The Customer Feedback Strategy to Grow your Business

Table of Contents

1. What is Customer Feedback?
2. Why is Customer Feedback important?
3. Types of Customer Feedback
4. 3 Core practices to implement a customer feedback loop that works
5. The Customer Feedback Loop

In fact, there is no better and more reliable source of knowledge about your company than Customer Feedback.

Its impact can lead to immediate improvements in various aspects of the business like product, service, customer experience, sales, revenue, etc.

How do we improve our product or service when we don’t know what to improve? Pause & think about this for a moment…

We can’t do more of it if we don’t know what’s right. We can’t do less of it if we don’t know what’s wrong.

93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service.

But how do you know what a customer perceives as “Excellent service?”

Without customer feedback, a business can’t tell if it’s on the path to success or failure.

Customer feedback gives us access to our customer’s minds. It’s how we know what they think, say, or feel about our product or service.

See what Top leaders have to say;

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Bill Gates,
Founder Microsoft

Customer feedback is the ultimate truth. If you read customer feedback and listen to call center calls, you will really get grounded.

Julia Hartz,
CEO Eventbrite

We see our customers as invited guest to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little better.

Jeff Bezos,
Founder Amazon

Let’s look into why customer feedback is so important.

1. It points out aspects of your product that need improvement

Feedback from customers can help you identify areas where your products or services need improvement, and make necessary changes to meet customer needs and expectations.

2. Increased customer satisfaction

By taking customer feedback into account, you can make changes to your products or services to increase customer satisfaction, which can lead to repeat business and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.

3. Better decision-making

Feedback from customers can provide valuable insights into how your product or service is perceived by the market, which can inform strategic decision-making and help you stay competitive.

4. Cost savings

By identifying and addressing issues before they become major problems, customer feedback can help you avoid costly mistakes and improve operational efficiency.

5. Develop new products

Feedback from customers can help you identify new opportunities for product development, which can lead to new revenue streams.

6. Customer feedback helps you acquire new customers

What do you do when you want to buy a product online? You check the product reviews right? and then make your purchase if you are pleased with the review.

According to Invesp,

90% of customers read online reviews before visiting a business website and 88% of customers trust these opinions almost as if they were personal recommendations.

Overall, customer feedback is a powerful tool that can help businesses improve their products and services, increase customer satisfaction, and make better decisions, which ultimately can lead to more revenue and profitability.

Some types of feedback

1. Customer loyalty feedback
2. Customer satisfaction feedback
3. Customer service feedback
4. Customer preference feedback

1. Customer Loyalty Feedback

This lets you know how loyal your customers are to your brand. It tells you how likely they are to promote your brand.

A very good way to measure customer loyalty is through Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey.

2. Customer Satisfaction Feedback

This measures how satisfied your customers are with your products, services, and other interactions with your brand.

Some metrics to measure customer satisfaction are Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES).

3. Customer Service Feedback

Customer service feedback examines a customer’s experience with a service or support agent.

4. Customer Preference Feedback

This is one feedback I like. It allows me to quickly get valuable insight into a new product/service I’m working on.

It tells you what products or services (either yours or your competitors’) your customer prefers.

It will give you a better idea of how to position your product/service to your customers in a more rewarding way.

Before we dive into the Customer Feedback Loop, let’s look at these 3 core practices on how to implement a customer feedback loop that works.

3 Core practices to implement a customer feedback loop that works

1. Make sure you are using the right channels.

It’s important to ensure you’re meeting your customers where they are. You can’t conduct a feedback survey on Twitter if your audience is mostly on Instagram.

Do some research to know which media platforms your customers use the most and use that data to inform your Customer Feedback Strategy.

2. Use the feedback collected to improve your product or service.

When you collect customer feedback, it’s really important that you make use of it.

It feels good when a business is open to your opinion right? and is also invested in making the necessary changes to keep you happy…that’s how your customer feels too.

3. Communicate changes to customers.

Honestly, I don’t do this part very well. Interestingly, this is the chance to flex your skills & value after you’ve satisfied a customer.

Communicating the improvements you have made to your customer after collecting their feedback helps you to trigger that experience spot in their brain.

With this in mind, let’s dive into;

The Customer Feedback Loop

I’m going to try to make this as clear & practical as possible so that you can make use of this Customer feedback loop in your customer feedback strategy if you want to.

The Customer Feedback Loop is a strategic framework for Collecting, analyzing, and implementing customer feedback which is then used to improve the customer experience.

The Customer feedback loop consists of 4 steps;

1. Collect customer feedback
2. Learn
3. Act
4. Follow-up

1. Collect customer feedback

What feedback do you collect? What questions do you ask? Well, it depends on your goal.

Let’s say your goal is to understand how satisfied your customers are with your product or service.

Goal: I want to understand how satisfied my customers are with my product or service.

The most popular ways to measure customer satisfaction trends are:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is used to measure the likelihood a person will recommend your product or service. It’s a question with a scale of 1 to 10:

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT measures how satisfied a customer is with a specific interaction with a company. The question looks like this:

Always begin with the end in mind before collecting feedback from your customers.

Know what your goal is & even why you want to collect feedback. This is the very first step to ensuring that your feedback strategy is on the right track.

For restaurant owners or operators, here are some resources you’ll need to effectively collect customer feedback at your restaurant;

A. Customer Feedback Software:

Customer feedback software is used to collect, organize, and analyze customer feedback.

It can be used to gather feedback from various sources, such as surveys, online reviews, and social media, and can provide businesses with valuable insights into customer satisfaction levels and areas for improvement.

You can either purchase existing Customer feedback software from vendors or build a custom software to fit your company’s internal process.

Most importantly ensure that the software you choose has the features you need and can help you achieve your goal.

B. Customer Feedback Device:

By all means, pls avoid those bulky & static feedback devices, or should I say computers.

Here’s what I mean…Have you ever walked into a restaurant & noticed a big static computer steering at you from a corner with dust all over its keyboard?

How many times have you walked over to give feedback? most likely once or never. I’m just realizing I’ve never dropped feedback.

This is one of the major reason feedback fail. Little or no feedback is collected, team members become demotivated, and feedback strategy becomes abandoned.

In order to effectively collect feedback, you would need to intentionally interact with your customers to collect feedback from them.

Feedback can easily be collected using a Tablet.

C. Customer Feedback Agent:

This person(s) is/are responsible for collecting feedback from customers after they have purchased from you.

If it’s an eat-in customer, collect feedback after they’ve eaten their meal.

You want to wait for them to step into that experiential zone before getting their feedback.

Note: The resources above are applicable to non-restaurant businesses.

2. Learn

Learning is a very crucial part of making an informed decision. To squeeze the juice out of the feedback you’ve collected from your customers, follow these 3 steps;

• Organize and categorize feedback

Once you have collected the feedback, it’s important to sort it into relevant categories to make it easier to analyze.

For example, you might create categories for overall satisfaction, food quality, customer service, and pricing.

• Analyze the feedback

Look for trends and patterns in the feedback. Are there certain issues that are coming up repeatedly?

Are certain aspects of your business consistently receiving positive or negative feedback?

For example, if customers are dissatisfied with your pricing, is it because the prices are too high or because the value is not clear?

• Summarize your findings

Summarize your findings in a report to share with relevant stakeholders.

This can include a breakdown of the different categories of feedback, any trends or patterns you observed, and any recommendations for improvement based on the feedback.

3. Act

Now you’ve collected customer feedback, organized, analyzed, & summarized your findings…What’s Next?

Oftentimes, companies ask for feedback but never make use of it. What good is feedback if it won’t be used for improvements?

The first step to implementing customer feedback is sharing it with relevant stakeholders within your organization. This can be the product team, sales & marketing, customer service, managers, etc.

By sharing feedback with relevant stakeholders, you ensure that the right people are aware of the changes that need to be made. This will increase the chances of implementation.

You can share feedback with stakeholders in real-time using email alerts or by putting them together in a report & send it through email.

Feedback can also be discussed in your company management meetings where decisions are made regarding your product, service, or business improvements.

Once customer feedback has been implemented, it’s time to follow up & flex your skill & value to your customers.

4. Follow up on customers

As a customer, regardless of what feedback we share with a company, there are 2 things we seek.

1. That the process of sharing feedback is easy
2. That our feedback is taken with importance.

The first one can easily be achieved with Customer feedback software.

The second is not so easy cos people don’t like sharing feedback with companies because they think they’re talking to a wall.

According to Hubspot, 53% of shoppers believe their feedback doesn’t go to anyone who can actually act on it. Crazy right?

If we don’t make our customers feel like their feedback is heard, they simply won’t give feedback. If we don’t get customer feedback we risk our business failing.

It is important to close the feedback loop. Following up with customers to thank them for their feedback is the most important and most ignored step in the Customer Feedback Loop.

Closing the loop is critical to ensuring that customers will continue to provide you with feedback.

A simple way to close the loop is to send a “Thank you email” to your feedback respondents if the feedback survey was sent through email.

Follow-up can also be done to communicate changes or improvements made as a result of the feedback collected.

The channel you use for collecting feedback should be the channel you use in closing the feedback loop.

When customers feel like their voices are being heard, and that something will be done about it, they aren’t afraid to share their opinions.

It’s our responsibility as a business to follow up with customers who share feedback, whether positive or negative so that we avoid the risk of failing.

Collecting customer feedback is the only way you can understand how your customers feel about your product, service, and ultimately your brand.

If you’re reading this, and you don’t have a customer feedback strategy for the year, now is the best time to do something about it.

Start Now!!!

If you have any questions, or you need any guidance regarding Implementing a customer feedback strategy that works, feel free to reach out here