Customer Feedback is a complex topic and sometimes people give advice about it without fully understanding what it is or how to use it. We have listed below the worst 5 pieces of advice we have heard and why you should do the exact opposite.
Bad advice #1: Don’t bother with customer feedback
This is probably the worst advice you could possibly receive: don’t bother with customer feedback! The perception that customer feedback is not needed to improve your customer experience or products is a thing of the past. Nowadays, customers not only expect to read reviews about your products and company but are also eager to write their own. Therefore, collecting and managing customer feedback is probably one of the top things you can do to increase your sales and achieve corporate success!
Bad advice #2: Don’t answer to customer feedback
Not answering to customer feedback is another bad idea. When you reply to your customer reviews you signal to all your customers that you read and value their opinions. Therefore, you should always answer to all your reviews, both positive and negative.
Even though nobody likes reading negative comments about themselves, it is important to keep your answer calm and polite and to actually try and understand why your customer experienced this issue. Thus, by showing your concern you might even change their minds. In addition, you will also start a conversation and ultimately increase your customers’ engagement.
Bad advice #3: Don’t analyze customer feedback
Collecting customer data should be done with the goal of analyzing the data and taking actions to improve your customer experience. Once you have collected your data, you can compare the answers among your various customer segments and outline the differences in buying behaviour. Furthermore, the data you collect will give you historical insights, such as product performance and customer satisfaction levels.
Bad advice #4: Don’t use social listening
As Jeff Bezos says:
“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000.”
Therefore, not using social listening can be detrimental to your company! Social listening can help you greatly to grow your business by optimising your reputation management. In addition, it is a useful tool when it comes to influencer marketing, social selling, building a community around your brand, and analysing your marketing campaigns.
Furthermore, social listening gives you the opportunity to better understand your customers and to attract new, potential customers. By listening to what your fans have to say, you can improve your products and gain more brand awareness.
Finally, Social Listening is not limited to only what your customers are saying about your brand. It can also include feedback about the whole industry and your competitors. Thus, you can discover why a customer might switch to your competitor. You can then use this knowledge to build better products and to market them more successfully. #truestory
Bad advice #5: Don’t implement customer feedback
Even though collecting and measuring data is a crucial part of the process, if you want to be successful you will need to go beyond that! Think about how to interpret the data in the right way so that you can take action and improve your products and services. Moreover, by involving your customers in the product development process, you demonstrate that you care about their opinions. Therefore, listening to what they have to say is not enough, you have to also act on it! Once you implement any changes based on customer feedback insights, make sure to make it known. Thus, your customers would feel more encouraged to leave you further feedback and their involvement will be higher.
In conclusion, don’t listen to bad advice about customer feedback! Otherwise, you might miss on a great opportunity to attract new business, to improve your products and to increase your customer loyalty!