A customer feedback survey with ratings and comments is the only reliable source for customer success or concerns. This means it is paramount to make listening to customer feedback a core element in your business to ensure success.
Did you know that customer-centric businesses are 60% more profitable? Or that 73% of companies with above-average buyer experience perform better financially than their competitors.
Customer feedback allows you to measure customer satisfaction and so is an invaluable source to drive business decisions and deliver higher performance over time. However, the key lesson here is to embrace these reactions as a business strategy. In other words:
Don’t waste customers’ time asking them survey questions unless you are prepared to act on what they say. – Bruce Temkin, Founder, Customer Experience Professionals Association.
We agree – feedback collection is not enough. Taking action through through to closing the customer feedback loop is the route to sustained profit. Read on to find out more.
1. Customer Feedback Analytics Allows You to Take Action
The key reason to placing customer responses and ratings at the core of your business is to allow you to take action. A swift response time to any comment (regardless of mechanism) or negative feedback will always improve the customer relationship because it shows their voice is valuable. So much so that their opinions are acted on to improve the business.
Moreover, as a business owner, you need to solve the issue immediately. This ensures that other customers will not experience the same issue. More importantly, you need to resolve it before the client leaves bad feedback. In fact, getting negative comments makes a huge difference and may damage your reputation and reliability.
For this reason, relying on social media posts from a dissatisfied client only delivers detail after the event with little actionable insight.
And remember – if you can immediately solve the issue the business rewards are huge. In fact, you can bring in 5.7 times more revenue than your competitors.
2. It Shows You Value Your Customers
The #1 reason customers switch to another company is that they feel unappreciated. This is particularly so after poor service issues. So neglecting to react to customer issues often leads to defection. In the event that this happens, the business loses the immediate revenue and gets bad mouthed up to 16 times.
The best way to fix this is to collect on the spot feedback that delivers insight in real-time. For example – the customer delivers a low score for service, which triggers an alert to your team. Since the data received is instant, they now fix the issue and connect with the buyer. Consequently stopping defection, revenue loss and brand tarnish.
3. Helps in Making Decisions
Feedback from customers is reliable data that can guide you in making decisions. Marketing will know which service features are not needed and which needs improvement. Operations will know if customer journey is meeting expectations. This will help you determine where to focus your resources and effort.
This provides a big opportunity as many businesses fail to use the data. In fact, according to Salesforce:
52% of marketers adapt their strategies and tactics based on customer interactions and ratings.
So if it is that important, how should a business obtain feedback? Particularly nowadays, when there are many ways to getting comments and scores – so which one to use?
Customer Feedback Survey
A common feedback tool is a customer satisfaction survey, sometimes called a “customer feedback survey”. Below are areas to consider when surveying customers. Specifically the goals here are to reduce inconvenience for the client, and improve data collection for the business.
- State the purpose of the survey request to avoid confusion
- Confirm either the question count or anticipated completion time
- Only ask questions that help you meet a specific goal
- Ask simple questions – the more complex will mean fewer responses
- To deliver insight, most questions should be a numeric rating, or simple choice.
- Create rating scales that are consistent and unbiased
- Include limited, open-ended questions (for a qualitative review)
- Use branch logic to reveal service issues and what delivers a satisfied customer
- Measure satisfaction over time
- Avoid asking a leading or loaded question
- Steer clear of asking personal information
- Use a variety of methods to capture data from all types of client (first time, regular, out of area etc)
Collection Methods
With this in mind consider a range of collection methods for your customer feedback survey. In particular:
- Calling your customers as soon afterwards and asking about the user experience
- Customer service teams to also use live chat support
- Making an online poll
- Using In-App feedback
- Texting your client
- Sending email survey or receiving emails
- Monitoring online reviews, the online community and Google Alerts (together this is ‘social listening’)
Our strong preference is to ask for feedback at the point of experience. This means at the physical location that the customer is interacting with the business. Opinion generated here is the ONLY place where corrective action can be taken concerning a negative experience. Actionable feedback is the goal of any customer survey, not simply a focus on response rates. Moreover there can be an immediate focus on unhappy customers.
4. Helps Improve Product or Service
Your marketing department can never be sure if your product works unless evaluated by customers. Only then can you learn about all the strengths and flaws of your product or service. From the comments and suggestions, your product team can deliver the right changes and maybe get a new product idea. This product feedback from current customers often has a profound impact on the core product.
Exactly the same benefits are accrued to the Operations team – who now adjust service delivery in real-time
5. Helps Ensure Customer Satisfaction
As we’ve mentioned, taking action on your customer’s feedback (no matter the type) is your key motivator.
When you read feedback, you can identify and solve issues you may not be able to see by yourself. When you take action, customer satisfaction will likely increase.
6. Helps Create Great Customer Experience
Another reason is so that you’ll be able to create a positive experience for your customers. When you take action on issues, customers go back to using your service because you listened. Constantly making needed changes to your products and services helps with customer experience.
One of the outcomes of this improved experience is increased spending. Specifically, customers are likely to spend 140% more after a positive experience than customers who report negative experiences.
7. Helps Increase Customer Loyalty
With many choices to pick from, it is important to make sure customers stick with business. The economics of customer retention are compelling – and easy to calculate. The moment your customer experiences poor service, they’ll be heading for the door.
When your customer sees that you listened to their suggestion, they will feel valued. Customer interaction will make them feel appreciated and they will be less likely to defect. Even leaving replies to your customers know that you are present and making changes for them.
The positive upshot of this improved retention 96% of customers say customer service is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand.
8. Boosts Profit
Taking action on customer insight (including social channels) will result in a good customer experience. In turn, you get high satisfaction ratings and loyal customers. All these contribute to your business’ profit.
An improved product or service will please the customer base. Happy customers mean they appreciate your product, so it will be their go-to every time.
As with the other advantages – there is a big financial payoff. In this case, we know that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers.
Benefits of Having A Customer Feedback Service
Relying on a great strategy to get customer feedback is a big advantage. In addition to on location report methods, you can invest in automated bots or live messenger to answer your customers. So, what are some of the benefits of gaining some client opinion and rating tools?
Receive Third-Party Endorsement from Happy Customers
A happy customer will put down a good review on your page, but the same source will also spread the news to their friends. This is a great opportunity for your business to get known.
Upsell and Cross-sell Opportunities
When you can take action and resolve the issue, customers will stay longer in your store. They will also check out more of your products while they explore your brand. This may lead them to buy more items or get more services profiting from your business.
Other benefits include:
- Getting the opportunity to scale your business
- Enhancing business brand reputation and lowering customer complaints
- Obtaining word of mouth recommendations that influence potential customers
- Delivering improvements in product development and service operations
- Increasing customer loyalty means lesser risk of your business failing
- Gaining more clients for improved business performance
Make Customer Feedback the Core Of Your Business Now!
Active listening to customer conversations and reviews, even if a negative experience delivers value. Thus, making comment or ratings a key source of business growth. It’s amazing how making customer feedback can benefit your business, right? What are you waiting for?
0 Comments