One of the most important parameters is to understand what your customers think about your business, your products, customer service or how your website is perceived. After all, it's their needs you're trying to fulfill and they're the ones paying your bills.
The mantra: "Happy wife, happy life" can also be applied to your business: happy customers result in the success of your business. It's therefore important that you listen to what they have to say about your business, even if it can be an uncomfortable experience at times.
Before you dive in, however, you need to have a clear idea of why you need your customers' feedback. Is your goal to improve your service? To deliver a better customer experience? To figure out how to welcome your new customers? Or do you want to strengthen the relationship between your customers and your business? There can be many reasons. It all depends on the specific needs of your business. Next, you need to consider which channels you will use to collect the data and what will you actually do with the newfound insights?
It's a good idea to define your goals before you start and keep them in mind throughout the process so you don't waste your time and resources.
Iscustomer feedback always important?
Youmight be wondering: is customer feedback important for all businesses, or is it only important for certain types of businesses? According to Forbes, it's all about a company's current position. It's really quite straightforward: start-ups may need feedback to adapt their products or services to their customers' expectations, while companies that have been around for a number of years are focused on other challenges - such as how to keep meeting customer expectations.
We're not quite done yet. Customers have become more empowered over the last few years as technological advances have allowed us to interact with each other more and faster, meaning customers can freely and publicly express their opinions about your business. Despite the saying "for every customer who complains, 20 others will remain silent", one unhappy customer on social media can seriously damage your company's image as it quickly spreads like wildfire. Just like rumors in a small village. Rumors go viral.
Createa corporate identity together
Now let's look at the bright side of technology! For example, you can get to know your customers in a new way that wasn't possible before due to old-fashioned channels, but now you can through social media. When you establish a two-way communication with your customers, you make it possible to effectively create a company identity TOGETHER (e.g. the way YOU define your business and the way your CUSTOMERS experience it: these two impressions must be similar) and the products and services must be streamlined. Your customers can become your best partners.
Let's think about start-ups for a moment. Customer feedback is undoubtedly a potential goldmine for start-ups and their growth. In most cases, start-ups still need to figure out how to jump-start their processes to achieve a successful fit with their product market and how to best meet their customers' needs. This is where feedback comes into play - because as entrepreneur Paul Graham, "Do things that don't scale", writes:" "I've never seen a start-up lose its way because it's trying to satisfy the customers who have been with it from the start".
Howdo you collect customer feedback?
However, customer feedbackis not only beneficial for start-ups. An example of this is our very own LEGO. The company is known for being customer-centric, and they have been able to improve their product portfolio while keeping their other costs down by involving their most informed consumers in user research and development activities.
I know that getting feedback from your customers can be a difficult task. Chances are, only very unhappy customers are likely to share their (negative) experiences with a business. How can you change that and improve your company's goodwill?
An effective way to collect feedback is to equip your business website with an online form where customers can write what they like and what they think needs improvement. A good time to do this would be when customers have a question because this creates a sense of reciprocity and they feel like they are helping the business and future customers. Additionally, you can tell them how their feedback will be used and perhaps how your business has improved thanks to their feedback.
Here's a great example from minted.com:
Finally, we all know that prevention is better than cure. According to an Aberdeen Group study, we can see that online shoppers prefer live chat over other service channels, and 44% of them feel that it's the best feature that eCommerce stores can offer overall. That's why 24/7 live chats like crowdio.com can help you get closer to your customers and guide them through the entire buying process. This is possible because live chats are more convenient than phone calls (also in terms of waiting time), they are less frustrating and they require less work for the user. Plus, it's a great way to avoid unhappy customers spamming your social media.
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