What do I do with customer feedback?

It’s common for businesses to avoid customer feedback simply because they don’t know what to do with it. However, this means they miss out on a valuable opportunity to grow.

Don’t ignore your customer feedback – use it and embrace it. With the right strategy, you can use customer insights throughout your business to make improvements and create a winning Customer Experience (CX).  

In this article, we dive into the top 4 ways to use customer feedback and share some of the best practices you should keep in mind as you go. With these straightforward tips, your business is guaranteed to thrive. 

4 ways to use customer feedback 

As we have seen time and time again, listening to customer insights is the start of a powerful growth strategy. To turn your customer feedback into success, just follow these 4 steps:

1. Providing social proof

Customer feedback provides a valuable opportunity to show other customers that your brand deserves their attention. As long as you have the customer’s permission to share their words, you can repurpose them as testimonials on your website. 

With other consumers vouching for your service, products, and overall experience, new customers can quickly see that their time and money will be well spent. 

To take this a step further and boost your growth even further, consider asking the happy customer for a review. With a glowing reputation on a third-party website like Google or Facebook, your business is sure to attract more customers because the reviews are objective and transparent. 

2. Developing products 

Despite your best efforts, you will never understand your customers as well as they understand themselves. When it comes to a product, they know what they want better than anyone so stop relying on brainstorms and start paying attention. 

Customer feedback can improve product development by identifying:

• Features customers want most. 
• Customer pain points. 
• Opportunities for product upgrades.
• Potential issues before they arise. 
• The most effective marketing strategy for your product. 

To develop top-notch products, follow forums, send surveys, check reviews, and engage with customer opinions. This way, you won’t have to rely on guesswork or assumptions. You will save time on product development and prove you are a brand that cares about your customers – a win-win. 

3. Boosting employee morale

There is a difference between knowing your customers are happy and having evidence of it. For all your employees putting the work in each day, that proof can make a huge difference to morale and productivity. 

While some high-level managers choose to keep customer feedback to themselves, sharing it with everyone else in the company is a valuable practice. By making customer insights available to employees, you can they are: 

• Engaged with customer expectations. 
• Encouraged to perform at a high level.
• Taking ownership of their work.  
• Recognised for their efforts. 

There are a few ways to go about this. For example, you could set up an online message board or slack channel to share customer feedback automatically. With helpful suggestions and raving reviews instantly accessible to them, employees can find the motivation they need without having to go through a complicated process.  

4. Identifying room to improve 

Perhaps the most important step of all is using customer feedback to make changes. In much the same way as product development, customer feedback is the most efficient way to determine your next steps because it comes straight from the source. 

Instead of wasting time and resources on a misguided strategy, use customer feedback to implement changes you know will be successful. This can include how to improve your: 

• Customer service processes. 
• Website and app. 
• Communication across all channels. 
• Products and services. 
• Marketing and promotional material. 
• Social media content. 
• Core brand values and personality. 

For example, if a customer says the wait time was too long, you can roster more staff during peak times. Or, if they ask about your opening hours, you know to display them more clearly on your website and Google Business Profile. Whatever the feedback is, you can act quickly and be confident that everything meets customer expectations. 

Tips for using customer feedback

To help you start on the right foot, here are some practical tips to incorporate into your feedback strategy: 

Respond to every customer 

While it might seem overwhelming at first, responding to each customer is a must. Each customer has taken the time to respond to your feedback request and reflect on their experience so honour that and thank them for their input. Not only will they feel acknowledged, but it will also ensure you pay attention to every piece of feedback. So, whether negative or positive, don’t let any feedback go unanswered. 

Send a link to ask for reviews 

Now is the time to turn those happy customers into brand advocates. When a customer gives a positive response in a feedback survey, send them a link to your review page too. This way, they can easily share what they’ve said privately on a public forum and before long, your star rating will be sky-high. 

Use a Customer Feedback Management tool 

A customer feedback management tool (CFM) helps you to keep up-to-date with customer preferences without getting bogged down in the process. You won’t have to organise data or spend hours trawling through customer responses because the software will do it all for you. 

A CFM platform is your one-stop shop for all things customer feedback, including building surveys, distributing them, collecting the responses, and analysing the data. Getting this wrong can end in frustration and loss of customers so, instead of risking that, find a CFM that takes the hard work out of it. 

Review Tui enables you to: 

• Build customer surveys.
• Receive real-time alerts and reports.
• Distribute personalised email templates.
• Integrate seamlessly with HubSpot. 
• Use campaign links across any communication channel:
• Request reviews with convenient links. 

If you want to use customer feedback to your advantage, Review Tui could be the place to start. Join the waitlist for our software launch that’s coming soon or download our practical guide. You’ll get all the advice you need to implement an effective customer feedback strategy and have your best year yet.