"Everybody Gets Tired When Nobody Listens"

A direct quote from my daughter: "Everybody gets tired when nobody listens."

My daughter is four. She made this enlightened statement between giggling on the swings and hanging from the monkey bars.

While I am certainly biased in thinking my daughter is brilliant, there is no doubt that she speaks the truth. Listening is perhaps the most important skill in both business and in life.

The application of consistent listening serves tremendous marketing benefit. From customer service to employee interactions, a small business owner must be able to truly open her ears and probe for more information.

I previously recommended that a business owner must continually question their customer comments to dig for more information. In order to extract the most information, it is necessary to put aside egos, open up the ears and let the other party do the talking.

This life skill will move your business to the next level. You will find that customers will give you great information, employees will feel empowered and the competition will struggle to match your level of service.

It is tiring when nobody listens. Think how much energy is sapped with the simple act of seeking attention.

Do yourself, your employees and your customers a favor by energizing them with your listening.

Question Your Customer Comments

Dare I suggest that you question what your customers say?

Absolutely.

Many small businesses utilize surveys, suggestion boxes, comment cards or other mechanisms to solicit customer feedback. These can be excellent forms to gather input, but too many business owners misinterpret the data.

First of all, there are rarely enough data to make a well-informed decision. Without significant sample sizes, a business owner might react to one comment that may not represent the whole.

Secondly, the interaction represents one snapshot of time. Just what one person was thinking at that one time.

Third, the population that is inclined to fill out a survey is either extremely satisfied or extremely dissatisfied. While their feedback can be useful, often times their comments do not offer constructive advice: satisfied people like business as usual and dissatisfied people simply need to vent.

Thus, the best way for a small business to handle customer feedback is to question it.

Engage in dialogue with your customers. Then listen.

If you have a feedback mechanism, like a comment card or a survey, provide a means to follow up so you can dig into the comments.

If you receive a compliment, find out more. What specifically was good? Why was it so good? Do others share your opinion? And the best question of all, why would you recommend our business to others?

If you receive a negative comment, dig for more information. Set your ego aside and ask deep, probing questions. What was so negative? Why was it negative? How could we make it better?

In either situation, the 5 Whys are a terrific way to really question customer comments. Asking why 5 times for every interaction will produce actionable results.

To take your feedback to the next level, utilize social media and other on-line platforms to engage with customers and encourage dialogue. Social media can enable a larger sample size, a more varied perspective of time and a broader opinion base than a survey.

Gather your own customer panel via ratings on websites, fan pages on Facebook or tweets with a particular hash tag. Use the question and answer pages on LinkedIn. You will truly converse with your customer base and you can continually demonstrate the value you provide. Best of all, social media is free.

Just make sure you question every and all comments. Deep questions and lots of listening.

This act alone will move your business to the next level and it should be part of your Marketing DNA.