Customer Feedback

By: Jen Mylett

There’s no denying the value of customer feedback. Effective feedback can be positive and negative and still be helpful for the overall growth of the company. Having continuous improvement is a true focus based on feedback from across the whole business – customers, clients, employees, suppliers, vendors, etc. To make sure your business is getting the most from customer feedback, here are three tips to go by:

1. Ask Questions

It may be more beneficial and effective for the company asking for feedback to gear more towards open ended questions rather than rankings. Although using a scale of 1-10 on the likelihood of the customers recommending the good or service to a friend may be easier to complete, the may be not be as valuable for the company. The company will not know why the customer has this problem, or better yet, how to fix the problem. Also, it would be important to address what stood out to the customer, about their experience, whether it’s good or bad.

2. Listen to the Customers

Whether the feedback is verbal or via a survey, the customers want to know that the company understands and knows their feedback is valued. If you think that asking more questions will guarantee more valuable feedback, you may have been misinformed. Customers tend to find long surveys tedious and time consuming. Therefore, it’s effortless for the customers to say what they want to say in more  open-ended response or simple questions.

3. Utilize the Feedback

It’s not enough to just know that ‘X’ amount of people rated the good or service a 2 out of 10. Instead, apply this feedback from the customer to improve your business. For example, if a customer complains about shipping taking too long. Check the shipping provider to find an underlying issue if it wasn’t just a one-time accident. Then, decide how to improve that customer’s experience by offering discounts, or free shipping on the next good shipped to them.

Today, everything must be done to please the consumers. This means that communication must abide by their schedule, and what their used to (email, phone, etc.). To meet all customer expectations and come across as a customer-oriented business, it’s essential to follow these tips listed above!