How to Translate Customer Feedback Into Action
You can improve your business by proactively collecting customer feedback. Here you can learn how to translate customer feedback into action.
Your clients are the backbone of your company, and you not only need them to take interest in what you’re selling but need them to be loyal and return in the future. Without them, you risk having to shut your doors and not follow your dreams of being a successful entrepreneur.
As a business owner, you must always find ways to continuously improve your operations, processes, and approach. One way to do so is to gather feedback from your customers and get a better understanding of what they do and don’t like about your business. Once you have this information, you can’t sit on it. Instead, learn how to translate customer feedback into action so you can make positive changes and ensure a better and more prosperous future.
What are the Benefits of Actioning Customer Feedback?
Gathering customer feedback and acting on it will never be a waste of your time. Rather, there are several benefits that come with actioning customer feedback. The success of your business depends on you being able to effectively collect this feedback and then act on it. For starters, if you’re in the business of e-commerce then it helps you to optimize your online store’s customer experience. It enables you to understand what you’re doing right so you can do more of this going forward.
In addition, actioning customer feedback helps you to identify and deal with any problems in the customer journey. Regardless of how well you are performing, there are going to be some complaints and areas for improvement. Find out what these are from the source, which is your customers who may have valuable feedback that you can use and apply in how you run your business. You will essentially be able to make more informed business decisions and your customers will be happier since they will feel heard.
Finally, it helps with customer loyalty and retention. These are two significant aspects when it comes to being able to retain customers and have them continuously choose you over the competition. Using their feedback, you can reach new customers through word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied customers. In the process of collecting this feedback, you can understand your customers better and improve your products and services.
Different Ways to Collect Customer Data (Including Feedback)
The good news is that collecting feedback these days is fairly easy and straightforward. The reason being is that there are a lot of different ways to collect customer data, including feedback. For instance, you can send out questionnaires to customers in follow-up emails or publish quizzes on your website and social media, which people love to participate in.
Social media surveys are another excellent opportunity for collecting feedback and gathering ideas from your customers. Consider collecting data using a feedback plugin tool. Spend time analyzing reviews on Google and TrustPilot, as well as analyzing comments on social media. Another great idea is to use a sentiment analysis tool, of which there are plenty of options out there to consider using depending on your needs and preferences.
If you want to give back and show your appreciation for your customers, then think about incentivizing customers to provide feedback using discounts. This way, it’s a win-win situation for both of you. They save money and feel heard, and you’ll be rewarding them in the process. Incentives will also likely trigger them to spread the word and you might end up attracting even more customers in the process of offering these rewards.
You can also save yourself a lot of time by preempting customer feedback. Find existing studies that demonstrate customer expectations. For example, customers are more likely to purchase again if returns are made easy. Be proactive and take actions now that will keep your customers happy and coming back again.
How to Deal with Customer Feedback
Once you take the time to gather feedback and you have it available to you, you should use it to your advantage. It’s important to understand how to deal with customer feedback so that you can improve your business and prove to your customers that you’re listening. Keep in mind that it’s not always going to be uplifting comments and easy-to-hear responses. You should prepare yourself to hear the truth without any sugarcoating. Instead of taking the feedback personally, you can use it as an opportunity to run a better and smoother business.
One idea is to use it to streamline the customer journeys. For example, if your customers provide you with specific feedback, as in the checkout process is overly complicated; then you should work on optimizing your checkout. This will not only provide a better experience to your customers, but you will also likely be able to increase your sales when fixing this pain point. These are the types of matters and comments you can’t afford to ignore.
You want your customers to find what they need quickly and with ease. Otherwise, you risk them clicking away and shopping elsewhere for what they need. Therefore, if it becomes known that your customers are finding it difficult to locate certain products, you could add a custom search box to your site. In doing so, your customers will be more likely to make a purchase from you and remember how easy it was so that they return in the future. These are just some of the improvements you can make that will go a long way in being able to achieve more satisfied customers.
You may also start to realize that as you ask for customer feedback, a lot of the same types of questions and concerns start coming in. This should signify to you that there are matters that need to be addressed, and you should work to clear the air immediately. One solution to use if your customers keep asking the same questions is to add answers to a clear FAQ section on your site or use canned email responses. This way, you not only get them to visit and stay on your website, but they’ll have their questions answered in no time without even having to spend time getting in touch with you.
While positive feedback is nice to hear and easier to respond to, there may be times when you receive comments that aren’t so pleasant or positive. Always reply to negative feedback even if you disagree or don’t have an immediate solution. Use negative feedback as a learning opportunity to do better in the future instead of carrying on with business as usual. Replying effectively to negative feedback can turn a bad customer experience into a positive one.
There are several risks of ignoring negative customer feedback, including reputational damage, bad customer experience, and poor retention. The bottom line is that you will also likely lose money as a consequence of not responding to negative feedback from your customers. People want you to and expect that you will reach out and show that you care about them and their opinions. Therefore, make it a point to commit to following through with this important task.
One area you must invest time and money in is your marketing. You want to get in front of your target audience at the right time and with the right message. Therefore, another idea is to use great customer feedback for marketing purposes, such as testimonials shared via your website, on social media, and through email marketing. Let others do the talking for you to help draw in business instead of always being the one sharing your messaging.
This not only helps you promote and share about your business and products, but it also builds trust and credibility with your customers. It doesn’t need to be complicated and take up a lot of your time. In fact, one of the easiest ways to collect this information is through a feedback form. Spend time preparing it now so that it’s ready to go when you want to distribute it and gather some additional feedback.
Conclusion
One way to improve your business and gather useful insights is to listen to what your customers have to say and learn more about their experience working with you. It’s not just about being willing to gather and collect customer feedback, but also about taking the time to understand how you can apply it. After reviewing all of this information you should feel confident in knowing how to translate customer feedback into action so you can make positive and impactful changes and run a better business. In doing so you’ll be able to take your business to new levels and hopefully not only win over customers but keep them for the long run.
Tripetto is a powerful tool that will help you collect the customer feedback and data you need to make more informed business decisions. Our plugin allows you to create smart forms that are truly conversational forms since they react to the given answers of your respondents. Still have questions? We encourage you to reach out for more information and to get the process started turning customer feedback into action.
