Importance Of A Customer Feedback Process
Learn why a customer feedback process is critical along with tips on how to get one jump started within your company.
It’s pretty obvious that customer feedback is crucial for any business. Feedback from your customers serves as a powerful guide that helps deliver meaningful insights. Understanding the importance of a customer feedback process really is imperative for your overall business success. You can gain feedback in just about every component of your company which allows you to manage issues and problems, as well as help you reduce costs. It turns out to be especially useful when you are wanting to improve overall customer satisfaction.
How can you know which customer strategies are working in favor of your company? What do your customers like & dislike about your company? How are you going to keep up with the changing requirements of your customers? This is where a great customer feedback strategy can come into play. Ensuring you fully understand how to meet the requirements of your customers means you’ll gain more happy customers faster than if you do not. It is important to ask the right questions so you can evaluate their overall responses. This helps in processes related to product development, innovation, and also in building a loyal customer base.
Let us help you unravel the importance of a customer feedback process for your organization and how you can master it.
What is a Customer Feedback System?
A Customer Feedback System defines how you receive feedback and what you do after that feedback is received. This type of feedback strategy your company can help to ensure all customers have a voice (Voice of the Customer VOC) and also the feedback received is actually being used to improve.
Many companies out there can often are looking for ways to increase overall sales. This can be because they did not listen to the suggestions or queries submitted by their customers. If you listen to your customers and apply the given information into your business structure, it could turn out to be the fastest way to move your business forward. Many studies have shown that on average a company will spend 5x more to acquire a new customer compared to an existing customer.
Customer feedback can be referred to as information obtained from your customers or audience about how your company, product, or service might have helped them. This could be how it’s helped them solve a problem or reach a target. There can be no better or reliable source of information into the quality of your company than a proper customer feedback system.
Recent Study - Customer Comments
A recent study report revealed that personal recommendations tend to be the top motivational factors when it comes to modifying the purchasing decisions of customers. Face-to-face personal recommendations are known to be derived from family & friends and turn out to be highly convincing. If you wish to gain customers with the help of personal recommendations, it is important to make sure that they are positive. Ensuring you create a feedback strategy around your customers comments is a great way to do that.
Why is a Customer Feedback System Important?
There are several reasons why understanding the importance of a customer feedback process is crucial. Below are a few of the most popular we have experienced while implementing our customer feedback system.
1. Pointing Out Aspects of Products or Services Needing Improvement
It’s expected that you are well-aware of your products & services as a company. While you might be well-versed with all the available features and specifications, you might not be aware of all imperfections. It is important to know what outcome your customers need from the product.
When you show that you are truly listening to the customers needs, it will help you to improve your overall sales better than anything else. In the end, the product or service is made for them. Therefore, you should aim at delivering them what they desire in the best possible manner.
2. Making Customers Feel More Involved and Important
Nothing would show your customers that they are important and involved more than asking for their opinion and actioning their suggestions. Customers want to be heard, this is obvious when you see the success of platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews where millions of customers are taking time out of their busy day to post for free.
When your customers are asked for their opinion about a specific product or service, they tend to feel valued while feeling that they are a part of the team. When you ask customers their valuable feedback, it makes them believe that their opinions or suggestions really matter.
PRO TIP
The (obvious) secret here is all in the delivery. If you ask for their feedback in a boring generic cold email then expect a similar response. In order to get feedback from customers you must be personable and show you care!
3. Getting Current Customers to Recommend
There is no denying the importance of word-of-mouth business. By far this is the best form of advertising available. This holds especially true in the case of referral based marketing. The customers would come to you because your brand has been recommended by someone they know and trust. Referrals are also known to be highly effective and free of advertising costs.
4. Get Customers to Come Back
While you are capable of selling a product or service, it does not imply that the customers are going to return to your brand. Feedback from the customers is going to reflect on the factors that you might not have considered before –including free shipping, available customer service solutions, safe packaging, user-friendly website and more.
While you might not get positive reviews initially, unique customer insights are going to help your business in understanding the desired approach to your end customers.
How To Create A Customer Feedback Strategy
Creating and collecting customer feedback does not need to be complicated. There are several ways and also some systems in the marketplace that can help you do this easily and effortlessly. Companies such as Survey stance make is easy for you to obtain feedback from your customers. If you are wondering how to create a customer feedback strategy successfully, this could be your answer.
Map Customer Journey
The first step in creating a Customer Feedback Strategy is mapping out the customer journey and note all points where you would like your customer to be able to share their feedback.
Determine Feedback Tool
Once you have found all the points in the process you would like to capture the feedback, the next step is to determine what is the best way to capture the feedback from your customer? This can be an email survey after a purchase, an in-person Feedback Kiosk during checkout or a SMS text message asking how their purchase was.
Survey Questions
What are the best survey questions to ask customers? This is the million dollar question. If you're capturing customer feedback we found it best to limit the questions to no more than 4-6. This is hard because you and your teams what so much information, but there is a correlation between increase questions and reduce survey completion.
Analyze Results
After you capture all the feedback from your customers, now what? We found it's best to create an ongoing internal meeting to review results and develop action plans at the end of each meeting. Review the data, determine trends and put plans in place like a Start, Stop and Continue Action Plan.
Feedback Kiosk
A Feedback Kiosk in your store allows customers to answer questions right at the most crucial moment. The moment they’ve just experienced your customer service. This can be valuable for you to be able to assess whether you are meeting their needs and sending raving fans out the door.
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One Click Feedback
The One Click Feedback system is designed for web based businesses and also for after sales check-ins. It allows your customers to assess your business easily and effortlessly with just one click. You can include this system in your email signatures, help desk tickets and much more.
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Creating and analyzing customer feedback is crucial in helping you get to know your customers better. Knowing how to create a customer feedback strategy effectively, can boost your overall sales naturally.