual invoice of the customer (an extra copy of the invoice taken and stapled to the feedback form) then a combination of the profile data, SKU data of what the customer actually bought and the feedback of the customer could lead to very powerful analysis and insights. Thus the analysis of the feedback forms can help to refine the questionnaire itself to make it more meaningful.