Are your customers happy with your products/services? Is there something you can do to make them happier? Why are they choosing your competitors over you? Could you have done anything to prevent this?
Getting feedback from your customers can help you answer all those questions with more accuracy than studying market reports and predictions can provide. That’s why you need to establish several channels so your customers can provide invaluable feedback. And once they are set, you need to ask for it directly, because people are hardly ever motivated to share on their own.
4 Best Ways to Get Customer Feedback
1. Use customer surveys
A survey is an excellent method of communicating with your customers because it provides you with important data in a way that’s easy to process. Today you can use a simple survey builder, like SurveyMonkey to create any kind of survey you like. On one hand, it’s a great advantage because you can design a piece that will fit your business perfectly.
On the other hand, the piece you produce, while seeming excellent to your eyes, might not get the results you need. In fact, remember that customer survey response rates are generally abysmal. Many businesses report that they get only 10-20% or 26% responses at most (GetFeedback). If you want to make the most out of this tool you’ll need to learn from the best. Take a look at the KFC customer satisfaction survey as this brand is renowned for top-quality customer service. The surveys it uses are designed by leading experts in their fields and are a product or relentless research and testing. Therefore, using them as an example will definitely work best.
2. Watch the mentions of your brand online (and respond)
Set up Google Alerts and any other similar services you can get your hands on in order to watch the Web and social media for any mentions of your brand. This will allow you to not only passively learn your customers’ opinions, which they share online. But you will also get a chance to respond.
This is essential in order to develop a dialogue with your audience and, hopefully, make a good impression on everyone watching that interaction. The latter will help attract more customers and improve your brand’s reputation. Note that you need to respond to every mention, be it positive or negative.
3. Talk to your customers directly
It might be the digital age outside, but people still value personal human interaction. In fact, today they value it more as it’s becoming a rare commodity. Therefore, a great way to both gather customer feedback and distinguish your business is to set up some type of personal interaction with your targeted audience.
Depending on the situation, you can do this through exhibits and seminars. If you have a brick-and-mortar shop, organize a special event when everyone can come and share their opinions about your business. If in-person interaction isn’t possible, set up a live video Q&A session on your Facebook channel.
4. Use emails
The value of email marketing should not be underestimated. To this day, it maintains one of the highest ROI in the industry (CampaignMonitor). Therefore, you should use its power to learn about your customers.
You can get feedback through email marketing both directly and indirectly. To be direct, send out an occasional email survey. But keep those very short and to the point. Be sure to include some rewards for your customers to make them motivated to complete the survey.
Indirectly, you can learn about your subscribers by analyzing data from your email campaigns. Which letters get a better click-through rate? How do your sales ups and downs correlate with email openings? Use every bit of data you can gather to paint the most accurate picture of your customers’ preferences.
