Feedback – why you need to ask for it and act on it
Customer feedback is one of the most important things for your business. It helps improve product development, marketing, operations, and so much more. However, It’s one of the most important aspects of running a business that often gets overlooked. Or more importantly not acted upon.
Many companies could find themselves lacking sales or simply not keeping the right kind of customer base because they have not taken the time to listen to their customers as much as they should. Listening to your customers and applying those insights is the best way to move a business forward. The best option to make sure you’re fully understanding your product or service marketplace is to obtain qualitative and honest customer feedback. There are 5 main reasons why you would want to collect this:
- Customer Involvement
- Understand your customers
- Product Development
- Obtain reviews, referrals, testimonials
- How to improve and provide better service
- Find out if something went wrong – and fix it.
Finding out what your clients think is the only way that you can give them the best customer experience. You can use this information to adjust how you do business and satisfy your clients’ needs more effectively. The most important way of fully understanding a customer’s perception of your brand is by asking them directly, and the best way to simply hear the voice of your customer is through their own feedback.
Customer feedback is information provided by clients about whether they’re satisfied or dissatisfied with a product or service. This also relates to any general experience they’ve had with a company. In turn, improving their loyalty and overall success with your company. Listening to your customers is the best way to propel your brand forward.
When I talk to many of my clients and friends about what makes their business special, often they tell me it’s their incredible customer service. But when I delve deeper I find that they really don’t understand how to deliver consistent customer focused service. They don’t know how important it is. Or, they think having satisfied customers constitutes ‘good customer service’
Jeff Bezos from Amazon says, “the best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works. In all my businesses, my team and I made sure that our attention to our customers was the most critical part of the business. And we developed this by constantly listening to our customers both verbally and by surveys. When looking after your customer, it’s all about them. It’s not about your product or your store, it’s about them. It’s about two things:
- Solving a problem they have, or
- Providing them with an experience / product / solution they’re looking for.
So, if dig deep and ask lots of questions to find out what is important for them, then they will sell themselves. Some sales people get so consumed and focused on telling their customers how good their product is or how good they are they forget it is not about them. Yes of course you need some credibility, and good testimonials to show how reliable and good your product or you are, but you don’t need to tell them.It’s far more important to listen and ask lots of questions and keep digging deeper into what they want or need.
Companies often ask for feedback, but don’t do anything with it. So how do you approach this? First of all, take a good look at the answers, categorize them, then share the feedback with others at your company who can implement those changes. This could be a member of your product team or your customer support team.
Those teams who have a better insight on the subject will be able to prioritize and decide how to put the new strategies in motion. Also, it’s important to pay attention if customers appear to be unhappy about the same things. If many people agree on something, it gives you a good place upon which to start.
It is so important to collect data and gain feedback from your customers to ensure you are offering a service or product people want and need while offering you a myriad of ways of how to improve.
Milton Collins, author of Delight Disrupt Deliver, is a sought-after business coach, qualified Accountant and an award-winning business owner. As the principal of The Action Business Coach, Milton dedicates his time to helping small business owners meet the challenges and maximise the opportunities of their businesses. Visit https://miltoncollins.actioncoach.com/