How to get honest and substantive feedback from your customers

Businesses can’t improve operations without honest and substantive feedback. Customers can be reluctant to provide it, for several reasons. Companies can try to overcome this by focusing feedback requests on improvement (not employee assessment),…
Many businesses have lost sight of this foundational operating principle and treat their customer feedback machine as a necessary evil to be fulfilled in the least-costly and least-awkward way possible. Smaller companies, which tend to be pressed for resources, may put little effort into trying to get customer feedback. Managers at small and medium-sized companies may feel like a robust customer feedback mechanism is a luxury that must wait until the company is larger.