“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.”

–Elon Musk

Every time we talk about Customer feedback, we emphasize how important it is to your business/marketing strategy and brand image reinforcement.

A look at the Extensions listed on the Chrome Store will show you that for each product or service being advertised online, there are at least 50 more offering the same service or something similar. So how exactly does one break even?

One way a lot of companies crash out even before getting into the race, is through their failure to correctly analyse feedback.

“True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes.”

–Daniel Kahneman

Feedback gives product designers, marketers, business owners and other stakeholders the insight they need to improve their business, products and/or overall customer experience.

Now, it is one thing to ‘know’ how important feedback is, but how do you go out to get it? Here are some ways to receive feedback:

• Live Chat
• Feedback forms
• Online surveys
• Social media platforms
• Quick polls
• Face-to-face discussions
• Contests and competitions

In related blog posts, we talked about receiving feedback as one way to reduce Customer Churn and took a look at the Anatomy of a Feedback form.

Then again, this is not as easy as it looks, as there are various stages to creating a feedback system that works. For example, if you were to gather feedback using a Survey, you need to determine the Feedback survey goals before you can even create a survey that is sure to convert, especially with respect to the set goals.

Once you’re done with that, you can then move on to implementing a wholesome decision-making process. But first, you will need to analyse/sift through the feedback received.

Now how do we move from Feedback data to a high turnover or loyal customer. Here’s how Feedback can help you improve your bottom line:

Feedback helps you make Good Business Decisions:

We’re not throwing out the case of spontaneity, but when it comes to making business decisions, if you acquiesce to every whim and demand (yours or the customer’s) you will end up building an unstable product.

For Trader Joe’s, they use Feedback to itemize products and sort through products that have high or low demand.

Audrey Dumper, VP of marketing at Trader Joe’s, said, “We like to think of Trader Joe’s as an economic food democracy.” With Feedback, they were able to remove products that don’t sell well/fast and make room for more heavily demanded products.

This helped them create a unique experience that’s tailored to local shoppers. In the end, the shoppers kept coming back for products they wanted and drove their sales through the roof.

Successful business decisions are usually data-driven and they are built using analysis, insights and ideas, collected via consumer feedback, interaction and engagement.

Feedback provides useful Insights and Ideas

Your primary reason for gathering feedback should be to gain ideas on how to improve your overall customer experience.

The customer acquisition and retention terrain is harder to navigate and some companies have found that the best ways for them to get fresh ideas is to listen to the Customer’s feedback and complaints.

UPS is one company that backs up its top-notch customer service with an even better feedback process. Once a customer’s order is completed, they obtain feedback via surveys and phone calls and the information obtained is what they use to develop their service better.

To maintain a consistently amazing customer experience, you need to constantly ask your users what they want/need and then use the insights gained to create a better experience for them while using your product..

Now when they have a better experience using your product as opposed to competitors, you can be sure of their loyalty and referrals.

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Feedback helps you gauge Customer Satisfaction

“If you do something good for one customer, they’ll tell 100 customers.”

– Jeff Bezos

When you try to use feedback to measure customer satisfaction, best believe it helps to build deeper and stronger connections.

By being intuitive, you’ll be able to retain more loyal customers who are excited to share their use cases and experience with your products through Testimonials, Case Studies, social media mentions, etc.

In the data received from a Feedback survey, you need to look out for those that indicate levels of satisfaction. Examples are:

• How likely are you to recommend this company/product/service to a friend or colleague?
• What would you say to someone who asked about us?
• If you were unhappy with us what can we do to get you to come back?

These questions help uncover any customer issues and fix them before they go viral. They can also be used to highlight some obscured aspects of your products or services.

By measuring customer satisfaction, you are able to determine if you are meeting your customer’s needs or surpassing customer expectations.

Better Feedback Can Help Reduce Costs

By improving your customer feedback and analytics, you will be able to know what your customers want from you and then you can make cost-cutting improvements to your product, service or process.

Using alternative feedback tools such as a feedback form instead of one-on-one phone calls, you can easily monitor customer queries and inquiries and resolve them quickly.

Implementing a live chat system helped American Business & Technology University decrease the number of received phone calls by 50%, and this resulted in the reduction of costs associated with returning calls.

In the end, it’s safe to say that the customer remains king and it’s best to keep listening through Feedback so you can solve the problems they are faced with.

You can decide what kind of information from your feedback as that is the best way to improve your business, product, service and experience. There’s no such thing as too much feedback, you just have to decide what information you need and what you need it for.

Are you ready to start collecting seamless feedback? Sign up to Formplus to create your own feedback form, easily.