Peek inside the minds of your customers. It might sound like science fiction, but the company behind Customer Radar says that it can let you know what your customers are thinking in real time.

“Any company or organisation that deals with large volumes of people will find it difficult to understand what the vast majority of their customers are thinking at any one time,” it says, adding that its patent-pending technology allows you to read the mood of your customers.

“It gives you the insight into how well you delivered on their expectations and enables you to drive your business with live independent information.

This is good because you get a chance to manage dissatisfied customers as soon as they let you know they're unhappy. You'll get a chance to fix the problem and a second chance at retaining their business through better customer management.

So how does it work?

“We make it easy for the customer to provide feedback using the Customer Radar 3 step process,” the firm explains. Customers are asked to provide feedback on your company via texting on their mobile phone.

The Customer Radar program manages and collates the data into an easy-to-use dashboard. Apparently it's easy to implement and train staff on, and it won't interfere with your existing technology or point-of-sale systems. Customer Radar is aimed at many different forms of business, but the company says there are good opportunities for organisations that have large volumes of customers. If you're a company that previously gained feedback or performance insight via feedback forms, complaints boxes, people with clipboards and online research, then this could be an option.

The aim of Customer Radar is that you get back realtime consumer feedback on satisfaction, products and services. The live benchmarking and insights can help you identify areas of strength and weakness in your business before they become a serious problem.

You can get a view of your company from a customer's perspective and gain insights into staff behaviours. Best of all though, you can use it to create new revenue opportunities.

Noel Leeming has used the technology and is quoted as saying that it created a new level of accountability “that we had not had before”.

Auckland City Council was also impressed: “The system also allowed immediate, on-site access to the responses as they came in.”