CUSTOMER FEEDBACK – UNCOMFORTABLE BUT ESSENTIAL

When was the last time you were called by a business you buy from to give feedback about their products and services?

The truth is,

Most businesses in Kenya do not collect customer feedback. Customer feedback is an essential part of any business. Listening to the response given by your customers should be at the core of all operations of an organization as well as the overall business strategy.

Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot put it so well “Feedback is the breakfast for champions”. Feedback yields a lot of valuable information and any business stands to benefit from the feedback received.

 

What is Customer Feedback?

Customer feedback is the information, insights, opinion, reactions or preferences that the customer shares about a product or service that your business offers.

 

What are your customers thinking?

Through customer feedback, as a business owner, you get to learn what the customers think or feel about your product or service and their experience as well. You get to learn what is working, what is not working and what needs improvement.

The customer service team would normally receive feedback from the clients because they interact with the customer a lot.

If you do not gather customer feedback, you will not know what is wrong and you will end up doing nothing about it. Without customer feedback, your business is bound to fail. Customer feedback is a guiding source for success for any company.

Fail! Is not what we are looking forward to as business owners so what is the benefit of Customer Feedback.

 

Are your customers satisfied?

Customer feedback offers valuable information that drives the growth of a business. Through customer feedback you will get to know what drives satisfaction for your customers and when customer satisfaction is achieved, as a business, you gain loyalty from these customers.

Will your customers stay loyal?

Loyal customers help grow a business through repeat purchases and they also tend to buy more. And in the quest to build your business, the same loyal customers are your number one source for new customers through referrals.

Whether the feedback is positive or negative, as a business you stand to gain from all the information you receive from your customers; you will learn to improve and provide products and services that actually meet your customer needs.

 

Why do you need customer feedback?

Before starting to collect customer feedback, you need to establish your goals; what it is you want to achieve and your desired outcome. It is important to have well defined intentions so that once you get the feedback, you are able to use it accordingly.

For instance, what part of the customer journey do you want to target and improve on? Is it content marketing, on-boarding? Do you want to introduce a new product or service? Do you want to improve a product or service?

Collecting feedback that attends to your goals provides insightful and actionable data.

 

FOUR WAYS OF COLLECTING CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

1.Customer Feedback Surveys

Customer survey is a preferred method of gathering feedback because you can tailor make them to respond to a specified goal. A good survey should be convenient for a customer to complete while providing business intelligence for the company.

A good survey should be short, clearly define your goals, offer multiple unbiased questions, have consistent rating scales and should be sent to the relevant channels.

One of the easiest and widely used methods to gather information in regards to customer satisfaction are via:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – This method mainly targets the likelihood of a customer to recommend your product or service. You may have interacted with these questions where you are asked “On a scale of maybe 1 -10, how likely are you to recommend this product/ service?”
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) – This method is used to measure how satisfied a customer is with a particular interaction with your business. It could be a question like “How satisfied are you with the overall buying experience? With a scale score to choose from.

For both of these options, a follow question to find out why they picked the score, would be ideal so that as a business owner, you can learn what drives customer loyalty.

 

2. Social Media Monitoring

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and the rest, provide valuable information in regards to what your customers are saying about your product or service. The comments on social media are usually, casually written and tend to be honest.

Monitoring what customers are saying about your product or service or just your business as a whole is very important. Conversations on social media lets you know the issues or challenges that your customers are experiencing, offering your business a chance to handle the issues before they escalate.

Sometimes your customers may be requesting for assistance or appreciating your product or service. Regardless of what is said on social media, you need your customer care team monitoring the conversations so that they can relay the information to the relevant teams accordingly.

 

3.  Online Reviews 

Similar to social media, online reviews offer genuine information in regards to the experience your customer had, interacting with your product or service. Information received here enables you as a manager or business owner to identify what is working and what is not working for your product, service or your brand as a whole.

 

4.  Phone Calls

A call is a personalized and great way to get information from your customers about your product or service. Having your customer care team make a follow up call to your customers to find out what they feel or what their experience was, offers you an opportunity to learn more about your product or service.

Since the conversations are not limited, the customer is able to share detailed and unfiltered information. As a business you get to learn the pressure points for the customers, their opinion about different aspects of your business and the cause and the recurring issues that need to be addressed.

Phone calls work well when you target specific customers, mainly your loyal customers who are in a position to give you the best feedback which helps you improve on your offering.

Once you have gathered feedback, you need to leverage on the information received. It is ideal and important to automate the customer feedback strategy by adopting the customer feedback loop. This involves:

• Gathering feedback – Ask your customers about your product/ service in relation to the overall trends, service issues and product issues
• Analyze the feedback – By organizing the information received into categories that are relevant to the business
• Act – There is no need to do all the work of collecting information and not using it. You need to act on the feedback given by sharing it with the relevant team to implement changes and make a difference
• Follow up – It is important to make a follow up with your customers who gave feedback so that they get to know that you actually listen and you are doing or have done something about it. This goes to show that you care about their opinion

It is now clear that,

Collecting customer feedback is crucial and the information received can transform a business. Your customer care team has a major role to play in this because of their constant interaction with the customers. They are bound to gain useful insights that can benefit an organization.

Are your employees well trained?

Book a session with Customer Centric Kenya for tailor made Customer Service training that will assist your team learn more about customer feedback and how it can be implemented to create the best experience for your customers.