Keep Your Customers Forever

An important concept most people don't consider is WHEN to ask for feedback. It is typically asked at the END of an event - after the webinar or course or vacation, etc.  This is known as the “autopsy approach”: waiting until the event is over to figure out what went wrong.  But how does conducting this autopsy help your members, students, clients or attendees? Doc Champagne explains why you should never use the autopsy approach when asking for feedback, with examples of how autopsies can go wrong.  Instead, use the science-based alternative to get huge response rate and far more accurate and meaningful results.    Key Points: Autopsy approach – what it is and why you shouldn't use it What the best time is to ask for feedback Using a Survey Conversation as the better alternative Why the timing of your questions encourages others to give their feedback more freely   Your Gift! Visit http://MatthewChampagne.com/PodcastGift  to download your free infographic of The 9 Principles of Customer Feedback.  I'll also email you an explainer video so you can quickly and correctly apply these principles to keep your clients, members, students and customers forever.   Learn More: Read “The Survey Playbook”: Amazon & Kindle Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to Keep Your Customers Forever Simple steps to Keep Your (best) Clients Forever: 7-minute podcast here Let's connect on LinkedIn Dr. Champagne named "Technology Visionary" by SURVEY Magazine

When we ask customers, clients, members, students, or attendees for FEEDBACK, we must include both the HOW and the WHY in our instructions.  The result is meaningful, specific, honest comments from your audience from which you can take proper action. Forgot to include these two critical components?  The result is vague, irrelevant feedback that is not representative of your audience.  So simple to apply the HOW and the WHY – just give a listen! Key Points: The worst thing you could EVER tell your audience is “Take your time to help us improve our products and services”.  So why does everyone do this? The magic 12 words will demonstrate the WIIFM for your audience and they will respond with the feedback you need to improve Don’t ever include “Any additional comments?” or other open-ended items on your evaluations or surveys – will cause you great harm Your Gift! Visit http://MatthewChampagne.com/PodcastGift  to download your free infographic of The 9 Principles of Customer Feedback.  I’ll also email you an explainer video so you can quickly and effectively apply these principles to keep your clients, members, students, and customers forever. Learn More: Read “The Survey Playbook”: Amazon & Kindle Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to Keep Your Customers Forever Simple steps to Keep Your (best) Clients Forever: 7-minute podcast here Let’s connect on LinkedIn Dr. Champagne named "Technology Visionary" by SURVEY Magazine

The greatest positive impact you can have on your “audience” (clients, members, students, attendees, customers) is to “close-the-loop”: share back some results you gathered from the surveys they answered.  This proves that their voice was heard, shows them how they compare to others and is the biggest WIIFM (what’s in it for me) possible.   Doc Champagne explains why Closing-the-Loop is the most important of the 9 Principles of Customer feedback.  It generates the highest possible response rate and creates a huge WOW factor because it is so rarely done.   Key Points: The technology has long existed to easily do this, so why aren’t you doing it? There is a right and wrong way to close-the-loop, but it is far more forgiving than violating other Principles of Customer Feedback Your audience will feel more engaged and connected with your organization even though they are simply filling out an online survey! Closing-the-Loop makes your audience WANT to respond to your questions again and again.   Your Gift! Visit http://MatthewChampagne.com/PodcastGift  to download your free infographic of The 9 Principles of Customer Feedback.  I’ll also email you an explainer video so you can quickly and correctly apply these principles to keep your clients, members, students and customers forever.   Learn More: Read “The Survey Playbook”: Amazon & Kindle Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to Keep Your Customers Forever Simple steps to Keep Your (best) Clients Forever: 7-minute podcast here Let’s connect on LinkedIn Dr. Champagne named "Technology Visionary" by SURVEY Magazine  

Goals don’t work for most people.  We’ve known this for 45 years, when “goal setting” as a lone motivational tool was abandoned by even its most ardent researchers.  Yet the smooth-talking goal gurus continue to pitch their goal planners, goal journals and goal setting courses (discounted just in time for the New Year!).  Instead, you need SYSTEMS, which work for everyone.  When you create a system, you take the pressure off of goal setting because “the score takes care of itself”.  Use triggers to build habits and you’ll always be moving in the right direction.  Set some goals, sure, but don’t FIXATE on goals.  Don’t let the goals gurus waste your week setting daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals for every facet of your life.  And ignore the (very vocal) minority of goal-driven people who tell you how you must be doing it wrong if goals don’t work for you.  Key Points: Create SYSTEMS to achieve goals – don’t create goals without systems When you set goals, you are failure every day until you reach your goal – why would you want to live this way? “Even the very wise cannot see all ends” – stop pressuring yourself with lifetime goals Use triggers, personal dashboards, and create a system to achieve all you want out of life   Links:  Scott Adams's book : How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big   Learn More: Read “The Survey Playbook”: Paperback & Kindle Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to Keep Your Customers Forever Simple steps to Keep Your (best) Clients Forever: 7-minute podcast here Let's connect on LinkedIn! Dr. Champagne was named "Technology Visionary" by SURVEY Magazine 

The most critical metric when gathering feedback from our people is the same metric that is totally ignored.  If you don’t know your RESPONSE RATE, then you won’t know if your results are meaningful or meaningless, whether interpretable or misinformation. Takeaways: At (1:30):  Why your old professor had it right: results are only interpretable if you have high response rate. At (3:50):  Our gut feeling about surveys is correct - we’re only hearing from the extremes.  Here’s how to avoid this. At (4:50):  You would never consider doing this, yet we do it with our customer feedback all the time!   Your Gift! Visit http://MatthewChampagne.com/PodcastGift  to download your free infographic of The 9 Principles of Customer Feedback.  I’ll also email you an explainer video so you can quickly and effectively apply these principles to keep your clients, members, students and customers forever.   Learn More: Read “The Survey Playbook”: Amazon & Kindle Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to Keep Your Customers Forever Simple steps to Keep Your (best) Clients Forever: 7-minute podcast here Let’s connect on LinkedIn Dr. Champagne named "Technology Visionary" by SURVEY Magazine  

We can be super choosy.  With so many people selling us tools and methods and apps that (they say) we absolutely MUST have for our business or our life, let’s use a solid criterion for selecting.  If their proof of results consists of “it worked for me so it will work for you”, then hide your wallet.  If the proof is based on independent empirical data and is couched in the solid research of others, then it may be a good choice.   Takeaways: There is real “medicine” out there in the form of psychological principles that have been tested and demonstrated over decades. Take the medicine because it works. There are far more people selling banana-jalapeno-cinnamon milkshakes because it worked for their particular case one time so they mistakenly think it will work for other people in other situations. Huge mistake! Even ideas that are totally bogus will work sometimes just by coincidence. So when a tool or gizmo or method doesn’t work for you, don’t waste time re-studying the method and thinking about what YOU did wrong.  If you were sold on “it works for me it will work for you” then it’s not you – it’s the tool that doesn’t work!   Subscribe to the show! Go to the Apple podcast directory.  Be sure to rate the show and give a review. Include your name and website and I will promote it on an upcoming show!   Love to Connect! LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattchampagne YouTube:  https://www.YouTube.com/MatthewChampagne Go to: www.matthewchampagne.com/podcasts for more

We need to stop trying to satisfy our customers, members and clients, and focus on turning them into LIFERS - folks that aren't going to leave us for a lifetime. Here are the 3 billion reasons why.   Takeaways: • Of the 3 billion people coming onto the internet in the upcoming years, many of those will be building products and services.  Some just like yours!  Your competitors have just multiplied exponentially!   • It is no longer enough to just “satisfy” customers in this competitive field.  You need LIFERS.  You need them focused on you and not looking to the next shiny new object.   • Entrepreneurs must continually and accurately gather customer feedback and act on it in a meaningful and transparent way to Keep their Customers Forever.    Subscribe to the show! Go to the Apple podcast directory.  Be sure to rate the show and give a review. Include your name and website and I will promote it on an upcoming show!   Love to Connect! LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattchampagne Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/doc.champagne/ Twitter:  https://twitter.com/evaluationguy Go to: www.matthewchampagne.com/podcasts for more

You’ve seen others use it and wonder if you should use it yourself: the technique where you segment or bucket prospects.  This practice violates several psychological principles and most are methodologically unsound so that you drive people away, gather misinformation and make some people think poorly of you.  Avoid it.  Here’s why.   Takeaways: As it is popularly used, this practice suffers from methodological errors and violates principles of psychological measurement with the predictable result of lower response rates and uninterpretable results.   We like to think we are complex and have many layers to us, so don’t then assume others can be simply described by one and only one category.  Use surveys to extract the full depth and complexity of those you want to pull into your orbit.   As I’ve preached before, treat prospects as you would a first date.  Would you ask your date a single question (“Are you adventurous, creative, reserved or intelligent?  You can only pick one!”) and then design the evening around that bucket?  Not unless you want your date to run away, and that’s what your customers are doing. Subscribe to the show! Go to the Apple podcast directory.  Be sure to rate the show and give a review. Include your name and website and I will promote it on an upcoming show! Love to Connect! LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattchampagne Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/doc.champagne/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/evaluationguy Go to: www.matthewchampagne.com/podcasts for more