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August 26, 2008
“You talk. We listen.”
Getting feedback is hard: You need to encourage people to participate in a survey, write a review, or share their opinion in some other way.
So it’s astounding to me how often companies waste this hard-earned feedback. They fail to share survey results. Miss the chance to make changes. And sometimes, even when they make improvements, they don’t make the connection between what people said and what the company did as a result.
That’s why this recent effort by Stop & Shop caught my eye. A regional supermarket (a division of global giant Ahold) with 385 stores located in the Northeast, Stop & Shop is repositioning itself to better compete in the tough supermarket business.
How? By listening to customers’ needs. “You talk. We listen.” is the headline of the mailer Stop & Shop sent to customers.
“You’ve been depending on us for over 90 years to help feed your family,” Stop & Shop writes. “And we’ve worked hard to give you what you need. But as times change, needs change.”
So the supermarket embarked upon a customer listening program—which includes an online community called Grocery Advisory Board (G.A.B.)—to find out what customers need.
As a result, Stop & Shop is changing in three ways:
- “You told us you wanted lower prices, so we lowered prices on thousands of items.”
- “You told us you were concerned about the environment. We made reusable shopping bags available for sale. We even give you 5 cents back for each bag you reuse."
- “You told us you need help getting dinner ready. We created an expanded menu of prepared foods to help with dinner.”
I love the simple language, the emphasis on “you” and the very clear connection between what customers said they need and what Stop & Shop is doing as a result.
You, too, could take this approach: to report on action taken as a result of a survey or focus group, or even as a response to a review or comment.
This is not necessarily easy to do, but it’s very compelling and effective. (For more on what Stop & Shop is doing, see this article in MediaPost —free signup required.)
Posted by Alison Davis at August 26, 2008 03:56 PM
Comments
Re: Your accolades for Stop & Shop
In my personal experience, Stop & Shop doesn't listen at all. They stopped sending out weekly sales info in my area a while back and told us to check on-line instead. Like I have time to try to drag through and search about 20 on-line pages when I can flip through the paper version in a few minutes and circle what I want to buy. They said we could request having a paper version mailed to us. I did that but was ignored. Needless to say, I shop elsewhere. (By the way, they still send out paper versions in other towns - don't know why we get to be victimized.)
Posted by: PRowan at August 30, 2008 12:19 PM