If you have been following our blog, you already know a lot about Customer Feedback. We have broken down a few of the essential facts into a quick cheat sheet that will help you to master the art of receiving and analyzing customer feedback. Read more below:
Part 1. Know the facts
Did you know…
- After having a positive experience with a company, 77% of customers would recommend it to a friend.
- It is anywhere from 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one.
- Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits anywhere from 25% to 95%.
- 72% of businesses say improving customer experience is their top priority.
- Customer-centric companies gained 43% in performance compared to a 33.9% decrease for companies who have neglected customer experience.
- For consumers, customer experience will become more important than price and product by 2020.
Part 2. Ask the important questions
Some important questions you need to answer for yourself include:
- Who am I asking for feedback?
- Why am I asking for feedback? What information am I trying to discover?
- What is my target and how do I plan to achieve it?
- How will I ask for feedback? What channel will I use? What format will I use?
- What tools will I use?
- What am I asking? How do I design the best survey?
- How do I get the highest response rates from my surveys?
- How can my customer give me feedback and where?
Part 3. Take action
Next step is to take action and to start actively working on your customer satisfaction:
- Chose a customer satisfaction tool which will help you with the creation of the survey and the analysis of the results
- Create your first survey and make sure that the design makes it easy to read and answer. Make your survey short and concise. Check for spelling mistakes and make sure it is clear and easy to understand.
- Send your survey to your target customers
- Create an analysis report displaying the biggest trends in your customers’ responses.
Part 4. Analyze
Once you have collected your data, you can create an analysis report and see what the trends are. Using a customer feedback tool can truly simplify this step, as they automatically create those reports and display graphs. Depending on the results, decide if any changes should be undertaken. For example, if customers are dissatisfied with your service at a certain branch, invest in training or staffing. If your customers don’t use or dislike a certain feature of your product, consider redesigning it. In addition, if you asked any open-ended questions, go through them and see what your customers think. Do their needs match what you are offering?
Furthermore, in this stage you can follow up with customers who are dissatisfied with your business. Show them that you are listening to what they have to say and you are working on fixing the issues. Customers don’t expect perfect companies but do want companies which value their opinion and work hard on improving their services.
Part 5. Repeat
You need to send surveys regularly, so that you can track your progress and see if there are any major changes in your customer satisfaction levels. However, be careful not to send survey requests too often! You don’t want your customers to get the so-called “survey fatigue”, when they stop replying to survey because of how often they receive them. Finding the perfect frequency for survey requests can be crucial!
Part 6. Build a lasting relationship with your customers
Finally, you will need to go the extra mile and build a replationship with your customers beyond just sending them a survey every once and a while. This will majorly increase your chances of being recommended by them to their friends and family.
In order to build lasting relationships with your clients, you should personalize your communication with them. Respond to their comments and suggestions, no matter if positive or negative. Stay in constant contact with them, show that you are trustworthy and show that you value their opinion.
Follow our Ultimate Cheat Sheet on Customer Satisfaction and you should be on your way to becoming a customer feedback master!