Customer feedback is extremely valuable to your business because you surely want to keep your customers happy, don’t you? But in order to do that, you must make it a point to know what they want and what they are looking for.
Your customers are the lifeblood of your business; it’s just right to hear from them and do whatever you can to make them consistently happy. So how can you get customer feedback effectively? Here’s some ways to go about it:
1. Go ask
Not all customers are willing to share their two cents voluntarily. So go ask them. Ask for their opinions, suggestions and recommendations. Ask for feedback and accept whether it’s positive or negative. Both types will help you improve your business as well as customer service. Just don’t wait for your customers to say something, step up and ask for the answers you’re looking for.
2. Ask the right questions
While customers are willing to give feedback when asked, they still don’t want to take too much time telling you about it. Hence, you should ask the right questions from the get-go. Don’t focus on asking them about what you should do to improve your product/service or how should you do it, they don’t care. All they care about is for your product/service to meet their needs. Ask questions that will help you better understand what those needs are.
3. Pick the right audience to ask
When getting feedback, you simply can’t just ask anyone. This means that you should only get feedback directly from your customers, not people who just happened to use your product or visit your website. Customers and users are different and you need the opinion of people who actually pay for your products or those who are willing to pay to use them. Sort out the noise.
4. Talk to your customers
A lot of companies use methods like surveys and forms when asking for feedback from customers. Although this may be the quickest way to get feedback, it’s not always effective. Talking to your customers directly is much more effective if you want to get honest and valuable answers. If you’re operating online, then give your customers a call. Your customers are more likely to be detailed about their feedback when talking to you personally than writing you an email.
And I know that calling is always harder, but you need to do the hard things! Shooting someone a tweet is not an option.
5. Ask feedback regularly
You can’t just ask for feedback when you feel like it. It should be a regular thing as this will make your customers more comfortable to give you feedback. If they feel that your company does listen to what they have to say and you’re always available to them, they will most likely feel comfortable giving you feedback without you even asking for it.
6. Use forms and surveys to some degree, just don’t rely on them too much
Realistically speaking, you can’t call every customer and ask for feedback, but you can try calling as many as you can. This goes without saying that you also have to utilize other ways of getting feedback from customers, like using Google Forms or surveys. These things will give you a good idea of your standing with customers, but don’t rely on them heavily when it comes to decision making.
There is no perfect method or approach for getting customer feedback. You always need to test which strategies are the most effective for your individual scenario.
Carrie is a writer and blogger. She’s all about learning the ways of the online business and sharing the knowledge with other people.
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