The Importance of Customer Feedback
Customer satisfaction plays a huge role in one’s business; the higher the customer satisfaction, the more likely your business is to thrive, get recommended, and quickly establish a loyal customer base. And one of the best ways you can increase customer satisfaction is by directly acquiring feedback from current and even potential customers.
Getting customer feedback allows your business to learn what you’re doing correctly (which you should maintain or improve), and what you’re doing wrong (which should be addressed immediately). Additionally, you’ll be getting more ideas on how to better improve your business’ products and services, and even other key aspects such as customer service and logistics (if any). Also, the mere fact that your business is proactively asking for feedback makes your customers feel involved and appreciated — that you listen to them and consider their needs/wants/preferences.
As such, we’ll be taking a look at various tips to help you collect meaningful feedback from your customers to boost your business:
#1 Keep it Short and Simple
More often than not, customers prefer answering shorter customer feedback forms or surveys. Remember, you’re asking them more than just their feedback — you’re technically asking them to take a few minutes of their valuable time to help you out (which would help them out later on once you act on their feedback). Unless your customer’s irate (and wish to show their displeasure in the feedback form/survey) or super satisfied with your service, they probably wouldn’t want to spend more than 15 or 20 minutes on a survey. As such, make sure that you keep your survey short yet ‘meaningful.’ The longer your survey is, the more likely they are to either rush the answers, giving you inaccurate or unreliable results.
#2 Know What to Ask
In connection with the previous tip, since you’ll be wanting to limit the number of questions in your feedback form/survey, it only follows that you make each question count. Make sure that you ask the right questions that allow you to get the expected answers that you’ll be acting upon. You should also ask questions that get as much information you need and with the highest level of accuracy as possible. For example, when asking for overall customer satisfaction on a certain aspect of your business, instead of asking ‘yes or no’, you can put a ‘range’ from ‘very satisfied’ to ‘very unsatisfied’, and then follow it up with an open question asking them what the business can do to improve
#3 Provide As Many Venues for Feedback as Possible
If you have a physical shop, you can provide survey forms to your customers right after doing business with them, to get a ‘fresh’ review. However, you should also consider providing them with other means of getting feedback through email, your website, or even over the phone (just make sure that you don’t cause any inconvenience and try to ask them in advance when you do opt for the latter). And speaking of websites, you can also make use of a web survey software to integrate feedback and surveys into your business’ website easily.
#4 Make it Lively and Add Humor
Answering a survey or feedback form is already tedious as it is, which is why a lot of customers simply opt-out from doing. So, try to insert some color and humor into your survey and make it ‘lively,’ as if they’re speaking to an actual person who’s enthusiastic about getting their feedback instead of just a plain piece of paper that’s wringing answers from them.
Conclusion
Getting customer feedback is essential in every business, regardless of scale and industry, especially when that business is still growing. But even for established businesses, getting feedback is a way to help your brand continuously improve, stay competitive, and guarantee customer satisfaction.
