Boise, Idaho (PRWEB) September 14, 2011
To do its part to help struggling small businesses nationwide grow and create new jobs, South Office LLC has announced it is offering its new QR-code driven customer feedback service for free.
?We are doing this to help small businesses improve their customer experience and, therefore, expand and hire new employees as revenue grows,? says Martin R. Baird, chief feedback officer for South Office, a Boise, Idaho-based company. ?Wal-Mart announced last week it is bringing back its layaway plan to help shoppers during the recession and give the economy a boost. This is our way of also helping the business community and the economy.?
South Office is targeting companies with one to five locations and will offer its Feedback Revolution QR service at no charge to the first 1,000 businesses that sign up.
?Our offer is simple,? Baird says. ?If a business would like to use our cutting-edge research and common technology to learn about their customers? experience, we will do it for free. They just need to sign up at http://www.feedbackrevolutionqr.com to get started.?
Feedback Revolution QR weds the technology of QR codes and smartphones with extensive customer satisfaction research published by Harvard. The research, which spanned 10 years and involved more than 4,000 customers in 14 industries, concluded that a customer?s willingness to refer is more powerful than satisfaction or loyalty. One of the service?s questions was developed from the research, which also concluded that customers who are willing to risk their reputation for a company will continue to patronize that business and tell their friends to do the same, creating repeat and new business.
In this economy, too many businesses are forced to make tough decisions about keeping employees, Baird says. ?We don?t want anyone to get a cut in hours so their employer can have real-time customer feedback,? Baird notes. ?And real-time customer feedback can be the key to helping many businesses grow and improve.
?Government doesn?t know how to create jobs. Entrepreneurs create jobs. They have the ideas that drive our economy and they need some help. We hope that by transforming the way some of these companies collect and use customer feedback, we may become part of the next Starbucks, McDonalds or even Google.?
According to the Small Business Administration, small firms have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years. ?Consider this,? Baird says. ?If one out of three micro businesses ? companies with less than four employees ? in the United States would hire one more person, we would be at full employment.?
Actionable customer feedback leads to an improved customer experience that goes directly to the bottom line, Baird says. According to American Express, 70 percent of Americans are willing to spend an average of 13 percent more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service. American Express also found that when a customer is happy, he tells nine people about his experience. But he will tell 16 people about a poor experience, according to American Express.
?The Internet has made it easy to share experiences with the world, but we want customers to share that valuable information with the business owners directly so the owners know exactly what customers want changed and improved,? Baird says. ?Businesses should understand that comment cards don?t work because customer feedback needs to be fast and actionable.?
By listening to customers and increasing revenue, businesses can reinvest through hiring and expansion, Baird says. ?The economy needs all the help it can get,? Baird says. ?With national unemployment at 9.1 percent and over 13 percent in places like Las Vegas, every little bit can help.?
The president and congress cannot create public-sector jobs, according to Baird. ?They create government jobs that are just a drag on our economy. Hundreds of billions of dollars in government programs are not the answer. It will take businesses having the ability to add one or two new jobs each to get the ball rolling.? When people have jobs, they go out to eat, buy new furniture and put money in the bank, with each of these actions helping the businesses they touch get stronger, according to Baird.
?I?m no Warren Buffet or Bill Gates,? Baird says. ?I?m just a guy who wants to do his part.?
South Office offers Feedback Revolution QR, a QR code-driven customer feedback service to help businesses gather real-time customer feedback and transform that information into improved business practices. Feedback Revolution QR weds the technology of QR codes and smartphones with extensive customer satisfaction research published by Harvard, making the service a game changer in customer feedback, according to South Office.
South Office describes Feedback Revolution QR this way:
Because the service is quick and easy, people are more likely to participate and provide valuable customer feedback. The customer sees the code and scans it with their smartphone. A list of at most five questions appears on the phone?s screen. The customer types or uses speech to text on the phone and then transmits their feedback by touching a ?submit? button. It typically takes less than 60 seconds to provide feedback. Customers who do not have a smartphone can participate on their computer or any other device that has an Internet connection, using the URL for the customer survey.
Once customers have scanned the code, they can answer the questions anywhere ? while they?re in the store or restaurant, walking around the mall, walking to their car. And because their responses are anonymous, they can be honest about their customer service experience. Anonymity also eliminates the guilt some customers feel in providing honest feedback.
South Office LLC helps businesses measure and manage the quality of their customer experience and make improvements to their internal operations to enhance business performance and increase revenue. The company focuses on providing tools that make customer feedback easy and that will generate real-time results for companies.
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