Customer feedback is important for any business.

But for the feedback to be most useful, it can't be delayed and companies must act on it quickly, said the chief executive of a Salt Lake City company that helps businesses improve their services.

Satisfied customers and productive employees are key drivers in a company's financial success, said Rich Hanks, chief executive of Mindshare Technologies. "But you'll never know who is really satisfied without measurement."

Mindshare works with clients from 27 industries that span the service spectrum, including restaurants, lodgings, retailers, hair salons, spas, home services and newspapers.

Customer feedback varies greatly by industry, from about 2 percent for a restaurant if no incentives are offered to customers, to as high as 35 percent in the health-care industry, Hanks said.

Although positive comments are encouraged, more responses are on the negative side. In those industries with less-skilled workers, the biggest complaint is about inattentiveness, he said. "In those with more-skilled workers, more complaints are about the thing itself, the haircut, the food."

Soliciting customer feedback is a first step in operational improvement," Hanks said.

So, too, are mystery shoppers, although their focus is different, said Kelly Hancock, spokeswoman for the Dallas-based Mystery Shopping Providers Association, an 80-member trade association for an industry with annual sales of more than $800 million.

"We really play hand-in-hand with the IVR," Hancock said, referring to interactive voice response companies such as Mindshare. "They get a snapshot of a customer's experience."

"They give consumer opinions based on that one experience; we're going to measure management standards."

Mystery shoppers visit businesses with a checklist of questions they must answer before leaving, she said. "We're measuring standards, not customer responses. It's not really apples to apples."

Some companies, such as the Montvale-based A&P supermarket chain, use multiple methods to track customer satisfaction, spokeswoman Patti Councill said.

A&P combines customer surveys, toll-free lines for shopper feedback, customer response cards in all the stores and its "own form of mystery shopping, which we perform regularly," Councill said.

In addition, it periodically uses an outside vendor to conduct customer surveys of A&P and its competitors.

Some merchants rely on the owner or manager talking personally with customers, but that may not provide accurate feedback, Hanks said.

"You can't be there all day, every day, to see what's going on," he said. "Also, 95 percent of irate customers will not tell you [their complaints]. They are conflict avoiders who will not look in an owner's eye.

"It needs to be anonymous."

Another popular method is to provide customers with "satisfaction" cards that can be mailed to corporate headquarters, but that can result in a delay, Hanks said.

By encouraging customer feedback in real time - at the end of dinner or immediately after they've shopped at your store - business owners can take corrective steps immediately, he said.

For example, if a customer uses a mail-in card to complain that a restaurant's rest room is dirty or that the chicken was greasy, it may take a couple of weeks before that information gets to corporate headquarters and back to the local manager.

"That's not very helpful," Hanks said.

His service works by telephone and Internet, so customers are encouraged to provide feedback immediately. Some even do so with cellphones at the table, he said.

Getting comments by phone also allows managers to hear customers' emotions, as well as the actual comments, he said.

Those comments are then "fired back" to the merchant, who can take swift action, he said.

E-mail: demarrais@northjersey.com