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There is an entire industry founded around getting customer feedback. However, much of this spending is wasted when the companies either fail to act on their information, or fail to get the right information to act on. In this article, we will discuss what you need to do to make customer feedback work for you.
Know How to Ask
One of the first mistakes companies make in getting information is using improper or outdated methodologies to get their feedback data. Here are a few general guidelines.
- Seek customer data from all your major customer-facing resources, including stores, websites, and phone services.
- Make sure that questions or surveys aren’t intrusive, but nonetheless beckon appropriate attention. For phone calls or email messages, this means an easy opt out. For webpage-embedded surveys, this means not redirecting or otherwise disrupting the browsing experience.
- Get a broad selection. The fewer customers who respond, the more skewed your data will be. Aim for a bare minimum of 100 responses before analyzing data.
- Prepare for long-term feedback. Reward those who take surveys (a simple discount coupon or similar is usually sufficient), ask permission to contact them again, and invest in long-term tools to conduct research (permanent access to preferred online survey software, a long-term contract for phone surveys, a survey email application, etc.).
Once you know how to ask for feedback, you have to be sure to…
Ask the Right Questions
Even when the right techniques are used, many companies don’t make any progress. More commonly than not, this is because they don’t know what questions are best to ask. Rather than focusing on details that you think are important, try to orient your questions around value: how valuable your services are to them currently, what already has value, what could increase the value of your company in their eyes, etc. Here are some suggested questions to cut to the core of the issue effectively.
- What prompted you to visit us originally?
- Why did you choose to buy from us?
- What competitor could we learn from?
- What’s one thing we could have done better that would have improved your experience with us?
- What is one thing we did during your visit that we should never stop doing?
Notice that these questions don’t rank satisfaction. The point here isn’t to see if they are happy with your product or services, but to learn how they could be happier. Once you have this crucial data, all you have to do is…
Implement Effectively
Exactly what will need implementation varies from issue to issue, but there are two keys regardless of the details.
1) Be sure that you actually do listen to feedback, and prioritize improvements to your company.
2) Once your solutions are in place, get feedback again to see if the discovered issues are now resolved.
Every business is inextricably reliant on its customers. That means that, like it or not, their opinions are the only ones that matter. As such, getting to know those opinions and addressing them appropriately can increase overall customer satisfaction, company reputation, and buyer loyalty.
