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Strategies for Effective Customer and Employee Surveys
Episode 374
Each week, we bring you insights from industry experts to help you scale up your water treatment knowledge and operations. This week, we're thrilled to share strategies for effective customer and employee surveys based on a recent interview with Brian Katarski, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at AquaPhoenix Scientific. Brian's extensive experience in sales and marketing makes him a valuable source of knowledge on how to gather and use feedback to drive improvement.
How Important is Feedback? "Feedback plays a very important role in all relationships: employees, coworkers, even your spouse." - Brian Katarski
Feedback is a cornerstone of growth. It empowers teams to improve by increasing their knowledge and confidence. Brian emphasizes the necessity of not just collecting feedback but using it as a foundation for continuous improvement.
What is Feedback? "The most important part of feedback is that we have to use it as a basis for improvement. You cannot collect feedback just to ignore it, or justify it away, or pretend like it doesn't exist." - Brian Katarski
According to Brian, feedback should be actionable. Whether it's from customers or employees, feedback needs to be addressed constructively. Ignoring or dismissing feedback is counterproductive. Instead, look each other in the eye and commit to acting on the feedback received.
How Do You Build a Healthy Culture of Feedback in Your Company? "The biggest piece to it is if you want to encourage this long-term over time is you have to respond to the feedback. You can't just ignore it, right? You can't ghost it, or you can't just think it didn't happen. or say. you know. justify it away. You have to respond to it in a way that lets somebody know 'I heard you. I understand. Here's what we're gonna do with that information now', right. And that way they and they now know that we care. That we want to hear what they have to say whether it's an employee or a customer. They know that we're going to listen to what they have to say, and they'll be more willing to share that information with us." - Brian Katarski
Creating a healthy feedback culture starts with demonstrating that feedback is valued and acted upon. Brian highlights the importance of responding to feedback promptly and constructively. When employees or customers see that their input leads to real action, they are more likely to continue providing valuable insights.
"You've got to try some different tactics and different things to try to reach certain people. Sometimes it's a quick paper survey. You know, maybe as you're walking out. Maybe you send an email or a link with your service reports whenever you send those off on Fridays or whenever you do it. Just different ways to do it, maybe put it on an invoice you're sending off, maybe have your marketing team sending those out, but you'll kind of figure out the best ways to gather that information depending on how people do it." - Brian Katarski
Diverse methods of collecting feedback ensure that you reach a broad audience and gather a variety of perspectives. Whether it's through paper surveys, emails, links in service reports, or even feedback sections on invoices, finding the right approach for your audience is key to building a robust feedback culture.
How Do You Start and Encourage a Feedback Process? "Build out a plan around what you want to gather feedback on. Start with the end in mind." - Brian Katarski
Brian advises beginning with a clear plan. Identify what specific feedback you need and how you will use it to drive improvement. By focusing on the end goal, you can design a process that ensures the feedback is both meaningful and actionable.
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Published on 1 year, 5 months ago