Why Most Managers Fail To Reach Their Customers
August 1, 2003 • As organizations grow in size, they also grow in complexity and require increased management to guide, direct, and control. This "pyramiding" of management in organizational growth often leads to a decreased level of day-to-day customer interaction with management.
Organizational interaction with customers takes place every day in what we call Customer Contact Points, or ALL places in which customers communicate with your organization. The highest level of daily interaction within these points typically takes place within the sales, support and services side of most organizations—not with the management team.
When customer feedback finds its way to the management level, the provider must first decide if the feedback should be transmitted. Second, he/she must pass the information through the presentation, filtering, and latency of transmission from subordinate to manager. Since most people don't want to make themselves look bad, they will commonly pass along only the information that benefits them as they typically have no incentive to do otherwise—especially when it involves negative feedback. Furthermore, the information also gets "filtered" through personal interpretation and intent and becomes more of what the person wants the manager to hear then what actually comes from the customer themselves. This is what we refer to as the Feedback Filtration Effect™.
The process doesn’t stop at management either. The same issue that plagues the initial provider of information affects ALL levels of the organization, whereby creating a direct relation between the amount of levels (people) feedback passes through and the amount of feedback filtered. In the end, all levels in the filtration chain could gain personally but at the expense of the organization as a whole.
The following paragraphs represent a few areas in which managers and organizations as a whole can reduce the Feedback Filtration Effect™ on their organization:
- Consolidation and centralization of ALL feedback information flow.
This involves creating an organizational plan and goal of centralized feedback information management from all Customer Contact Points.
- Complete objectivity and independence of feedback data management.
People who process feedback should be independent and objective and not feel encumbered by the feedback from others. These people are the information "traffic cops" who make sure the information highway always stays open and operational.
- Automatic feedback information flow with internal global visibility. Access to feedback from all Customer Contact Points must be presented in the easiest and most cost effective manner. This information must be unfiltered and provided in real-time to ALL levels of the organization who can utilize the feedback to make strategic and timely decisions for the organization. Redundancy, consolidation and mediation of feedback will take place in certain cases, but it must not encumber the immediate flow of the aggregate information.
- Incentive. The importance of customer feedback must be clearly articulated throughout the entire organization with incentives including awards and recognition for feedback provided. The expectation set by the organization for customer feedback must become an organizational policy and articulated as such.
For further information about customer feedback management, contact the CFS Corporate Research Department at: corpresearch@custfeedback.com or at (800) 465-8430.
