Using Customer Feedback in Business

While analytics and data give entrepreneurs all sorts of insight into what their customers want from their products, sometimes it’s best to get answers straight from your customers themselves.  Customer feedback helps businesses understand why people do what they do; why their customers are using their products or the competition’s.  When you ask the customer what they want, you get a much clearer picture of what’s going on with your business and a much clearer picture of what can lead to success.  Customer feedback allows you to fix problems and head straight towards opportunities; opportunities to learn what your customers want, what they need and how to attack the marketplace for the greatest gain.  So how to use customer feedback in business?

First off, try using surveys.  “Surveys are the bread and butter for getting feedback.  They’re easy to set up, easy to send out, easy to analyze and scale very well.”  That said, make sure your surveys are short and to the point.  No one wants to spend 10-20 minutes filling out a customer satisfaction survey.  When your surveys are too long, customers ignore them or oftentimes give up answering halfway through which leads to poor results.  Additionally, when surveys are too long, customers rush through to answer them and don’t give the most useful feedback.  Getting quality answers is critical and keeping a survey to a few minutes can ensure that quality.  Try to keep your survey to five questions and definitely no more than 10.  Ask only questions that are relevant and that you’ll use.  “Every question should serve a purpose.”  If you ask extraneous, unimportant run-of-the-mill questions, you’re wasting everybody’s time.  Save time and gain valuable information by only asking essential questions.  Try starting with open-ended questions.  If you build a survey with multiple choice questions, you might not receive the feedback that customers are really thinking. By doing so, you limit yourself to answers that only reflect your assumptions.

Secondly, have a structured process for receiving feedback.  Whether you realize it or not, customers are always looking for better ways their needs can be met.  Try coming up with one or two questions to ask at check out.  Not just: “Did you find everything you were looking for today?”  But something more along the lines of: “Did the store layout help you find everything you were looking for today?”  Make sure your questions drill down to create essential answers.  When minor issues pop up too frequently, customers will start shopping around for better solutions to their problems and it’s only a matter of time before they’re gone for good.  Nip it in the bud before it happens with sharp, on-point questions that will lead to real time solutions.

Once feedback comes in, answer it.  If your customers are willing to answer your questions, be willing to answer them back.  Customers want to feel like they’re being heard especially if they took the time to even offer feedback.  They want to know you care about their input so show them you do.  One method I’ve seen before is a customer asking about the early release of an item or feature.  Try offering them early access to it in return for feedback.  For tech issues, connect them right away to your support engineers.  If a customer asks a question, give them step-by-step tips to resolving the problem.  Obviously you can’t always respond to customer questions right away, but try to at least do it in under 24 hours.

Reach out directly.  This option is often undervalued.  “If you want to truly understand somebody, you really need to go talk to them.”  Hearing the passion in a customer’s voice can be a great starting place to finding a way to really meet their needs.  Try running focus groups.  Offer free lunches for people that are willing to give their time and participate.  If you don’t reach out and talk to your customers, you never really learn what’s going on in their minds and how they view the products and services your selling.  You can get major bonus points with customers for asking for feedback in person.  While surveys are great and should be used (as long as you use them the right way), you can get more value from a face-to-face or over the phone conversation then you can from thousands of surveys.

There are many ways to get customer feedback but not all methods really work and often can be a waste of your time.  If you use the examples cited above, you can get the most out of your customers’ opinions.  Ask them pointed questions and show them that you care.  You’ll only get what you give.  While it’s essential to make it easy for customers to give their feedback, make sure you’re getting the right kind of feedback.  Your business can’t grow without loyal customers who want to come back for more.  Treat them right and show them they’re an essential part of your success and your business will surely head in the right direction.

Here are some articles you might want to check out about using customer feedback in business:

“14 Customer Feedback Tools for Small Business”: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2827-14-Customer-Feedback-Tools-for-Small-Business

“Is Your Brand Using Customer Feedback Efficiently?”: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/brand-using-customer-feedback-efficiently-134903984.html

“How to Make the Most of Customer Feedback”: http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/07/how-to-make-most-of-customer-feedback.html

“How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Your Business”: http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/customer-care/understanding-your-customers/how-to-use-customer-feedback-to-improve-your-business

Until next time…