Your business won’t do much business without the support of your customers. And one of the best ways to earn their support (and loyalty, and undying devotion) is to listen to what they have to say.

Customer feedback is crucial in every aspect of business, from research and development to marketing to customer service and beyond. Whether directly or indirectly, your customers have something to say, and it’s your responsibility to listen.

In this post, we’ll look at the benefits of customer feedback as well as how to collect and analyze it.

4 Big Benefits to Collecting Customer Feedback

Improved Products and Services

You created your products and services with the customer in mind, but they’re the only ones who can tell you if everything is working as intended. By soliciting customer feedback, you get an insider’s view of how people really feel and what they’d like to see tweaked, changed, eliminated or added.

In-Depth Knowledge of Your Audience

People want to do business with a brand that understands them. But if you’re not listening to what they have to say, that’s an impossible task. Customer feedback allows you to get to know your audience on a deeper, more authentic level so that you’re better able to meet their needs.

A Better Customer Experience

Your products and services aren’t the only things that matter to your customer. The experience they have before, during, and after making a purchase are important, too. Customer feedback helps alert you to things like a lagging check-out process, long wait times or customer support that’s not up to par.

The Ability to Correct Mistakes

Most businesses will have to deal with an angry customer or two. When you’re on top of your customer feedback, however, you can deal with problems proactively — often long before the dissatisfied person takes to social media to air their grievances to the world at large.

5 Ways to Collect Customer Feedback

Most of the time, customers will only provide unsolicited feedback if they’re incredibly delighted or incredibly disappointed. So if you want their thoughts, you’re going to have to nudge them a bit.

Some of the best ways to collect feedback are:

• Surveys
• Social listening
• Follow-up calls or emails after a purchase
• Focus groups
• On-the-spot customer interviews

Make sure it’s simple for your customers to provide feedback. Don’t ask for more than what you need to know and consider offering an incentive for sharing their thoughts.

3 Tips for Analyzing Customer Feedback

Now that you’ve collected the feedback, it’s time to act on it. Here are a few of our best tips for analyzing the information.

Record every response no matter how trivial they may seem. It’s impossible to identify patterns without considering all the information.

Create categories and subcategories and cross-reference as needed. For example, you may have a category for customer service and then subcategories for positive experiences, negative experiences, and any staff members who were mentioned by name.

Automate the process as much as possible. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools and other specialized software can help you keep track of customer feedback with very little hands-on effort needed.

What Are Your Customers Saying About You?

People are going to talk. If you can get them to talk to you instead of about you, you’re privy to insights that would have otherwise been missed. Customer feedback can help you improve every aspect of your business!

Are you ready to open up a dialogue with your valued customers? Mischa Communications can help. Let’s get the conversation started.