By Alexa Lemzy, content editor @TextMagic.
Customer feedback is one of the most powerful tools available to any company for improving many areas of your business.
From problems with your products to the selling points you should promote, there are many ways you can optimize your business using customer feedback.
Paying attention to what customers say about you can be a major asset.
Ignoring them can quickly cost you existing customers and ward off potential buyers.
So where should you go to gather customer insights?
Here are six channels to gather useful criticism that more businesses should take advantage of:
1. Social Media
Your business probably already has a profile on a few social media sites, but are you using it for more than just pushing out marketing?
There are a huge number of customers who might already be giving their opinions without you knowing it.
More than half the overall population follows their favorite brands on social media and 95% of 18-34-year-olds.
You should read through all the comments on your page at least twice a day.
Asking simple questions on what customers like about your business is a great way to find out what your satisfied customers want from you. Posts like this also act as free marketing in the form of testimonials. Here are a few ideas for questions you can ask:
- How has our product improved the way you work?
- What is your favorite aspect of our product?
- What feature of our services couldn’t you live without?
Negative comments are usually easier to find, and you rarely have to ask for them.
Don’t be disheartened by this. Dissatisfied customers are just more likely to get in touch than satisfied customers.
Image source: https://freshsparks.com/using-social-media-for-customer-service/
Not all feedback gets posted to your page, however. Track brand mentions to see who is talking about your business and what they are saying about you on social media.
2. Customer Onboarding Surveys
Knowing why a customer decided to use your products and services is one of the most useful pieces of information you can collect.
Sending your customers a quick quiz after their first purchase or subscription can be an effective way to get this information.
This can highlight the selling points and advantages of your product over the competition, and the reasons a customer decided they needed your services.
This information is great for identifying the most appealing aspects of your product and what to focus your marketing on.
Often customers see advantages and uses for your product you never thought to promote.
Here are some great questions to ask in an onboarding questionnaire:
- What problem are you aiming to solve with our product?
- Why did you choose our product or service?
- How did you find out about us?
It can also be a good idea to send a couple of follow-up questions a few weeks later to find out if you are meeting their expectations, or what they are finding most useful about your product.
These answers can tell you a lot about the most effective ways of promoting your business.
Your follow-up questions can highlight how you are meeting expectations set by your marketing.
Use trends in this data to see if you are attracting your ideal customers and adjust your marketing accordingly.
3. Exit Surveys
Knowing why a customer stopped using your services is arguably more important than understanding why they first became a customer.
Retaining customers is easier than attracting new ones, so information on why you are losing a customer is a critical insight.
Try to find out why a leaving customer is dissatisfied with your business. Always ask whether they are moving to a competitor or simply no longer need your services.
Image source: https://www.groovehq.com/blog/exit-surveys
This is a highly effective way to identify room for improvement in all aspects of your business. The issues customers discuss here were enough to make them stop using your business.
Unhappy customers may not feel inclined to help you out with criticism, so keeping the questions short and simple can increase the response rate.
Think about what you could do to address the negatives and retain future customers.
Sometimes a customer will leave because of a single bad experience. If you respond promptly with a solution, you may be able to keep that customer. These unsatisfied customers can often become your most loyal because you showed you care.
4. Simple SMS Surveys
One of the best ways to find out what your customers think is simply to ask!
This can be a hassle for your customers, however.
Simplifying the process will increase your response rate, and sending out questions via SMS is an effective way to achieve this.
Use multiple-choice questions or ask for a rating out of 10 to get a single, simple answer from each recipient.
A single answer from a recipient may not seem useful in isolation, but keeping it simple can generate thousands of responses.
Image source: https://www.newbook.cloud/us/features-us/smstext-messaging/
Just making an effort to find out what customers think in a way that is convenient for them can impact their opinion of you. Ikea was able to increase its Net Promoter score by 26% just by offering a more straightforward way to tell you what they think.
Ask for simple ratings out of 10 on:
- Product quality
- Price and value for money
- Customer service
5. User Experience Testing
What better way to identify sticking points in your site or app than by watching users’ first interaction with the site.
A user testing service provides you with videos of users completing a set of tasks on your site while narrating their thought process. Look out for pages and processes that are confusing or off-putting to users.
Businesses have increased conversion rates by as much as 50% by incorporating input from user testing into their design.
So, what if you notice a lot of users abandoning the checkout process, for example?
Simply run user testing on this process to spot where first-time users get confused or frustrated. This can tell you a lot about how customers want or expect your service to work.
6. Listen to your Customer Support
Cataloging all the complaints you receive through customer service is always the best practice.
Often it is also mandatory depending on the regulations you are subject to.
Make sure you go through these complaints and have a system to categorize them and spot trends. If lots of customers are contacting you with the same issue, you can’t react if you don’t know it is happening.
The best way to stay on top of this is to talk to your customer service team.
Your customer support team is in contact with customers all day, every day. If something is making your customers unhappy, they are usually the first to know.
As a result, your customer services team is a great early warning system for these problems.
Furthermore, their constant exposure to customer feedback means they can often spot issues before they even become a problem.
If you are introducing a new policy or product change and customer service tells you this will drive a lot of complaints, take that seriously. They talk to your customers every day, and they know what your customers like and dislike.
Summary
All feedback is useful feedback.
Unsatisfied customers will always get in contact more often than satisfied customers, so don’t be disheartened by negative comments – but do respond to them.
In today’s online world customers always have an alternative to your business, so acting on their feedback is vital to stay on top of the game, even when the majority of your customers are happy.
Lastly, use the feedback you collect not just to improve your products and services but also to focus your marketing efforts on what matters most to consumers.
This post was written by:
Alexa Lemzy is the customer support manager and content editor for TextMagic blog. She writes about SMS and mobile marketing, and is passionate about equipping business with the insights and technology to support their growth and success. Follow her on Twitter for all the latest updates.
