How to Increase Customer Feedback
Every marketer has their own style. How many times have you asked yourself; what’s the best way to get in touch with your leads? Email? Social media? Press Release? Surveys? With so many options it can be hard to know what will work best for you and your business. It’s important to stay true to who you are as a company, but at Philomath Research we believe that every customer is important, and that one type of communication doesn’t work best for everyone. That’s why we provide every customer with multiple communication channels, giving them the option to choose the ones they like most and making sure you never miss out on valuable, in-depth information about what your customers want and how they feel about your product or service.
One thing to consider when building your business? Getting out of the office and knowing what’s really happening on the front lines. This way you stay close to your company’s focus – its customers. Feedback from the community is important, but that feedback needs to help you build a relationship with your crowd of consumers to position your product just right in their eyes.
We’re aware that you all work hard every day, just like we do. But we want you to know that we are extra grateful for the help and advice your feedback affords us. Perhaps most importantly we need to hear back from our users to make progress on what’s currently lacking. We mustn’t forget how valuable customer interaction is in the grand scheme of things, which is why regular surveys and polls can be so helpful! It helps us feel confident in where we’re headed as a team, and it provides us with the information and insights that grow better products.
We explore the latest trends in customer feedback management and break down seven different ways to collect customer feedback, delving into the basics of each. Here’s everything you need to know about the different methods at your fingertips.
What do you mean by Customer Feedback?
Feedback is an essential ingredient when coming up with the perfect recipe. But at times, not everyone has all the information that you need to transform your project from a blank slate into an attractive, flavorful dish. At these times it’s important to consider who might be able to help you take care of all your needs as you go through your project by creating or curating feedback to ensure a product that not only looks appealing but tastes great!
Customer feedback is like when you ask a customer how their lunch special tastes, and they reply: it’s pretty good. Customer feedback can be positive or negative. If a valuable suggestion is given to make the recipe for a particular dish better, for example, that’s positive feedback. The more specific and relevant the suggestions are to your business, the more meaningful it is to act on them!
Importance of Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is just as important for how a bakery decides what flavors to put on their cake recipe book as it is for a startup deciding what to put in its “If You Give…” It allows us to make educated decisions about where we might go wrong or right as companies and ultimately improve our business. We’re interested in discovering what tastes best with our customers so we can know how to better cater to them with our services. By having quality customer feedback, you are able to know what your clients are thinking about your products and use that information to create something even more successful next time around!
Feedback is just like gold to an entrepreneur. Within both the good and the bad, they are gems that can be used to adapt the customer experience over time. In short, feedback is essential in keeping your community at the heart of everything you do.
6 most effective Customer Feedback methods
Before you begin collecting feedback from customers, it’s important to understand why you want to do so. Identifying your objectives and outlining the rules or guiding principles for getting there sets the groundwork for a successful outcome for both parties — employees and employers alike.
1. Customer Feedback Surveys
Developing a useful customer survey may be more challenging than you think. There are a ton of ways to capture feedback from your customers. One of the best methods involves getting data that is on target and includes actionable items while also offering opportunities to help improve their overall experience. We can help you develop everything you need as long as we’re approved to begin working with you right away!
The simpler your survey, the easier it is to complete. Customers will have a more positive experience with your survey if you make sure there are no extra questions. Simply take note of their feedback and create a concise report.
2. Email and customer contact forms
Email is one of the easiest ways to connect with your customers, who are a vital resource for all businesses. Each time you deal with an email from a customer, you can use it as an opportunity to discuss any concerns or issues they might have and seek their feedback on potential improvements that can be made.
3. Usability tests
Prior to implementation, a common misuse of usability testing is that the questions are not clear or focused on specific variables that would yield deeper insights. For instance, a common problem when user testing software is getting customers to articulate why they like or dislike something but instead the customer just says “I don’t like this” which does not create nor provide any useful data enabling companies to better anticipate how to adapt and improve.
4. Exploratory customer interviews
It’s very important to reach out to customers. We’ve learned that there’s no better way to find out what they think of your product or service than to speak with them directly. Through direct outreach, you can have meaningful conversations with your audience that would have never been able to happen if you hadn’t tried to engage them.
Qualitative stories from customers bring colour and nuance to quantitative feedback (data). Having personal experiences from actual customers such as their opinions, pains, and joys helps a team understand the feelings behind customer decisions and the community response to a company’s brand or decisions.
5. Offer a reward in return for feedback
Typically, customers are more likely to offer feedback that is negative than they are to provide positive feedback. A great way to encourage a more constructive back and forth exchange between customers and your company is by offering incentives for the customers for providing their opinions about the company’s products or services. This will probably be the motivation and encouragement people need when it comes down to voicing negative opinions.
Offering incentives is a very effective way to help stimulate sales. These can be free shipping, discounts on future purchases, samples, or gift cards. To help the incentives seem genuine and non-sales driven, avoid overdoing it and making everything a sale. This will make you look desperate and running out of time which will hurt your company’s credibility instead of helping it.
6. Request feedback when a cart is abandoned
There are several ways to capture further information about customers that do not proceed with the checkout process. For example, an exit popup can request reasons for leaving the purchase cart before completing payment. That way you can determine why people left without purchasing – perhaps they couldn’t find something easily or they had technical issues, maybe they found another product at a better price, or whatever the reason may be. You can present this information to management in several different ways. One option is to create a list like Kevin suggests above so that you can view all your collected data at one time. This makes it easy to review and act on each captured response when needed. As an alternative, you could also access these types of responses most efficiently through an Excel spreadsheet or Google document as well.
Want to know more about your customers? Visit us at www.philomathresearch.com