You’ve received your most recent supplier scorecard from an MSP, or maybe you have just received your latest monthly/quarterly satisfaction survey results (candidate, manager, etc.), or maybe it’s that time of the year that you have asked the key stakeholder at each client to provide your firm with a Net Promoter Score — but have you really heard the “Voice of Customer” in those results? While I am a strong supporter of making data-driven decisions through scorecards and surveys, I am also a strong believer that some of the scorecards and surveys we utilize may not be collecting the actionable data we actually need.

There is a tremendous opportunity to engage your customers to collect feedback in less “formal” (or “canned” or “system-driven”) ways. For example, try positioning your satisfaction survey to drive continuous improvement in specific aspects of your service delivery rather than having respondents check a box on an aggregate satisfaction score. These surveys should ask for feedback on specific stages of the service (versus an overall score) to show your interest in identifying any improvement opportunities and provide examples of the process improvements that you have made in response to previous feedback.

Another suggestion is to send personalized requests for feedback. This would entail sending a personal email that is clearly addressed to the client about the services they have received. You should provide a contact person’s name, phone and email in case they want to provide additional feedback or talk directly. Also, avoid using “do not reply” email addresses from your CRM system when sending these out.

Third, you can schedule time to discuss feedback “face to face” — whether that is actually in person via video or a phone call.

Nothing conveys your interest in honest feedback more than asking for it directly.

I would like to share the following example from my time at BASF.

Despite great service-level agreement metrics (they had saved us almost 30 days in the time to offer) and pretty good hiring manager and candidate satisfaction scores, I was hearing “noise” from hiring managers (through the HR business partners) about the RPO program. I tried asking for examples to support the “noise,” but it was mostly anecdotal.

So, I created a quarterly hiring manager survey that I administered personally — inviting them to contact me directly if they didn’t want to complete the survey. Not only did I receive a higher response rate than the “standard” hiring manager survey sent from our ATS, but the feedback I received was actionable — mostly because I was asking specific questions about different stages of the process and made it easy for them to provide me with their thoughts.

Through this feedback, I was able to provide the RPO with tangible examples of where the managers were not satisfied and how they could remedy it — and we saw continuous improvement in our survey ratings in following quarters.

Those initial survey responses enabled us to plot the satisfaction levels of our various sites and identify those sites where the metrics and manager satisfaction were both below targets. With that information, we met with those managers, letting them know that we heard them and were committed to working together to improve the results they were receiving. They knew their voice was heard and that this survey wasn’t just another survey — but they also knew that they would need to be part of the journey to a better model. We also saw improved metrics and satisfaction scores from these sites in the quarters that followed these meetings.

It is critical to rethink the way you collect feedback and hear the voice of your customer (whether your customer is a buyer like me, an operations manager from an MSP or a direct hiring manager) — make it a personalized request, ask enough detailed (and relevant) questions to have actionable data and show them how you will take action upon the feedback that they provide.

One last thought: Actionable feedback should flow both ways, so give your customer honest and sincere feedback on your experiences supporting them.