Goodwill Kentucky's Customer Feedback Transformation

The Situation

Goodwill of Kentucky runs many retail stores across the state. They wanted to know what their customers really thought about shopping there, but their old survey methods weren't working well. The feedback they got was slow to arrive and didn't give them enough useful information to make real improvements.

What They Were Up Against

• Getting too little feedback, too late: Their traditional surveys weren't giving them enough responses, and by the time they got results, the information was already outdated. This made it hard to fix problems or improve the shopping experience.
• No way to get instant insights: They needed to know what was happening in their stores right now, not weeks later. But they had no system to get real-time feedback from multiple locations at once.
• Safety first: During the COVID-19 pandemic, they needed a way to collect feedback without physical contact between customers and staff.

The Solution

Goodwill partnered with ACL to use their Customer Ambassador Program. This new system lets customers give feedback through simple text messages on their phones.

Here's what made it work: customers didn't need to download any apps or click on links. They could complete a survey in under a minute, right from their phone. This made it so easy that many more people were willing to participate.

The Results

The change happened fast. In just the first three months of testing with only 20 stores, Goodwill collected over 3,500 completed surveys.

Even better, 95% of customers were happy to share basic information about themselves (like age and location), which helped Goodwill understand their customer base much better.

The real game-changer was getting instant access to all this feedback through an easy-to-use online dashboard. Store managers could see what customers were saying in real-time and make quick changes to improve the shopping experience. This also helped keep employees more accountable for customer service.

What Goodwill's Leadership Said

"The dashboard's access to data and insights holds the potential to transform our operations and positively impact the customer experience." — Rena Sharpe, Chief Operating Officer at Goodwill of Kentucky.