Why Customer Feedback Is Important: 5 Reasons
Imagine you run a business and have done almost everything to succeed. It seems like you have all set up, automated some processes, and your business works properly. Do you think it is enough to have a successful business? Not yet, of course. You see, if you run a company that provides its services to customers, be it a cafe or a shop, you face some kind of customer feedback. And you must be aware of the most proper ways to collect customer feedback, and, what is more important, what to do with it. That’s why we’ve decided to write about the importance of customer feedback for your business and its benefits.
Why Is Customer Feedback Important?
We are sure you are doing your best to satisfy your customers. Anyway, even if you improve your services every day, there will always be problems or defects in your work. Moreover, you never see your services as objective and real as your customers do. That is why customer feedback is important to keep proper communication with your clients. They will always give you real feedback from your business, such as their experience, changing requirements, your faults and failures, and needs for improvement. All this is a piece of priceless information that no business development specialist can give you.
What Is Customer Feedback?
Now, let’s start with the question you may ask first: What is customer feedback? It is a piece of information from your customers about your business. When you provide any kind of service, you need to create a way for your customers to contact you back in a convenient way to tell you if they have had a good experience, if they have liked your services, if you have met their requirements, and whether you need to improve your business. Customer feedback is not always negative. Your clients may highlight things they have liked the most in your business and you will know if you are doing it right.
How To Collect Customer Feedback?
So, you may ask how to start collecting customer feedback. Do it in any convenient way but make sure you keep all feedback so you can work with them later. For example, if you are a company that provides particular services to your customers, you may create short and informative questionnaires for those who have already tried your services and share them via email or the CRM system.
You can also post a questionnaire on your social media pages if you have any and ask to answer a few questions. This may feel a bit awkward if it is your first time, but believe us, it is worth it. Your clients will spend a few minutes answering, but you will get useful information to work with.
There are a lot of other ways to collect customer feedback. For example, if you have or run an online shop, you may share some questions directly on your website or social media pages. These can be polls, open questions, or anything. Make sure you keep all data to work with it later. Of course, these options might not work for you if it is a business of another type. For instance, if you have a restaurant, and you need to collect some feedback from your customers to improve your service and give a better experience to your clients, you may create small cards with questionnaires on them and give them to your guests with the bill in the end. Questions may be different, like “How did you like our food?” or “Please rate our customer service.”
These are of course just examples, you can write down and ask anything you need to know. Besides, the staff should ask regularly if your clients liked the service, the quality of your place, food, etc. Make sure you don’t ask merely formal questions: get an advantage from each answer to make your business better for your customers.
So, let’s sum up the ways to collect real customer feedback to get the most out of it:
- Make regular calls to your clients.
- Create a live chat support system to keep in touch with clients, solve their problems quickly, and collect feedback from chats.
- Create forms you can share with clients to get detailed feedback.
- Start surveys via email.
- Create a convenient space on your landing page to write the feedback.
- Start polls online via social media pages or websites.
- Ask for feedback at the place where you provide your services (shop, cafe, restaurant, etc.).
- Use your social media pages to share polls.
- Create a space for feedback right on the order confirmation page.
You can add the options that work exactly for you, but make sure you stay relevant to your field and business. Don’t get too friendly asking about their opinion if it is not your communication style. But don’t be too formal if your tone of voice is generally friendly and direct.
When you just start collecting customer feedback and haven’t done it until now, you may be shocked by the results. Some feedback may be quite negative as you provide services to customers and cannot please everyone. It takes a lot of effort to find out your customers’ problems and start solving them. Don’t get disappointed.
Remember that even the most negative feedback you can ever imagine will give you only the best outcome. Moreover, don’t think that feedback can only be negative. Customer feedback is not only about your clients’ complaints. Customers also leave positive comments that are as important as negative ones. When you get some positive feedback, you must work with it as well, which will lead to improvements in your services. You will know how to optimize your products and services and continue working on what your clients like the most. Moreover, you will be able to measure consumer satisfaction and get insights for yourself on a better customer experience. All this means you will start running customer data-driven decisions that will definitely help you succeed in your field.
What To Do With Feedback?
This is the question that very few companies ask themselves. Some of them collect customer feedback and don’t use it, but it’s not our story. First of all, what you need to do with the collected data is to categorize them based on the topic, product, service, etc.
Choose what exactly works for your company. Then, study each complaint or positive feedback separately. Keep records of all the feedback and change the status of each case when you process them or when you solve them. You must have the exact pattern of the feedback of your customers. It will be a little bit complicated in the very beginning, but later you will get used to regularized and orderly track of the feedback. You may want to keep records for each week, month, or half of the year based on your needs and the number of cases. Work with each case carefully and involve specialists from your company that you know may help with solving problems.
In reality, working on your business development and investigating customer problems at the same time will bring you great results. If you don’t get any feedback, you would definitely discover some problems and faults in your company much later, which could ruin your business. Imagine having a constant issue and not knowing about it for a long time. How would you feel? And with a stable customer feedback collection system, you will get your results shortly, which will help to fix the problems for sure.
Furthermore, don’t be afraid of public reviews about your business, even if some of them can be negative. All this will help you become better eventually. You can track these kinds of reviews with keyword searches, and you will be aware of everything that is being posted on the Internet about the products or services your company provides.
Benefits Of Customer Feedback
So, let’s dive into the main topic we wanted to share with you: the customer feedback benefits.
1. Business improvement
This point may sound general, but it is true. You see, the top specialists in communication and marketing say you should give space for your customers to complain. Like literally, they need an area, be it a feedback card or a survey, or a poll, to write down or say what they think about your business. And no matter how it will sound or look — you may feel shocked at first, but this is how you get a chance to work on your business and the products or services you provide.
How else would you know if you meet your customers’ expectations if not through their feedback? Call them, contact them via email, give them surveys and cards, and ask them to rate the customer experience they had when dealing with you, and you will know the truth. You will know exactly what they like and what they don’t. Besides, what is more important, make sure to communicate with your customers regularly.
A customer feedback collection is not a one-time thing to do, but it’s an ongoing process. Ask for their opinion regularly, and you will not only know what they liked or disliked, but you will also pay attention to their changing needs and requirements. Of course, their opinion and experience may change from time to time. And what once satisfied your customers might no longer be relevant. They may need a more detailed and individual approach with time, and you will have a chance to modify your services to their needs.
2. Loyalty maintenance
We bet you have already seen companies that don’t have a proper customer feedback processing system. They work the way they want and find it right without asking if you need anything else. You cannot contact them in case you have problems. This may be due to the total absence of communication with customers. Yet, this may also be because they have everything automated in their business.
Remember that automated processes are great as they save a lot of time. They are fast, convenient, ready-to-go, and already categorized. However, sometimes, customers need to talk to real people. Not all problems may be solved automatically. Your clients may have very unique needs, and it might not be complicated at all for you to fix the problem. That’s why you just need to listen to your customers from time to time.
We have seen companies that constantly work on their good name by employing some very useful techniques in communication and customer support systems. One of these techniques is giving direct access to your customers to contact the CEO or the shareholder of your company. Won’t say that the CEO must speak with each customer on behalf of your customer support representatives. But you may give space for your clients to write a letter directly to the CEO. For example, you may want to put a sticker on the cashier desk in your shop with a few words like “If you have any feedback you can contact our CEO directly via this email…” And with time, you will start getting well-constructed and informative feedback.
Applying these features makes it evident that your company cares about customers’ opinions. You show that you value each customer and are ready to work on your flaws so people get a better experience dealing with you.
3. Customer satisfaction measurement
Customer feedback collection has a huge benefit which is customer satisfaction measurement. It can be done in various ways, and you are able to choose which one works for you. One of the most effective methodologies for measuring customer satisfaction is NPS (Net Promoter Score). It is based on one simple question that discovers the likeliness a client will recommend a company to his relatives or friends.
Answer options for the questions are based on a 0–10 point rating scale, with 0 meaning the worst option and 10 — the best. This method is easy and universal, so every company can use it for client satisfaction management. You will get your clients’ answers in a much shorter time than in the case of other methods of communication. Moreover, the answers will be a lot easier to categorize, and you will be able to start working with the feedback right away.
4. Create a better customer experience
Do you think all companies take the same steps for customer satisfaction? Believe us, it’s not that easy. Not all companies have the necessary staff, tools, and systems adopted for good and effective communication with customers. That’s why we suggest you take all necessary steps and start communicating with your clients and collecting their feedback.
Certainly, your customers see the difference between companies that value their opinion and those that don’t, and they definitely choose the first type over the second. You would do the same as a customer, wouldn’t you? Think like a customer first and never forget how you feel when using a service or a product from a company that does not care about customer experience. There is a great saying: “Listen to your customers; otherwise, your competitors will.” Couldn’t agree more, right? Now, think about how many companies started communicating with their customers before you did. This was one of the main reasons why they succeeded.
5. Adopt the "customer is always right" attitude
We can tell you about millions of examples when the company did not succeed just because it did not accept that the customer is always right. You see, if you provide services or sell products, the most precious thing you will have are your customers. You cannot go on with your business if you don’t have the necessary audience and loyal customers.
We know that in some cases, customer feedback can be biased or directed from your competitors. In other cases, your client can be mistaken. But these are quite rare occasions. So, don’t think about these exceptions when collecting and analyzing customer feedback.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and analyze what would you do if you could fix the problem. And then, do it! When you adopt this position that your customer is always right, they feel it and know that every fault you could have was not intentional. This means a lot to your clients. And one day you will have to understand that anything your customer says will only help you become a more successful business and a brand of the first choice for your audience.
Conclusion
Remember these reasons when running a business, and of course when starting your own business. Even if you have a team that does not get the importance of customer feedback or you should always highlight its importance. You may also want to start tracking customer feedback with the tools and automation techniques in the beginning, but we bet your team will say thank you for the final results later.
Imagine how your company position will change if you input a whole system for customer feedback collection. And how many insights you will get to improve your business, modify your products and services, implement great changes, and take your company to another level.
