Never underestimate the value of customer feedback.
Your customers are your livelihood, so listening to their input and creating products and services that meet their needs is crucial to growing your brand.
Especially as a small business owner, gathering feedback from new and long-standing customers gives you insights into what is and isn't working for your company. As you grow, customer satisfaction is especially important as you likely rely on repeat customers, referrals, and word-of-mouth.
Let's dive into how to effectively gather customer feedback and turn it into business growth opportunities.
Feedback Starts With Talking to Customers
One of the most effective ways to do this is through customer interviews. More than surveys or forms, interviews help your small business start a conversation with customers to learn more about them and ask deeper questions.
Follow these tips for a successful customer interview:
- Build rapport. Get to know your customer by asking about their background and building a human connection. Building rapport makes customers feel comfortable and helps the interview run more smoothly.
- Understand their needs. Next, try to understand their needs and the problems they’re trying to solve with your business. These answers could highlight why customers come to your company and additional needs you can address.
- Ask how you can better serve them. This section is for gathering their suggestions and understanding any pain points of your current products or services. Seek to understand if your products meet the customer’s needs and what you could do to improve the product or experience.
- Gather positive experiences. Talk about any positive experiences the customer has had with your employees, products, or brand. This information helps you determine what you should be doing more of, and can boost morale.
- Compare your business to the competition. Your customers chose your business for a reason. Ask about how they found you and why they chose your business over others. This feedback helps you know how you stand out and what you can continue to prioritize to set yourself apart from the competition.
Gathering Effective Feedback
The key to effective customer feedback that represents customers’ true thoughts is to have a continual stream of feedback. When you’re constantly hearing from customers, you can match changes in their satisfaction and suggestions to changes in the business, such as knowing if a new product launch or update to your website was well-received.
The main problem with this is getting customers to provide feedback, especially when they are busy and distracted by other responsibilities. It comes down to one principle: Make feedback as easy as possible for customers. When giving feedback is quick and easy (and comes with some sort of reward), customers are much more likely to participate.
Email customers directly with a signup link so they can select a time that works best for their schedule. Waiting for customers to contact you for an interview or scheduling in person or on the phone makes it more likely for interviews to be canceled or missed. Simplify the process with email links.
You’ll also want to make the interview worth the customers’ time. Providing rewards like an Amazon gift card or discounts on your products incentivizes customers to participate.
Translating Customer Input Into Business Growth
After putting in the time and resources to gather customer feedback, businesses need to close the loop by putting those insights into action. Listening to customers is a huge driver for business growth; 77% of customers view brands more favorably when they seek out and apply customer feedback, meaning applying feedback can lead to loyal customers and strong growth.
But how can you use customer input to grow your business? Use customer feedback and suggestions to improve your decision-making around pricing, marketing, and product development. Customer feedback about what they do and don’t like about your product can provide valuable anecdotal research. Adjusting the look and features of a product or its pricing structure to align with those insights can create more customer-centric offerings and help your business create products customers will buy.
Similarly, customer insights can help build a loyalty or referral program for satisfied customers. By learning what makes customers return to your business or not, you can find key attributes of loyal customers to create a program that incentivizes them to advocate for your brand.
Customer feedback is also a powerful marketing tool. Potential customers tend to trust marketing from other customers because it feels more authentic, credible, and relatable. Leverage customer testimonials on your website, social media, and other marketing campaigns to put a face to your customers and show how your business impacts real customers.
Customer feedback should be a cornerstone of every business, no matter its size. By prioritizing customer insights and using them to adjust your business, you can create strong customer relationships and improve the experience.
Disclaimer: Fundbox and its affiliates do not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal or accounting advice. You should consult your own tax, legal, and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction.
