How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Your Business

Customer feedback is a valuable tool that helps businesses understand their customers' wants and needs. This information can be used to improve operations, identify areas for growth, and build customer loyalty. Making changes based on customer feedback can help businesses stay ahead of the competition and meet the evolving needs of their customers.

Through customer feedback, your business can determine whether its products and services provide value to your consumer base. It also helps businesses tailor their approach to supporting customers, which leads to greater customer loyalty.

Continuously listening to customer feedback is crucial, as customer values and needs change over time. By doing so, businesses can better focus their efforts on the areas that matter most to their customers.

Customer insights give organisations ideas for improving their business if they fall short of meeting customers' needs. Feedback can also guide everything from customer service to sales and marketing. The more feedback a business gathers about its customers, the better equipped it is to satisfy their needs, which can help stimulate growth.

Real-time alerts are an excellent source for providing such feedback. These alerts help businesses respond to issues promptly and change course before they escalate into more significant problems. Real-time alerts from sources like online reviews can provide an effective way to receive timely notifications and take immediate action.

According to research from Barclays, 85% of small and medium-sized companies find online customer feedback beneficial for their business. The most notable benefit is the insight customer feedback provides.

Customer feedback provides a direct connection between the company and its customers. When customers feel their opinions are valued, they are more likely to develop a positive attitude towards the company. This, in turn, increases customer retention and can result in positive reviews, recommendations, and referrals.

Below are some of the key benefits of using customer feedback to enhance your operations:

Customer feedback provides valuable insights into what your business is doing well versus where there is room for improvement. Listening to your customers' suggestions and concerns can help you identify key areas to make changes or improvements.

When your business actively seeks out and responds to customer feedback, it shows that you care about customers’ opinions and want to provide the best experience possible. This can lead to customers feeling valued and having a positive attitude towards the business, resulting in brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth referrals.

Customer feedback can provide valuable insights into what customers seek in new products or services. Using feedback to inform your product development process can help your business create offerings that better meet the needs of your target audience. If you are able to be more agile than your competitors in implementation, it can give you a significant advantage in the marketplace.

So we've covered the benefits of customer feedback, but how can it be collected? There are various methods that can be used; let's take a look:

Even though there is a multitude of ways for people to get in touch with companies, many customers still prefer to make phone calls to resolve their queries. And it should be noted that customers report higher satisfaction with businesses after a phone call. As a result, businesses must ensure that customers can actually get to the people with whom they wish to speak when they want to speak with them.

One way to streamline the caller directory process is through the use of conversation intelligence. This automatically records and transcribes phone conversations and uses real-time data analytics to gain insights from customer support processes. With efficient case management tools, companies can create accurate customer feedback records that can be used for current and future product development.

One of the most widely used and accurate survey methods is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS surveys measure how likely customers are to recommend a brand to a friend. This type of survey utilises simple and straightforward questions that customers can answer using a scale between 0-10, where 0 represents incredibly negative and 10 represents extreme positivity.

The NPS survey is a powerful tool that provides businesses a clear understanding of customer loyalty and satisfaction. By calculating the percentage of promoters (customers who rate the brand as 9-10) and detractors (customers who rate the brand as 0-6), businesses can determine their NPS score. This score can serve as a baseline for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty over time and comparing it to competitors.

Reviews are one of the best sources of feedback as potential buyers rely on these when making purchasing decisions. Knowing which aspects of your business are delighting or annoying your customers can really help shape your processes and priorities for the future.

Reviews can be restricted to customers who have purchased a product or visited a location, giving businesses an almost live customer perspective on their operations. However, it can be challenging to get feedback from customers who don't feel strongly positive or negative about your business, as those that leave reviews tend to have gone through extremely good or bad experiences and want to tell the world.

Actively seeking feedback and creating opportunities for customers to share their opinions can help businesses gain valuable insights into areas for improvement and enhance the overall customer experience. As well as advertising the good (and bad) bits of your business to potential customers.

Social media is a useful tool that lets businesses gather customer feedback quickly. Metrics like mentions, likes, and shares can show how people feel about a business and if they meet customer expectations.

The difficulty here is that customers may come to social media to publicly voice complaints. It is important to focus on how these are addressed, as the world can see how you handle complaints. Doing this poorly can lose potential customers, but doing it well can be great for PR.

Feedback forms allow customers to independently share their thoughts and feelings about a product or service.

Unlike other types of feedback, like rating scales, feedback forms allow customers to express themselves in more detail. For example, a business might send a link to a feedback form in an email survey to better understand customer sentiment regularly. Feedback forms can also be used after a purchase or transaction to find out why a customer chose a particular product or service.

Response rates can be low, but it helps to incentivise people by offering something in return. For example you could offer a prize draw for a voucher for goods, or a free period for your service.

When collecting feedback, your approach largely depends on your business's goals and needs. Effective organisations use multiple feedback methods to increase their chances of understanding customer sentiment accurately.

Businesses can leverage conversation intelligence technology and pop-up forms to generate real-time customer feedback. These methods can help your business analyse feedback quickly and improve your customer feedback strategy.

Social media outreach and customer feedback surveys are useful methods for gathering general feedback and suggestions from a large group of people. These approaches allow you to cast a wide net and collect feedback from diverse customers.

However, if you want to gather more in-depth feedback or specific insights from customers, you might find focusing on customer reviews and feedback more helpful. These methods can provide more detailed information to help you make better informed decisions.

Although feedback is beneficial, it can be challenging to receive negative feedback. When customers are upset or dissatisfied, they may leave comments on public platforms such as social media or review sites that can harm your brand’s reputation in the short and long term.

Regardless, businesses should stay aware of customer feedback and promptly address any issues to avoid negative impacts on their reputation. This means monitoring feedback on various platforms and channels and responding promptly to customer concerns.

Addressing negative feedback can turn negative experiences into positive ones, demonstrating a brand’s commitment to customer satisfaction and building stronger customer relationships. In the long term, this can help businesses maintain a positive reputation and retain loyal customers.

Nearly 80% of American consumers say that speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendly service are the most important elements of a positive customer experience.

Customers may leave positive feedback for various reasons, like finding a product easy to use or enjoying its features. Positive feedback indicates that customers find value in your product or service and are satisfied with their investment.

To leverage positive feedback, showcase it on your website and social media channels. Following up with customers who leave positive comments, requesting further feedback or offering additional support can also help ensure customer success and drive sales.

Negative feedback can arise for many reasons, such as technical issues with a product or service. This could be a delay in project completion or an unsatisfactory experience. Regardless of the reason, you must handle unhappy customers with empathy and be willing to take corrective action.

Listening carefully to the customer's concerns and taking responsibility will help you handle negative feedback effectively. Demonstrating a willingness to take action can show your business's commitment to customer satisfaction.

Like positive feedback, it's crucial to thank the customer for leaving feedback, even if it is negative. This shows that your business values feedback and is dedicated to improving its products and services.

When it comes to prioritising the feedback collected, consider your business's specific goals and needs. If you're consistently receiving overwhelmingly negative feedback on a specific aspect of a product or service, prioritise it.

On the other hand, positive feedback suggests that your business is doing well and should continue providing the same level of service. But this doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement and innovation.

Be sure to use positive feedback to identify areas where your business excels and to look for ways to build on those strengths. The key is to strike a balance between addressing areas of weakness and building on areas of strength.

Once your business has collected customer feedback and analysed it, the next step is to take action. Here are some key steps to take when implementing changes based on customer feedback:

After reviewing customer feedback, develop an action plan outlining the changes you will make to address any issues identified. The action plan should include specific, measurable goals, a timeline for implementing changes, and a plan for monitoring progress. Assigning responsibility for each action item can help implement changes effectively and efficiently.

When making changes based on customer feedback, it's important to communicate those changes to customers.

Letting customers know their feedback was heard and acted upon can help build customer loyalty and increase satisfaction. Clearly communicating what changes were made, why they were made, and how they will benefit customers can help ensure that customers are on board with the changes.

After implementing changes based on customer feedback, monitoring their effectiveness is essential. This can include reviewing customer feedback to see if the changes have had the desired impact, collecting new feedback to gauge customer satisfaction, and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) to see if the changes have led to measurable improvements. Based on the results of this monitoring, additional adjustments may be needed to improve customer satisfaction further.

• Customer feedback is a great way to better understand customers by allowing them to express their wants and needs.

• There are various ways to collect customer feedback, such as using phone calls, reviews, social media, feedback forms, and more.

• Analysing feedback can be done effectively using conversation intelligence software to gain ongoing insights.

• Customer feedback can be positive or negative; each type can help businesses better understand how customers perceive your brand.

• Implementing changes based on customer feedback is crucial to driving business growth and should include developing an action plan, communicating changes to customers, and monitoring the effectiveness of those changes.

Obtaining and assessing feedback is critical for any successful business. If you’re looking to find ways to improve your systems to receive feedback or simply looking for a more customer-focused phone support platform, book a demo or email us at hello@cordless.io. We’re always happy to help companies on a mission to improve their customer support!