Number of complaints and/or the number of return goods- sometimes good running businesses may receive complaints one time. For more complex businesses letters of complaints are used primarily where there are serious problems present. Smaller businesses like retail have spoken complaints which are able to be used for all types of complaints. These types my enable you to see things in the business that are going wrong and help to fix them
On the spot questions from staff- regularly customers may have questions asked by staff on the spot. After a purchase a customer will instantly be asked questions referring to different aspects of the business for instance the efficiency of service and overall level of satisfaction.
Observation e.g. mystery shoppers- this type is used by retail businesses to observe different features of consumers within the store. People are observed in a fairly small amount of time. The organisation may look at how many people walk down a specific row on the store and are attracted to the goods. These observations can allow the business to get results but not any answers and specific things.
Questionnaires through the post- this type of method allows the business to get frequent feedback from consumers. Customers may get them through the post or get one handed to them on the street by someone. Those who answer the questions are known as the respondent, these questionnaires are used to get varieties of opinions from respondents about certain things on the business. It will determine things like the buying behaviour of customers.
Customer panels or focus groups- these panels are used by businesses to judge how customer’s to react to certain goods or services the business is offering. The disadvantage is that it cost a large amount to keep the panel for large amount of time.
Focus groups may be started up by businesses the groups are usually made up from 10 people who may be asked to talk about a particular product. These people will tell the organisation what their opinions are with the product and what they can do to make it better.
Tescos measures their customer’s satisfaction by analysing tescos club cards for instance if a certain customer has lots of points of their card then this may mean that this particular person visits the store regularly and are loyal to what Tescos offer.
The business also asks people walking by what they like about the store and what products meet their needs. They sometimes hound out questionnaires to do this, it enables them to get an insight of what types of features customers are satisfied with within the business.
