It is a known fact that Customer Feedback is important for your business and it helps a lot to grow your business. However, what is being disregarded is why it is really significant for the business and how it actually works. Knowing exactly the reasons behind such importance is equally important, in order to act accordingly and reap the maximum benefits of Customer Feedback.
As a marketer, we always try to make our customers happy and satisfied. We try to provide the best products and services and do our best efforts so that we develop a long term relationship with the customer, and our customer base increases and eventually our business grows. But are the customers really happy with our products and services? How can we know what exactly they think and feel about us? To know the answer to these questions, we need to listen to the voice of the customer. This is where the role of Customer Feedback comes.
Every business is there due to the existence of certain needs of the consumers. Business can never be done in isolation. The presence of customer needs provides a business opportunity and without knowing what customers need, we cannot think of running a business. So it is necessary to listen to the voice of the customer and this is only possible through Customer Feedback. A simple and easy way to obtain customer feedback is Customer Feedback Surveys.
As per a study conducted by Market Force in 2015, 83% of all consumers had completed at least one survey in the previous year.
In this rapidly changing environment, customer awareness has increased in recent years to a large extent. With this, competition has increased in the market and the expectations of customers have also increased. Moreover, the customer needs, choices, tastes and preferences keep on changing with the changing trends.
So, it is necessary to keep upgrading our products and services by adopting new innovations. And to achieve the goal of Customer Satisfaction, we first need to know what actually customers want and whether they are happy with our products and services or not.
As per research by New Voice Media, only 1% of the customers feel that their expectations are truly met.
What is Customer Feedback?
Customer Feedback is the information that we receive from the customers about their satisfaction or dissatisfaction regarding a product or a service. It is basically their own opinion about the product, services and the experience they had with an organization. This opinion is the voice of the customer which is very important for the business to maximize Customer Satisfaction.
This acts as a means to look into the scope of improvement. This information can be collected through different methods of survey which include email surveys, online surveys, offline surveys, kiosks surveys, SMS surveys, and others.
However, we can also get this information through unprompted feedback which means that we do not approach the customer proactively but the customers provided feedback on open forums like social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. and we can collect that data by exploring the internet. Nowadays, social media has become one of the greatest mediums for obtaining Customer Feedback.
According to Sprout Social, 47% of the customers having a complaint in a product or a service raise a voice through social media.
So in this competitive era, it is important to not only provide such open platforms to the customers but also revert on every feedback by replying to every comment the customers feed.
Moreover, it is important for us to take Customer Feedback at the right time. It is preferred to take the feedback when the experience is fresh and the customer can recall it to share the exact feedback he wants to convey.
Top Reasons Why Customer Feedback is Important in Your Business
There are numerous reasons which make taking Customer Feedback important for every business. Let’s list out some important reasons:
Top Reasons Why Customer Feedback is Important in Your Business
- It enables you to hear the Voice of the Customer
- It helps you to measure Customer Satisfaction
- It makes Customers feel involved and important
- It helps to identify Unhappy Customers and work towards Improving the Experience for them
- It tells you the improvement areas and the areas which are working well for them
- It helps to Identify Happy Customers and supports in Retention
- It helps in taking important Business Decisions
Customer Feedback is important for a business for these reasons. Let’s review how.
1. It enables you to hear the Voice of the Customer
With the growing competition and consumer awareness, the marketing concept has replaced the old selling concept which paid less heed to Customer Satisfaction and eventually the importance of listening to the voice of the customer to know about their choices, preferences, and opinions has been increased to a large extent.
If customers feel unheard, they may switch to other brands in no time. So, it is really important to pay special consideration to the voice of the customer and take the next actions accordingly. For this reason, big brands are investing a good amount on the VOC programs to listen to the voice of the customers in a better way.
2. It helps you measure Customer Satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction should be the primary goal of every business with the help of which an organization thrives and grows. In order to maximize sales and profits, it is necessary to satisfy the customers and it is equally important to know that to which extent the customers are satisfied.
This leads to the arrival of the concept of measurement of customer satisfaction. Taking Customer Feedback not only helps in knowing that the customers are happy or not but also helps in measuring the extent to which customers are happy or unhappy with the products and services.
Feedback metrics like NPS giving the rating options to the customers on a scale from one to ten is an effective method of measuring customer loyalty. Moreover, CSAT surveys can help a lot to measure Customer Satisfaction.
3. It makes Customers feel Involved and important
The most effective way of making the customers feel valued is to take the opinions of the customers in the form of Customer Feedback and take action accordingly. When the customers are proactively requested to share their opinion, they feel that they are a part of the business and when we act accordingly, the level of their satisfaction increases to a large extent.
Always ensure to let them know that their opinion is valued and actions are being taken as per their feedback and suggestions. This creates a very good perception about us in their minds and this generates loyalty among them for the brand.
For instance- we own a pizza outlet and we received feedback from our customers that the oregano seasoning we are using is not up to the mark in terms of taste and quality. Then we need to work on the suggestion and upgrade its quality to ensure better taste. But the action does not end here only.
Our next action should be to inform those customers maybe even with a single SMS saying something like “Now you can enjoy pizzas with better taste with a better quality of seasoning as per the precious suggestions of our customers”
Those customers would be delighted to know this. This action would not only bring them back but also and would visit again and their word of mouth will also help the business to grow in terms of sales.
4. It helps to identify the Unhappy Customers and work towards improving the experience for them
When we work for having Customer Feedback, we can receive any kind of feedback. It can be positive also and it can be a negative one too. Sometimes, we tend to avoid negative feedback. Rather, we should deal with negative feedback constructively and convert them into an opportunity to bring more customers into the business.
Customer Feedback is an effective method to identify which customers are unhappy with the product or a service. Identifying the unhappy customers will let us know what are the improvement areas in which we can work on and thus improve the customer experience.
5. It tells you the Improvement Areas and the Areas which are working well for them
When we receive feedback from the customers, we sometimes receive different opinions regarding different attributes of a product or a service. In this way, we get to know the strength and weaknesses of our products and services.
For instance – if we have a restaurant and receiving Customer Feedback, it is quite possible that a certain food item is loved by customers and another food item being disliked by the customers.
This gives us an idea as to what areas we should focus on for improvement and what are our strong areas where we need to maintain the same quality. Based on this information, we can do a SWOT Analysis (An analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of an organization) and take action accordingly.
In order to get such feedback, we can use a survey. A survey can help us to get better Customer Feedback if it is used with good survey logic and branching.
6. It helps to Identify Happy Customers and supports in Retention
Customer Feedback is a good means to identify happy customers. Happy and satisfied customers must not be neglected and it is necessary to maintain the same level of relationship with the customers because it takes a good time to build trust among the customers but it takes no time to break that trust.
In research performed by New Voice Media, it was found that 58% of individuals will never opt for an organization again after just one terrible experience.
So, in order to retain the customers, it is very necessary to also focus on happy customers too and maintain the consistency to provide them the best quality of products and services with great customer experience.
Customer Feedback helps us in this purpose. It helps us to know which customers are satisfied with the products and services so that we work on maintaining the quality of the products and services and ensure their retention.
7. It helps in taking important Business Decisions
When we want to make an important business decision, it is really useful to know how this decision will impact the existing customers and will that be able to attract more customers or not. By gathering Customer Feedback, we get to know the information from the customer’s point of view that what is working out for them and what is not.
This helps us to know the customers’ perspectives while taking a certain decision. After knowing what customers like and what they dislike, we can make business decisions accordingly.
No matter you set up a mechanism or not, customers will surely talk about the business and the products and services they are using. They always share feedback of your business. So why not receive that feedback and work constructively to maximize our profit through Customer Satisfaction. The best way to get Customer Feedback is to set up a proper mechanism with the help of a powerful Customer Feedback Software.
A good Customer Feedback Software or App enables you to collect real-time Customer Feedback through different channels like email, SMS, kiosks, online and offline surveys. It helps you to easily create customized surveys as per your needs. An effective Customer Survey App enables you to create multilingual surveys and capture feedback offline even without internet connectivity.
Source URL: https://www.zonkafeedback.com/blog/7-reasons-why-you-should-take-customer-feedback
Thank you for sharing that customers’ feedback is indeed very important to make them feel valued when their opinions are being taken seriously. Every customer will encounter different experiences since everyone has their own expectations when it comes to buying a product or getting a service. Therefore, I would like to think if a business wants to make the clients feel valued, they should conduct an online survey to get their feedback by working with a reliable IT service.
Customer feedback systems help you understand the needs of your customers. With this knowledge, you can properly address inquiries made by potential customers satisfactorily, and encourage them to make purchases.