Last week, we went over some best practice customer service tips on the blog. Now that you know how to best help your customers, what are some ways that your customers can help you? Customer feedback is essential for company growth and it’s a reliable way to find out what needs fixing (if anything) in your business.
Whether your business conducts an online survey, provides tangible comment cards, or simply engages in social listening, customer satisfaction can be measured in many ways. Make sure that the customer is able to share honest opinions with your business in a timely matter. For example, a customer feedback survey should be mailed or sent electronically shortly after the customer makes a purchase or pays for service. If you wait too long, you may risk inaccurate results because the customer doesn’t remember the experience or the customer may ignore the survey completely.
Customers should feel safe enough to be honest with whoever is collecting the survey. Perhaps a technician asks a customer to fill out a comment card after a service is performed. If customers feel like they are being “watched,” they may quickly fill out the card and the answers may not reflect how they truly feel about the experience. Alternatively, the technician could offer a leave-behind with a website link to a feedback survey. This way, customers are able to give feedback on their own time with no pressure.
Once the feedback is collected, here are a few ways to use this information to improve your business and measure customer satisfaction:
- Update your product or service: All feedback should be recorded and saved. If many customers are leaving the same bits of feedback, this may be an indication that your product or service is missing a key element or needs an update. Gather all feedback so that your development team is able to make changes to better your product or service. Continue measuring customer satisfaction once you have implemented these changes.
- Share social listening feedback internally: Depending on who manages your social media channels, customer feedback has the potential to hit a dead end. It is important that any customer comments or posts reach the intended audience. If the comment is about billing practices, make sure it gets to the accounting department. If the comment is about wait time for a technician to arrive, make sure the dispatcher is aware.
- Improve your employee training process: From listening to what customers are saying, you can predict what will be important to teach when training new employees. For example, if customers are often confused by the online portal on your website, make sure new employees are equipped to answer any questions and walk customers through.
- Follow up and relay improvements to customers: Finally, it is extremely important to let customers know that you are listening and what they say makes a difference. When you have a product update, make sure your customers know that changes or new features were added because of their direct feedback. Customers want to know that they are heard!
How do you use customer feedback to your business’ advantage?
