Last year I had a tough conversation with a client.

She wanted to know why her retention rate was only getting worse.

I suggested that the first thing we should do is use NPS surveys to help gather data. We can look at how the analytics that we gather to help us make smarter decisions.

She balked at the idea.

Gather Feedback

Over the next few weeks I kept revisiting the issue. I didn’t want to be pushy, but I needed to challenge her.

We had to ask customers why they were leaving. If we made them feel as comfortable as possible and explained how much we just wanted the truth then we could figure out how to solve the issue.

That’s why I made a decision to start this new project.

I’m currently working on a software project to help companies like yours get better feedback from their customers so they can use this data to make smarter decisions.

Expanding out my business is always interesting because it requires challenging myself to step outside of my comfort zone.

Leadership

I’m learning to be more of a leader instead of just a doer.

I’m not a programmer, so I’m hiring someone to help me build the software. This requires a lot of patience and trust.

He has to understand my vision, use his best judgement, and create something that we are both happy with.

Most leaders make the mistake of trying to dictate the rules and try to get people to follow them.

I’ve realized the hard way that this is a bad way to lead.

People want to be involved in developing the project.

If you take that away from them then you take the joy of work away from them too.

Let me back up.

I have a passion project called Work Happy Now. I started the project because I wanted to know what made me happy at work and I thought I’d share it with the world.

It’s why I started this business, Domino Connection.

After many years of being a bad leader I began researching what really made people want to do great work. I wrote an article that went mini viral in the business writing world. It’s about encouraging employee happiness and engagement.

Progress

I found out that most people were happy when they saw progress in their career. They want and need to see a project succeed. They want people show appreciation for their hard work. And they really want to see that their work truly matters.

And for that same reason they are afraid to try new things. They don’t want to see it flop and feel like a failure.

They don’t want to be a failure.

But that’s the problem.

I’m going to tell you an open secret that many people are afraid to accept.

You need to fail to feel successful. You need to fail small and big to succeed.

Challenge Yourself

If you don’t try new things you’ll never see progress.

It’s why I challenge people to create passion projects for themselves. The people who try to do something difficult, grow professionally and personally because of it are the people who really succeed.

They stretched past what they thought was possible.

I look forward to seeing what you think.

The best way for business to continue to drive innovation is to improve how they listen. When you listen to smart people who care, then that’s where you will find hidden gems that help you take your business in new directions.

Stay tuned and I should have something to show you very soon. We’re shooting for June 1st.

When I was young I wanted to be a scientist.

You come up with an idea, create a hypothesis on how the idea would work, then you go and test it.

I would run my own experiments.

Can an Ant be killed with using the sun and a magnifying glass? (I was a little jerk when I was 6.)

Can buy a pack of gum and trade it for lunch at school?

How many girls do I have to ask on a date before they say yes? (I don’t want to reveal this number.)

There was always something I was curious about.

That’s the best part of my job. Helping clients come up with hypothesis on the best ways to improve User and Customer Experience, testing them out, and watching the data roll add up, so we can make smarter decisions.

I realize how hard it is to cultivate the scientist mindset in your own business.

Your business is so loveable, hard, and sweet. How could you ever cut it open and dissect it?

There needs to be an emotional detachment from your business that all owners need to have. If something isn’t working for you then you can’t force the product or service on your customers. You need to pivot and adapt to the market.

That requires taking a hard look at the data and making sure you are making good decisions.

That’s where I come in.

I take an x-ray of your website and show you what needs help and how you can fix it. I’m not attached to your business and it’s easier for me to be objective.

I would like to help more purpose driven companies.

I do this for people in the Domino Connection community. If you want special offers from me just join in on the updating fun and I’ll let you know next time I have a special offer to help you boost your Customer and User Experience.

Is there some big thing you’ve always wanted?

You might want to buy a beautiful island in the Caribbean. That would be cool, but you can’t have it all though, can you?

Just like you can’t build a great business and make every single customer happy.

It’s impossible, right?

Don’t think too much about it right now.

I want you to focus on this moment.

There will always be an unhappy customer at some point. There will always be something you can’t buy. Like your own island.

You can and should focus on this moment.

Right now.

It seems like something little, but it’s where every action start.

In the present moment.

The more actions you take, the closer you can get to making your dreams come true.

Big Picture

Maybe 80% of your customers give you a rating of an 8 or higher. No company in the history of the world has received all 10’s. You’ll never have 100% satisfaction from your customers. That’s ok. Reasonable expectations are a good thing.

80% at a 8 or higher is a great start.

How do you even know if every customer is really happy?

You don’t, but you need to try.

How do you find out?

You need to ask.

That’s why a customer feedback loop is so important.

I have a customer that is getting off the charts great feedback. Almost 10’s across the board. They like all of us aren’t perfect.

They got two 2s and they were able to solve both customer’s issue quickly. That’s the beauty of asking and tracking the responses. You can to make the customer experience better as well as improve upon common issues that keep occurring.

A customer feedback loop is an ongoing conversation with your customers about what is going well and what could be improved.

The higher the quality feedback you can gather from your customers the easier it is to figure out what you can do better.

The hard part will be getting people to give you their time.

Most Important Part

The most important part of this process is to continue to gather feedback so you can compare it to past feedback.

Are you improving upon your customer experience?

The only way to know is to keep tracking and review on a regular basis. I advise most of clients to either review their feedback once a week, a month or once a quarter. This will of course depend on the type of business you run. You want to find a comfortable balance for the customer as well as for you and your team.

The idea is to make it so simple that they are willing to use their valuable time to give you feedback.

That’s why I use the Domino Promotion Sequence (DPS), based off of Net Promoter Score.

Each person who loves what you do will promote you to their friends. They’ll tip like dominoes from one person to the next.

It’s a system that helps you get better feedback and use it to improve your User Experience and Customer Experience.

There are a couple key components to DPS.

The first part is the rating from 0 – 10

Breaking Down the Scores

Here is how people who take your survey are classified.

10 and 9 – Promoters
8 and 7 – Passives
6 thru 0 – Detractors

These classifications are a good guideline. Every score is important. Each person’s feedback should be responded to and each person should be made to feel important.

Many times you can turn them from a detractor or passive into a promoter of your company.

The 2nd step is finding out why they feel this way.

The 3rd step is understanding why they choose to buy from you.

It’s this part that will help you understand their main pain points and how to improve the copywriting on your website.

The 4th step is finding out what you could do to improve upon their experience.

There is always something to improve. Even if they give you a rating of a 10 there is always something you could have done better.

Keep a Positive Perspective

You shouldn’t get too high or low about the feedback that you receive.

Sometimes the feedback can be hard to hear, especially if the customer gives you a low score, so never take any of the feedback personal.

Most of the time people just want to be heard. When you reply back to someone they will be thrilled that you actually care about the product and want to improve upon their experience.

Most of the time you want to hear multiple complaints a few times before you start taking action to improve it.

If you try to fix every problem/issue that occurs you’ll wear yourself and your staff out. You want to focus on the most important issues at all times.

Remember you can’t make every customer happy, but you can listen to every customer and make them feel important even if you can’t always solve their problem.