You said: “Identify someone in your organization to track and respond promptly to both positive and negative comments.” I agree with this. Though, I would emphasize the need to put some thought into just HOW you will be responding. If you’re going to engage these customers via social media you need to be ready to act on at least some portion of the responses — even if it’s to effectively say “We’re sorry, but we can’t do anything about that”. To have failed them once is bad…but to deliberately seek their thoughts out and then to not follow-through at all is even worse. If you’re going to ask “Why did you leave”, “How did we not satisfy you?” or something similar, be ready to respond.

Also, among your suggestions for ways to “understand your customers’ expectations while they are still with you” — all of which are great! — I would add the regular gathering and analysis of information from your call center, customer service, technical support or similar post-sales contact centers. 99% of contacts to these functional areas are because something went wrong, is not working, etc. It’s a GREAT and proactive way to see where the friction and pain-points are for your customers WHILE they are still customers. Build self-help, FAQs to get some quick wins, and integrate this feedback into the product development/R&D process to design resolutions(fixes) directly into the next version of your product.

Great actionable thoughts, Mary.

Thanks!
Russ
Seattle, WA
http:///www.twitter.com/russhatfield