Why you should seek more customer feedback

As a business owner you likely have an idea of where you want to go and might even have a rough idea as to how you may get there, but is it what your customers want? Gathering customer feedback enables you to find out what you’re doing well at the moment, and get ideas as to what customers may want to see from you in the future. But that’s not the only reason why you should seek more customer feedback. In this article, we’ll explore the full list, and even give you some ideas as to how to get more feedback.

Reasons why you should get more customer feedback

Some people are averse to getting feedback because they’re worried about what they might uncover. We’ve analysed hundreds of responses from our alpha tester businesses and the vast majority of comments are positive, even for businesses that have a history of getting bad public reviews. You shouldn’t fear the feedback but if you still need more persuading here are a few more reasons why you should jump straight in.

Customers feel valued

Giving customers the opportunity to give their feedback on an experience with you makes them feel valued. A study by Otago University compared groups of people that were offered different incentives for providing feedback. The results were quite surprising as a cash incentive performed worse than no incentive at all. The study concluded that the likely reason was that the respondents felt a sense of giving by providing feedback and being paid for their thoughts negated this altruism.  You can read more about this study in our blog covering whether you should incentivise customer reviews.

Make informed investment decisions

Asking for customer feedback enables you, as a business owner or manager, to make targeted decisions on where to invest your budget. From using negative feedback to iron out the creases to using positive feedback to steer new hire training and business development. Gathering customer feedback takes the guesswork out of where your money should go and can reveal the expenditure that will have the highest customer impact.

Arm sales with selling points

Asking your customers for feedback gives them the opportunity to tell you what they like and don’t like. While that might not seem like a big deal it can give you new sales points. From having your salespeople lean into these valuable features to using these key points on your website and external marketing you can hone straight in on the features your customers care about because existing customers have told you they’re what matter to them. Rather than guessing which of the dozens of features matter to prospects you can use these right away knowing they’re likely to persuade future customers to use you.

Content marketing opportunities

Customer feedback offers brand new opportunities to feed the marketing team with ideas. A content marketing framework that’s sweeping the world is ‘They ask, you answer’ and one of the content pillars it talks about is discussing problems. Writing about the problems associated with your products or service sounds counter-intuitive but it can actually be very valuable. Your business doesn’t service everybody and explaining who you suit and don’t suit enables prospects to filter themselves out if they’re not a good fit. If you want to see an example of a ‘problems’ blog you can visit our ‘Problems with Review Tui’ article and check it out.

That’s not all the content marketing opportunities customer feedback can give. You can reach out to really happy customers for video case studies and use feedback for testimonials on your website.

Improve team engagement

Sharing the feedback you’ve received with colleagues shows them that the work they’re doing is making a difference to actual customers. Employees can see the results of their efforts and receive a sense of satisfaction in a job well done. This increases team buy-in and improves morale, especially when the feedback directly references the work they do for the business.

This can then create a cycle of success. An engaged team cares more, which helps them go above and beyond. This, in turn, can help them over-deliver on customer expectations, which generates happier customers that give more positive feedback.

How to get more customer feedback

Now that we’ve covered the core reasons why you should seek more customer feedback here are a few ways you can get more of it.

Use a customer feedback platform

This may seem obvious, and a bit ham-fisted coming from a feedback platform itself, but using dedicated software to collect feedback is a great first step. Having it all come to one place means you can analyse patterns to feed back to decision-makers. Being able to create surveys easily is also important, but only if the feedback is easy to analyse.

Use automation to send surveys to customers

Email automation platforms, like Mailchimp and HubSpot, enable you to set and forget the system of asking for feedback. You can create a trigger to send the email based on a purchase action, or a sales opportunity going to ‘won’. By automating this process you’re not making it someone else’s problem or risking that it falls by the wayside when things get busy. Automation makes it sustainable and consistent.

Incentivise feedback

This is a hotly debated topic and the science around it can be a little conflicting but encouraging people to give you their thoughts can be a key method of increasing the frequency with which you receive customer feedback. If you want ideas as to how you can incentivise feedback then check out our blog on whether you should incentivise customer feedback as it includes a few ideas as to how you can do it well.

Be everywhere

Customers will want to leave customer feedback when it suits them, and having multiple touchpoints increases your chance of being available for feedback when it matters. From emailing out a survey when the sale has occurred to having feedback links in staff emails and even fixed POS or sale options throughout your store, on the packaging, or on receipts.

Review Tui makes this easy with its QR code generator, enabling you to create QR links to surveys for free on the platform. Use these anywhere that a customer might have a phone handy so that they can leave feedback when it suits them.

In summary, seeking customer feedback helps you to grow your business. Not just by fixing the problems that stop customers from coming back, but by using happy customers to bring in more business and motivate your team. If you’re interested in a new way of gathering customer feedback then sign up for Review Tui updates by clicking the button below. The platform will launch later this year and we’ll be notifying anyone that’s signed up for updates first.