At Puget Systems, we have both formal and informal avenues by which we collect feedback from our customers. In terms of informal feedback, customers speak to sales and support staff on a daily basis and often share their experiences with our people and products. Feedback like this might be shared with the team or escalated to a manager if there's an issue to which we need to react.
Most of the feedback we receive in this manner is positive. Customer who make the effort to share their experience with us tend to have had a positive interaction with a Puget Systems's employee. Positive feedback is welcome because it helps us focus our efforts on what's working well. But it doesn't tell the whole story.
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What Do We Do With Feedback?
We relied on informal feedback solely until the first half of 2013 when we decided to become more intentional. Today we solicit feedback through several intentional channels. Feedback collected in this manner is shared with Jon Bach, founder and President of Puget Systems. In the past 3.5 years, I've presented feedback on 20 projects to the team, which then decides who is in the best position to act on what customers have shared with us.
Our goal here is never to single out an individual but to make changes and adjustments that improve our products and help us provide an even better experience for our customers.
Having been directly involved in the collection, organization, and presentation of feedback that's not always comfortable to hear, I can tell you that we take this process very seriously. Listening to sometimes critical comments about our company isn't easy. It takes some practice! But it undoubtedly helps us get better in both big and small ways.
How Do We Ask?
Initial Checkup – About a week or so after you've taken delivery of your new computer, we reach out via email. In short, we want to make sure your computer arrived safely and see if there's any help we can provide. We understand how excited you are to get your computer up and running, so we don't want to take a lot of your time.
With so many computer companies outsourcing support to a third party, this is our opportunity to let you know that we don't disappear after the sale. If you need help setting up your monitor or migrating data off an old hard drive, we will get you hooked up to the person who can assist you.
Feedback Projects – These consist of our most intentional, in-depth and focused avenues for capturing customer feedback. I've spent the past few years talking with our customers about many topics. Perhaps you've already spoken with me. Some examples of past projects:
- How can we improve our technical support?
- Are our workstations meeting the needs of our engineering customers?
- What product improvements can we make our Linux customers?
- How helpful do you find our website content?
I'm currently gathering feedback from customers who made the switch from the Mac to Windows. If you're one of these people, I'd love to hear from you!
Why Do We Want Your Feedback?
When I call customers and ask them to share their experiences with me, many invariably ask me what we do with it. Well, we believe that hearing what's working well and not so well helps us improve. One example: One theme we saw across nearly every early project was that customers were surprised at the size of their new computer. Some customers had planned to place their new computers on top their desks only to find out when it arrived that it was too large.
With that feedback in hand, we went to work. Jeff in sales created an article comparing each case we offered to a can of Coke. The next year when we offered a number of new cases, William created a video showing their comparative sizes.
This is just one example where customer feedback helped us recognize an internal blind spot that needed to be corrected. Do you have any feedback you'd like to share with us?