From Good to Great: How to Use Customer Feedback to Grow Your Business
How often do you get feedback from your customers?
More importantly, how often do you review that feedback and implement changes as a result?
For small businesses, especially service providers, customer feedback is a vital tool that can be used to enhance offerings and foster growth.
Let me share a story that’s only a tiny example of the importance of feedback. I had a resource link in a course I was working with at the time. I was doing a hundred other things when I posted it and I didn’t take the time to check it was working properly. Yes, it’s on me but I’m sure you’ve been there - a ton of other things to do and it didn’t rise to the priority pile since I’ve embedded hundreds of links before with no issue.
Fast forward two weeks … I get an email from a student telling me that the link is broken. I looked and sure enough, it was true. I must have hit the keyboard too quickly when hitting enter and added a comma to the link address.
There had been almost 100 people who had worked through this module and beyond during the two weeks before it was fixed and not a single person reached out before this student. When I posted that it had come to my attention that the link was broken and I have since fixed it, you’d be amazed at the number of people who responded thanking me because they knew the link was broken.
I now make a point of asking students to immediately share any feedback about anything in a course that isn’t working or doesn't make sense, whether it’s context or technology related. I also share exactly how to provide feedback in a simple way so as to encourage timely responses.
This story is an example of a small tech issue that was easily resolved. But what if the issue was bigger? What if your product isn’t delivering as promised because it’s confusing or misinterpreted? Or what if you didn’t know you needed to go back to a few basic foundational principles in order for your clients to understand the more advanced concepts and achieve the proper results? This could cause your potential raving fans to turn into frustrated clients who don’t finish with you or who feel like they wasted their money.
To make sure you're maximizing the potential of customer feedback, let’s go over some of the various aspects related to it, such as how to gather feedback, interpret it and identify areas of opportunity.
Because by understanding the power of customer feedback, your business can unlock its full potential and cultivate loyal customer relationships.
Unlocking customer feedback
Customer feedback can be obtained through various channels, including surveys, reviews and social media comments.
Surveys allow you to ask specific questions tailored to your business, providing valuable insights into customer satisfaction and preferences.
You may have been asked to provide feedback after attending a webinar or live training about a subject but didn’t buy the pitched product. This is a very common use of surveys and its insights can help you improve in overcoming objections in the future.
Ashlyn Carter, of ashlynwrites.com, does a great annual survey with her email audience. She asks about a number of things, not just feedback on her current business, but also questions on what struggles her audience is currently facing and what copy-related topics are of interest to them. This feedback not only can help her improve on her current offerings and determine what new offers may be of service to her clients, but it’s also great at filling out her content calendar and ensuring that she’s creating content that resonates with her audience.
Reviews are another way to get feedback. You can do this directly on your website or through third-party platforms, like Google, Yelp and Amazon. You often hear podcasters ask their audience to leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. Not only does this provide the podcaster an opportunity better serve their listeners but that kind of feedback also helps to boost their ratings and increases their chance of getting in front of a larger audience.
Social media is another easy way to get feedback. Comments give you a glimpse into real-time reactions and provide an opportunity for direct engagement with your audience. You can use polls to get feedback and directly ask your audience questions.
To collect customer feedback effectively, consider the following:
Use online surveys and feedback forms on your website, in your course platform, as part of your onboarding/off-boarding or through email campaigns.
Encourage customers to leave reviews by making the process simple and easily accessible and/or by offering incentives, such as a raffle for an Amazon gift card.
Monitor your social media and engage with your customer by responding to questions and comments and/or by using polls to ask direct questions.
Identify areas for improvement
Customer feedback can be a treasure trove of information that can uncover pain points in the customer experience and objections during the buyer’s journey.
When analyzing customer feedback, keep these tips in mind:
Look for recurring patterns, themes and trends rather than isolated items or incidents.
Pay attention to both positive and negative feedback to gain a comprehensive understanding.
Try to understand the underlying reasons behind the feedback so you can address the root causes effectively. For example, it may not be that you talked too fast in the video on how to crochet a washcloth. It may really be that you overestimated your customer’s skillset and overlooked instructions on how to crochet a simple chain to start the washcloth.
By actively listening to your customers, you can identify areas that need improvement and optimize your service delivery.
Examples of how customer feedback can reveal areas for improvement include:
Identifying bottlenecks in the user experience on your website or other platforms through feedback on navigation difficulties.
Uncovering shortcomings in customer service by paying attention to complaints and response time or unhelpful interactions.
Recognizing product or service deficiencies by analyzing feedback that highlights specific issues or features desired by customers.
Prioritizing areas for improvement based on customer feedback is critical. But, remember, not all feedback carries the same weight or impact on customer satisfaction.
Focus on issues that are the most significant to your customers and allocate resources to make targeted improvements that deliver tangible benefits.
Implementing change based on customer feedback
Once you have identified opportunities for improvement, consider the following:
Prioritize changes that have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Involve your team, if you have one, in the change implementation process to ensure buy-in and alignment.
If you’re making several changes or notable changes, test them gradually to minimize disruption and assess the effectiveness before full-scale implementation.
Not only is it critical to monitor the changes internally, but communicating with customers may also be necessary, depending on the extent of the changes.
Keep your customers informed by:
Sharing the rationale behind the changes.
Providing regular updates on the progress of the changes and any temporary inconveniences they may experience.
Expressing gratitude for their feedback and highlighting the value it brings to your business.
Measuring the impact of customer feedback
Measuring the impact of changes based on customer feedback is vital to gauge the effectiveness and optimize future strategies.
Consider the following methods:
Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as retention rates and order values to track the impact of the changes over time.
Conduct follow-up surveys or feedback requests to gather feedback on the effectiveness of implemented changes.
Monitor online reviews and social media mentions to assess customer sentiment and identify any shifts after implementing changes.
Create workflows and processes to continually improve your business using customer feedback by:
Establishing a feedback loop to consistently collect and analyze customer feedback.
Regularly reviewing and updating your strategies and operations based on the insights gained.
Fostering a customer-centric culture within your business, encouraging all team members to value and act upon feedback.
Customer feedback is a powerful tool that can fuel growth and ensure long-term success. By collecting and analyzing customer feedback, you can drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Using feedback allows for continuous improvement and strategic decision-making.
And while using feedback to create new offers or make bigger changes within your business, don’t forget that it can be even more impactful when you dig deeper into the feedback.
Remember when I said Ashlyn Carter uses feedback to help fill out her content calendar? As a copywriter, she will tell you the value she gets in using her customer’s own words when talking about their pain points, struggles and objections is essential for writing content and sales pages that convert. She gets their words directly from the feedback they give her.
So here’s your homework …
Start incorporating customer feedback to transform your business today.
Create a survey using software, such as Google Forms, and send it to your email list asking 2-3 critical questions about your services, content or any other thing that’s relevant to your business or create a quick poll on Instagram Stories.
Embrace the voice of your customers and continuously improve your business based on their insights. By doing so, you’ll not only enhance customer satisfaction but you’ll also drive sustainable growth and build a loyal customer base of raving fans.
If you have any questions or need any help getting started with this, shoot me an email at maryjo@aynsli.co.
