In his post on the importance of donor feedback and experiences yesterday, Roger lamented:

“Although the commercial world spends literally billions of $ seeking feedback on customer experiences — like the surveys you get after an airline flight, a hotel stay, or an online purchase — it continually amazes me that few organizations who consider themselves donor-centric make any effort to listen to listen to their donors and learn from their comments and complaints.”

Here is an example describing how one commercial marketer seeks customer feedback, how they use it, and its value to them.

From The North Face, which collects feedback on product performance as a well as surveying customers on purchase behaviour and intentions.

Says The North Face: “We are seeing our efforts reflected in our business as well, with an increase in same-year repeat purchase and year-over-year repeat purchase. For example, the overall rate of repeat (same year) for VIPeak members is about 20 percent higher and the overall repeat (year after year) of VIPeak customers is 50 percent higher than comparable non-VIP customers. Our primary measures of loyalty are engagement, channel performance, and repeat purchase.”

And responding to customer feedback and observed channel preferences:

“Customers are shifting more of their time to mobile so we are continuing to adjust our mobile offering to accommodate that.” And: “We are educating our retail associates about the consumer benefits of the VIPeak Rewards program and developing resources to help them build more in-depth relationships with their best customers, including activities that get customers outside. We are actively working with our stores and store associates to help build more of these customer engagement opportunities.”

Bottomline: Listen to feedback and adapt.

Tom

P.S. I pulled this example from Loyalty360 … “The association for customer loyalty.” I read their daily e-newsletter, which is often full of arcane examples of the latest loyalty point schemes and rewards … not of much relevance to nonprofits and fundraisers. But it does provide a very good window onto the strenuous efforts commercial marketers make to retain customers, and for most of these marketers, the first step is collecting customer feedback at every conceivable touch point.