Last time I spoke about the importance of customer feedback. Today, I’d like to deliver just a few guidelines for you.

There are two major types of feedback: quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (feelings).

Feel free to mix and match but a good guideline is shorter is better. In the last pasting, I mentioned Survey Monkey. I’ve used this platform at work a number of times and the limit for the free account is 10 questions. Looking at this from the restaurant perspective for someone dining in, here are some sample data points that could be collected.

Here are some question guidelines:
Ask open ended questions
Deal specifically with the personnel within the organization
Ask one question at a time
Use consistent rating scale(s)

With that in mind here’s a sample that could be used for a restaurant:

Dine In Option:
1. Day/time you ate in our establishment?

2. How long did you wait from when you called in to being seated?
5-10 minutes
10-15 minutes
15-20 minutes
20-25 minutes

3. Was the server?
Attentive-Yes/No
Knowledgable

4. Food-Length of wait time
5-10 minutes
10-15 minutes
15-20 minutes
20-25 minutes
More than 25 minutes

5. Food Taste
Excellent
Good
Average
Below Average
Poor

6. Restaurant ambiance (lights, cleanliness, music)
Excellent
Good
Average
Below Average
Poor
7. How often do you dine here?
First time
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Once in three months
8. How was the overall experience?

9. Comments

10. Can we contact you via email? If so, please submit your email address.

From here, as as the restaurant owner, you would receive an email for feedback. Assigning a number to the information submitted would allow you to see where the restaurant is doing good and what areas are in need of improvement.

If this was a restaurant that had a delivery option, you could ask similar questions as well.

This is just one industry that can get feedback. To reiterate, being proactive in addressing “issues” before they become “problems” can save a lot of headache in the short and long run. This and many other features can be integrated into a mobile app for further organizational benefit.

When services are rendered, it is in some ways a guessing game as to how the customer feels.  Other ways, it is not.  One example is the fast food industry.  If you are able to observe a screen, it may compute how long a customer was waiting from the time their order was up to the time of delivery.  This is one way of getting metrics. 

 

Depending upon the type of establishment, there may be a survey link with a request to take it on a receipt.  There are other ways that may or may not incur monetary use.  One that is limited fairly popular is Survey Monkey.  The limit is only 10 questions can be used but you can get up to 100 responses to get a good sampling of the overall population.    

 

Looking at the professional aspects, there are firms that are hired to get feedback.  This can be difficult in the age of caller identification where people are becoming less apt to answer a phone or hang up when the caller is identified. 

 

That being said, let’s explore some of the benefits of customer feedback:

Provide data for better business decisions: Adjust staffing levels to reduce customer wait time.

Solve problems:  It’s much easier to rectify a problem that is seen by a few rather than let it fester and possibly lose business at the end of the day.  This is important in the day of social media where a simple, seemingly benign comment can go viral and cause a business to go into “damage control.”  It’s easier to fix a problem while it’s small rather than have something go viral and go into damage control mode.

Customer Satisfaction:  One of the best things to do is magnify strength and minimize weaknesses.  This will allow you to quickly identify the things you are doing well. 

 

All of these things can quickly and easily incorporated into the Mobile App Maker Platform with our app builder which is one of the simplest in existence.  We are looking forward to you getting started today. 

I wanted to take a little bit to talk about downloading from “unofficial” app stores.  As you may well know, there are two predominate places to download mobile apps: Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.  However, there are alternatives that are out there. 

They include:

• 25PP
• AppAddict
• Appcake
• AppCola
• AppTracker
• Aptoide
• Cydia
• F-Droid
• GetJar
• HipStore
• iFunBox
• iPASTORE
• iTongPush
• Kuaiyong
• Mevvy
• Mob IPA Site
• Mobogenie
• SlideME
• vShare
• Zeusmos

There are some advantages to going outside of the two major places for information.  Apps that are released for a world wide audience may not be catered to a specific county which may differ based on localized taste.  The Apple App Store has a blanket list that just focuses on on popularity or what’s “hot” at the present time.  Google Play goes a little bit further by delineating based on age of the user.  This allows an individual to ensure they are getting an age appropriate app for them to use. 

 

Let’s take a look at just a few of the disadvantages.  To do so, we need to have a working definition that applies to the devices.

 

The first one is some apps require one to “root” or Android or “jailbreak” for iOS.  The difference between the two is:

 

Root-Get to the complete operating system

Jailbreak-Add extra capability that Apple normally prevents.

 

To do so requires bypassing normal safeguards present on devices.  The effects can be catastrophic.  The latest mass attack for Android was reported in this CNN article.  Once you read it, you can see how serious it is.  Personal information could have been stolen and at time of writing, there was no information taken although it could have happened after the story broke. 

Aside from this, the article further talks about how the Google Play Store was “diluted” in the review process by inflating app downloads and reviews which were taken care of by Google. 

The next is theft.  There are some apps that are in the “pirate” repositories the are normally charged.  Much in the way of time and effort went into creating an experience that the individual(s) would like to be compensated for.  Downloading and encouraging these types of apps promotes further illegal downloads.  To that end we at Mobile App Maker Pro will never engage in adding an app to an alternative site.  When you get started, you can visit Apple and Google to download our app today. 

Last time, we took hey look at communication in the workplace specifically. We took some time to address some of the difficulties in limitations that occur. What time on what's now take a look at Communication that can be found within the mobile maker platform.  Part of this stems from an article I saw online regarding one of the local police departments in my area.  The story can be read here.

Apple App Store

Google Play Store

When I was done taking a look at this article, I immediately downloaded the app the one thing that I noticed is that this app does not have an awful lot to it. There are four sections:

• Alerts
• Tips
• Crime map
• More-Connects to FB, Twitter, website and phone number.

 

Whether you like police officers or not they are essential and important. So what I did was I went ahead and start creating an app for them. I did this in part because they are not the most well-funded, they only have a basic page in the overall township website, and something like this was probably not on the forefront of their minds.  It’s still in the development stage but here’s what I did:

 

Everything pertaining to the local police department to include (type of page used first):

Dept Info-Custom Page

Dept. Fees-Custom Page

Public services-Custom Page

York crime Stoppers-Folder with two link pages

Local police scanner-Page link

A few new stories-Page Links

Megan’s Law-Page link

Vacation check-Form

Department videos-Custom page

Anonymous police tips-Form

Facebook-FB

You can see the web app version here sized for a mobile device.

 

Going back to the original premise of the article was communication.  The communication goes two ways within the Mobile App Maker Platform.  The general approach is people receiving  static information.  However when one integrates the push notification, it is possible to deliver real time information.  Here are two uses (of many) mobile app users can benefit from receiving push notifications:

 

Work/school delays for employment and school.

Emergency notification regarding fire, crime, major traffic closure

With some of these possibilities in mind, here’s how you begin:

• Select the client you wish to service
• Single App that I build for you
• Single app that you build for yourself
• Platform that you make multiple apps 

Either way we are looking forward to helping you get started today whether you need one app or multiple apps.

You may have heard of the axiom,"communication is key.”  Communication is unbroken all individuals can greatly benefit. When are individuals do not receive the same communication across the board, this results in many disgruntled individuals.  Personally speaking, this often happens at my place of employment. Some people are afforded opportunities that others or not, some people find out about events when others do not as well.  What causes this?

 

Of the main problems that I have noticed is information delivery methods.  I was recently talking with a person at work and they said for inclement weather is handed down to upper management.

 

Specifically at the weather, my employer does send weather alerts to a local television channel.

 

Lastly my employer does send information via Facebook page as well.  Let’s look at the challenges in each one.

 

Personally speaking going looking first to the upper management portion, I have not received a notification in three years.  The question here is where does the break happen?

 

Next is the local television channel. The local television channels my employer utilizes is two of four stations. Only one station receives the updates. What happens when along with that is there are many delays and enclosures that are being shown as well. What this simply means is if you step out the room for a moment, the alert that affects you specifically could go. This event means you can head out the door and possibly have a delay, Exposing yourself to unnecessary risk. 

 

The Facebook page may not be applicable because perhaps not everybody within the organization has Facebook.  Also, some people choose to keep their work life separate from the personal and don’t wish to have a constant reminder of work present when they get on.  Also, the organization relies on just on social medium of Facebook yet there are other platforms as well.  With that in mind, my next segment will be how can a mobile app help out in these regards.