If you run your own business I’ll bet you do your best to keep your customers happy, satisfying their needs, and working on their loyalty to your brand. But how can you be sure that your efforts bring these results? By obtaining customer feedback, of course.

What is customer feedback

Customer feedback is information provided by clients about whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with a product or service and about a general experience they had with a company.

Why customer feedback is important

Helps improve products and services

Customer feedback is an insight into what is working well about your product or service and what should be done to make the experience better. Their opinions help you ensure that the end product will actually meet their expectations, solve their problems and fulfill their needs.

Helps you measure customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction and loyalty is a crucial factor that determines the company’s financial performance. It is directly linked to many benefits, such as increased market share, lower costs, or higher revenue.

Naturally, the best way to find out if you meet their expectation is to get their opinions.

Shows you value their opinions

People always appreciate when you ask them if they are happy (or unhappy) with your service. It shows you actually value their opinion and that you are here for them, not the other way around.

Create the best customer experience

Today’s marketing is heavily based on the experiences people have with products, services, and brands. If you focus on providing the best customer experience at every touchpoint clients will stay loyal to your brand.

Improve customer retention

Satisfied customers will stay with you. An unhappy customer will eventually find a better alternative to your business and leave. Customer feedback helps you determine if your clients are satisfied with your service and detect areas where you should improve. Asking for opinions regularly you can always keep a finger on the pulse.

Source for information to other consumers

In the times of social media, consumers do not trust commercials or expert advice so much. Opinions provided by other customers who have already used a product or service are a more reliable source for information these days.

Data that helps business decisions

There is no place for business decisions based on loose guesses in a highly competitive market. Successful business owners gather and manage distinct kind of data that helps them develop future strategies.

How to collect feedback

Customer feedback is gradually becoming the cornerstone of growth initiatives.

New research published in the Harvard Business Review found that the act of just asking for customer feedback in itself is enough to keep customers from churning and coming back for more — even when they do not respond to your request.

The very process of asking questions or seeking opinions induces people to form judgments that otherwise wouldn’t occur to them. They might not consciously realize that they love a feature unless you seek feedback about it.

Surveys

These most common way of collecting customer feedback are survey forms with a set of questions that are usually sent in an email.

The one thing you have to always keep in mind here is to not get carried away and ask too many questions.

QuickTapSurvey states that the connection between the number of questions and the time spent answering each question is not linear. The more questions your survey has, the less time your respondents spend, on an average, answering each.

The takeaway is to make the survey as short as possible.

 Transactional emails

Transactional emails are the ones that you receive right after signing up for a new service, or upgrading to a new plan, and so on. Basically, these are emails triggered by a certain interaction between the user and your app.

More often than not, transactional emails are treated as necessary notice and companies would not put much effort into creating a dialogue with the customer.

Suggestion boards

Suggestion boards take collecting feedback a notch up: it allows users to collaborate on ideas with not just the company, but also with other users.

These boards allow users to create feedback posts that can be upvoted or commented on by other users.

The best thing about suggestion boards is that ideas that had been suggested by some customers became popular ideas among others who hadn’t thought of the benefits those ideas could bring.

Aha.io is a great tool for creating these boards.

 Phone calls

It’s said that if you truly want to understand someone, you will have to talk to them.

The surveys and tests will give you tons of data but they can never tell you what a person truly feels about your product. This is when you need to reach out to your users through the phone. It is a personalized and proactive method that generates the best responses.

Hearing a person’s voice and tone is the best way to sense what they actually feel about your product.

A call will help you tell the features that get users excited, features that really make their lives easier.

The key here is that the person calling the user should genuinely want to understand their problem and offer solutions. This is not a sales call.

Net Promoter Score Surveys

It’s the simplest question you can ask your customers: ”how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” It is, basically, a method to measure your customers’ sentiment about your product.

People who rate you 0 through 6 are known as “Detractors”, those who rate you 7 or 8 are known as “Passives”, and those who give you a 9 or 10 are known as “Promoters”, as illustrated here:

 Net Promoter Score (NPS) = Percent Promoters – Percent Detractors

Let’s take an example. Say there are 100 respondents.

10 responses were in the range 0 to 6 (Detractors)

40 responses were in the range 7 to 8 (Passives)

50 responses were in the range 9 to 10 (Promoters)

NPS: [(50/100)*100] minus [(10/100)*100] = 40

The worst score you can get is -100 and the best score you can get is +100.

Remember: Any score above zero is good, anything above +50 is excellent, and over +70 is considered world-class.

The greatest advantage of NPS is its simplicity and ease of use. It can be set up in minutes and is easily understood by everyone in the organization. It also makes it very easy to compare yourself with the industry standards.

Putting results to use

“Every day, companies solicit feedback from customers, yet only a few translate that feedback into meaning. An even smaller fraction of companies actually take action or close the loop with the customer, to let them know their voice was heard,” says the managing partner of the Phelon Group.

If you handle it right, the dialogue between you and your customers can become the biggest growth driver for your business.

The only way to reward your vocal and consultative customers is to roll with the punches and bring in actual changes.

Let’s talk about putting the feedback data to actual use:

Refine your niche

Most companies are not a hundred percent sure about the verticals they should focus on. It is never an exact science and companies end up spending huge amounts on trial and experimentation.

During the process of analyzing feedback from customers from a broad spectrum of verticals, you will begin to see patterns as to where do the majority of your happy customers come from.

Once you have discovered the verticals where the majority of your happy customers exist, start working on strengthening the relations you already have with them. Strive to make them your advocates and seek recommendations.

 Eliminate customer churn

Are you stuck with the principle that negative feedback should be swept under the rug and kept silent? It is a clear indication that you have set your customer success goal to a low ‘simply meeting customer expectations’. It is crucial to use feedback to improve customer service. 

Contrary to what most businesses think, negative feedback is an opportunity to prevent customer churn and foster a long-term relationship with the customer. These are the guys who’d need a little extra work: call them, understand their problem and ensure you do your best to make them happy.

Ensure that you check on them regularly – make them feel ‘cared’. Showing that you care goes a long way in building a healthy business relationship.

By keeping the two-way conversation open and building trust gradually, you can turn these problem customers into raging evangelists. 

 Identify advocates

Customer satisfaction is the primary indicator of how happy they are with your product. Gathering feedback will help you quickly identify the happiest of your users.

The next step is to nurture them into advocates. Get them sufficiently excited to rave about your product and recommend it to friends and colleagues.

Monetary rewards do not motivate advocates. Do simple things – thank you notes are a great idea.

 Motivate your team

Customer feedback can act as a secret driver to motivate employees.

Say you’ve been hearing praise about a feature – pass compliments directly to the person who built the feature, and ensure the team knows it too. It is a good way to encourage healthy competition among your team members.

Share conversations that are interesting and come up with new ideas about the product (improvements or game changers) with the whole team. It would help everyone understand the larger picture.

 Create a lead magnet

Lead magnets are exclusive pieces of content or discounts that are generally given away to consumers in exchange for their email address. These lead magnets are also a great way to gather some feedback from consumers.

We are all familiar with opt-ins that ask consumers to enter their email address for a discount, ebook, or checklist. Instead of just asking for an email address, try adding a few questions to the pop up for readers to fill in if they want to accept your offer. 

Send a post-purchase email

Email marketing is one of the best ways to build trust, nurture your leads, and gather consumer feedback. Additionally, email marketing has a staggering 4,400% return on investment, meaning you’ll get the most bang for your buck when working with these customers. 

After someone buys a product or signs up for your service, give them time to receive and use their purchase before you send a feedback email. We suggest waiting at least one week before you ask consumers about their experience. 

When you send out the message, start by thanking them for the purchase. Next, ask customers what they thought of your product and whether they would refer your business to a friend. Finally, ask an open-ended question about their overall experience and encourage them to give as many details as possible. 

The bottom line 

Customer feedback is essential to the growth of your business. There are plenty of ways you can keep your ear to the ground and hear what people in your niche think about your product and the industry as a whole. Social media, email, and on-site surveys can help you learn about personal experiences.

The key to using these techniques for growth is gathering sufficient data and using it in a way that shows consumers that you’re listening and want to help them find success.

You should never stop listening to feedback because needs, pain points, and goals change over time.