When I wrote the Top 10 Reasons to choose Conditioned Air Solutions, the one I may have been the most passionate about was #6 – "we want your feedback".

I don't think it is a coincidence that whenever I get great service I usually find that I have an easy way to give the business feedback. I recently visited Sweet Peppers Deli for the first time and it was great! Friendly people, clean place, great food, excellent service…and sure enough, a postage paid comment card on each table with plenty of room for me to tell them as much or as little as I liked. And just as sure, on Ryan's not-so-positive eating experience a while back, there was no card for him to fill out.

"That's great", you may be thinking, "but how do I do that for my business?" That's why we're here today: to see exactly how you can start getting regular feedback from your customers. I'm going to show you how both Sweet Peppers (from my customer perspective) and Conditioned Air (from my business owner perspective) do it, and some of the thinking behind that.

Both start with an old fashioned tool: a post card. Let's take a look at Sweet Peppers':

Note a few important things while you think about what you want to ask your own customers:

• they give you a web address in case you'd prefer to fill it out online
• they let you include as much or as little information as you want (birthday, spouse's name, etc.)
• they ask for enough details that if they can pass on your experience (good or bad) to the people involved
• they point out that they are not going to give your information to anyone else
• they thank you for your business
• it is addressed to the manager of that particular store
• it is postage paid

I'm not sure how this could be much easier for me as a customer, and that's critical: the easier it is for them, the more feedback you'll receive.

Now let's look at Conditioned Air's:

The first thing you may notice is the differences in the cards that are driven by the differences in our businesses. When we designed our card, some of our goals were general and some specific to our business:

• express our thanks for their business (which we do first thing)
• make it easy for them to tell us how we're doing
• reinforce our performance in their minds as they filled out the card (we almost always have all 5s so as they fill it out they think "Why yes, the technician was professional!")
• promote (via the return address logos on the back) the fact that we do HVAC, electrical, and plumbing
• give them a place to add any general comments or criticisms
• above all – make it easy!

If you think you need something like this for your business, here is exactly how to implement your own customer feedback system in the form of a post card. But first, a warning: if you do this halfway you'll do more damage than good. If you don't have the ability to regularly deliver the cards to your customers, or if you can't consistently follow up on any negative comments, or if you aren't able (or willing) to actually take the feedback to heart and make changes, then don't do it. But if you can do these things, then here we go:

1. Decide how often to ask. If you have a retail store and have customers who come in every day, you can't get feedback on every purchase. But those kinds of customers are gold if you can get them to tell you what you are doing so right that they buy from you so often.
2. Decide which customers to ask. Conditioned Air has some large commercial customers where we may do 10 or more service calls in a week – those people don't want to fill out a survey card for every call. But our service calls to any particular residential customer are infrequent, so we give them a survey card each time.
3. Decide how you'll get the cards to your customers. Sweet Peppers appears to have a couple of ways: they have cards on their tables and they have a link on their web site. And though I don't know, having never ordered take out from them, they ought to put special ones (tailored for take out customers) in the bags if you order take out. Conditioned Air often gets paid by the residential customer when we do the job and if we only mail out cards with invoices quite a few of our customers won't have a chance to tell us how we're doing. So we ask our technicians to hand them out on the times they collect payment from homeowners.
4. Create your questions – look at the two cards in this article, examine as many others as you can find, and think about what specific questions are important to your business. If you deliver, you may want to ask about your driver, or the timeliness of delivery. If you are a manufacturer, maybe you ask about quality or payment terms or whatever. Don't try to get it perfect or you'll never finish. Just think of a few basic (and easy to answer) questions and you'll be golden. As soon as they are printed you'll think of something else you should have asked – don't worry, just make a note and change it when you print your next batch.
5. Design your card. If you don't have the skills to do this yourself, hire a graphic designer. You are welcome to use mine: Ellen Hunter (ellen.hunter@mchsi.com). I told her some of you might email her so she's expecting it. Ellen has designed most of Conditioned Air's marketing materials, business cards, direct mail materials, etc. She will give you great value for your money, won't promise what she can't deliver, and will work with you if you have a problem. She works with printers and knows what they need. One more thing – I obviously can't speak for Sweet Peppers but other than our logos you are welcome to use whatever you can from Conditioned Air's card.
6. Find a printer. If you've never used one before, just do a Google search to find one near you, or ask Ellen – she usually handles my printing, and her printers may even ship to where you are. As with any vendor, I've found that prices for the same quality and service can vary significantly.
7. Assign someone to be responsible for this effort. Depending on how big your business is, this probably needs to be you. This person needs to make sure the cards are going out (and that enough are coming back in), read them and reply when necessary, and most importantly, get the feedback to the people who need it. If you are doing this properly, you'll see your comments change for the better over time.

This isn't rocket science, but it does require a bit of organization, discipline, and a desire to get better. If you have those you can have a steady way to improve both your customer relations and your performance.