Customers are more often than not, willing to discuss your business. When they do talk, the information they tend to share is called customer feedback. And it can help you improve all aspects of your business.
In this article, you will learn what customer feedback is, why it is important and find out insights from this article about the specific benefits it brings.
Table of contents
- What is customer feedback?
- Why is customer feedback important?
- How to get feedback from customers
What is Customer Feedback?
Customer feedback is the information customers share with you about their experiences with your products or service, and any interaction they have had with your company.
The feedback can be direct or indirect. For instance, customers can hopefully discuss your Brand on different social media platforms without tagging you (indirect), or leave your product reviews and comments on your business website (direct).
Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing to evaluate customer experience. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or go beyond customer expectations.
This could be positive or negative customer feedback, online reviews, or general comments about their interaction with your company. User feedback comes in many forms, including support tickets, customer comments, reviews, testimonials, and surveys.
Customer satisfaction leads to customer feedback. This implies that your customers have a hand in promoting your business beyond how far you can reach, if you satisfy them during initials.
Why is Customer Feedback important;
Customer feedback is important because it tells you how they feel about your business. You’ll learn what they like about your company and areas where you can improve.
Without this feedback, you won’t be able to know if you satisfy the people you exist for — your customers. You won’t know if they use your product as intended and even if they may want to continue doing business with you.
Here are a few tips that could help;
Listening to the voice of your customers will help you measure your customer satisfaction;
One of the best ways to identify what your customers want is by giving them a listening ear. Customers want to be heard and want their problems solved. Successful businesses listen to what their customers say and implement their suggestions to improve customer success, operations, and products.
It helps identify flaws to improve your products and services;
Receiving feedback directly from your customers can help you tweak and tailor your product to be more appealing to your ideal customers, buyer personas, and target market.
Acting on the insights you have gained from customer feedback and showcasing real progress with a product roadmap, will make your customers feel valued and heard. And will help you create a healthy relationship with them.
Satisfied customers tend to provide good reviews and help support your brand advocacy;
Satisfied customers tell three friends, and unhappy customers can tell 10 friends. If your existing customers are happy with your business, they may tell others about your business. This is also known as brand advocacy.
Brand advocacy is a simple way to grow your business organically through word of mouth.
Customer feedback helps you learn about your audience on a deeper level;
While you probably gathered valuable insight from customer persona satisfaction research, nothing is more valuable than the insight that comes directly from your customers, which is what customer feedback is all about.
They’ll give you an insight about themselves, how they use your products and services, and what they expect from you. When you understand more about them and who they are, you can create experiences that speak directly or be able to meet their needs.
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How to get feedback from customers;
Feedback from customers is a very important way to grow your business rapidly. Here are some ways on how to get feedback from customers;
1. Surveys
Surveys are easily the most well-known method of collecting customer feedback.
A survey can generate specific feedback for issues to focus on. Write questions designed to collect customer feedback about the challenges your business is facing.
However, customer surveys also have some setbacks. One of the main ones is that people find long surveys tiring, so they’re unlikely to respond if yours is too long or not immediately clear how long it will take to complete.
To avoid this, make sure to keep your surveys brief and concise to the point, moreover consider integrating them in a digital flipbook to make the process more engaging. Only include feedback survey questions that you need the answers to!
2. Reaching out directly;
Sometimes, low-tech solutions (e.g. customer interviews and focus groups) are better for collecting customer feedback because they provide deeper insights.
Calling your customers, emailing them, and organizing meetings with them are all great ways of getting feedback in person. For this, you can use Whatsapp Business API to communicate and get feedback on the WhatsApp platform effectively.
If you’re able to video chat or meet in person, you’ll get more value from the conversation, including verbal and non-verbal reviews that you wouldn’t get from a survey.
Different types of meetings, such as one-on-one interviews or focus group sessions, can offer different opinions and enrich your understanding of what your customer needs.
3. Offer incentives for feedback;
Going through a survey takes away valuable time from a customer’s busy schedule. One way to make your surveys worth the investment is to offer a reward for their completion. This makes for a simple, yet highly effective transaction approach to obtaining feedback.
While money or discounts are great, keep in mind that the reward does not have to be cash, either. You can incentivize customers using free content that’s useful to their workflow. This could be an E-book or an educational pamphlet that helps them achieve their goals.
4. Delay asking for feedback;
While getting immediate feedback is great, it’s more useful when the feedback is thoughtful and accurate. Sometimes it takes time for the customer to develop a complete perspective on their buying experience. If you ask for feedback immediately, you’re only getting to know how they feel at the initial point of using your product, not how the product or service impacted them over time.
If you’re noticing customer feedback seems inaccurate, try waiting a week or two before surveying your customers. You may find that the roadblocks challenging them could probably be long-term problems that occur over the continued use of your product or service.
5. Monitor social media channels;
Social media has become an inexpensive and efficient way to communicate with your target audience. Customers are already actively participating in communities on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and it doesn’t cost your business anything to join in on their conversations. Respond to comments, send direct messages, and engage with your audience to see how people feel about your company.
When your team encounters negative reviews, be sure to respond to them quickly. Active social media users are expecting a fast response, so you have to dedicate a resource to each channel. Closely monitoring your social buzz is a great way to track trends and events that can influence your business.
You can employ a social media manager to help manage your social media handles and respond to customers at regular intervals.
In conclusion, all departments must be involved in customer satisfaction — starting with customer feedback. In an economic environment where every business is looking for cost-effective ways to generate customers, there’s no end to the value consistent feedback will bring to your business or company.
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