Customer feedback is the best way to understand real-time issues customers face while using your service or product. Think of it as a sort of data-mining opportunity requiring no special effort on your part, as you receive honest and spontaneous feedback from stakeholders.
In a fast-paced market scenario, it is not enough to be popular among customers and have a loyal base among them. Even if you manage to achieve both, are you doing enough to sustain your business? Absolutely NOT.
The best way to understand what exactly pulls customers to your business is to collect customer feedback. If you can have a grasp on this answer, you can expect to successfully future-proof your business against rising competition, changing market dynamics, and the advent of new, disruptive technology.
By collecting customer feedback, you can understand the room for improvement. Thus, you may invest in the best technical and analytical infrastructure that will help you retain customers and also widen the scope to rope in new customers. In this article let us take a look at the importance of customer feedback, how to collect customer feedback and the best practices to follow while you collect customer feedback, and pave the way for sure-shot success.
What is the importance of customer feedback for businesses?
Data shows that you can enhance your customer retention by 5% if you can improve your customer satisfaction by 1%. The key to understanding customer requirements is the key to improving customer satisfaction, which you can take care of with an effective customer feedback collection. Furthermore,
- Customer feedback gives you precious insights through product feedback. Therefore, by optimising your backlog management, it will be easy for you to respond to feature update requests from customers.
- Timely responses to customer feedback can go a long way in reducing churn. It is important to show customers that you care by implementing their suggestions, thus earning a name in their good book.
- Building a culture that pays attention to customer feedback helps you understand customer behaviour and predict future changes that are to be made to your services/products.
- Whether you have dealt with customer feedback successfully or not is reflected through a high CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). A high CLV means a customer is spending more on your services or products, implying that you have an increased revenue.
- Customer feedback also helps you to improve on the user interface from time to time. This step would ensure that future customers would face fewer issues with your services and are less likely to be dissatisfied.
Post-reception of feedback, it is important to work upon the briefs of customer support teams in an organised manner and by strategic collaboration between the relevant teams.
How to implement best practices for customer success?
It is important to take a look at the right channels through which customer feedback is best collected and acted upon. Here are some tips for collecting customer feedback.
Conducting surveys and polls
It is best to have the option for surveys and polls within the app through which you provide your services and products. It is understood that 90% of customers who face issues demand an immediate response from the business, so it is important to provide them with a mode of complaint that helps them freely express their concerns. Customer surveys help you keep a constant watch on customer sentiments as your sales skyrocket. It will help you gauge in real-time whether or not you have a fine grip on the quality of service as your business becomes bigger.
Building an effective resource centre
Not only do resource centres act as a great avenue for customers to avail grievance redressal services by themselves, but they also provide a good platform for receiving passive feedback. Analysing the demands and requests placed with the resource centre can help businesses understand the roadmap that must be followed to truly improve their services. With a good Voice of the Customer (VoC) program, businesses keep customers in the loop when it comes to resolving bugs and introducing new features based on customer feedback.
Understanding impact and urgency
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) helps you have a quantitative understanding of how your product has fared among a diverse customer base. However, the best part of NPS is that it allows you access to qualitative insights on your products and services by none other than your customers. With Atidiv’s NPS service, you can have a better view of actionable insights so that effective steps can be taken to mitigate pressing issues. Remember, it is important to gauge the urgency of a request before acting on it, and a good way to do so is by looking at how other customers have reacted to a particular insight or service request by a customer.
Integrating data and roadmap
At this point, it is important to understand that customer feedback is a constant source of information that informs your roadmap. Your business roadmap is not a mere reaction to the feedback you receive from the market, but a product of your analyses of your service/product performance.
Closing the loop
After you receive customer feedback, the next task is to decide whether or not to pursue it. The point is that even if you decide against going forward with a service request, it is important to let the customer know. The best way to do this is by having a feedback interaction platform through which you can respond to new requests or let the customer know whenever you change the status of their request.
FAQs On Customer Feedback
1. How to make customers feel valued after receiving feedback from them?
After having learnt how to gather customer feedback, it is important to build a platform such as a resource centre that allows customers to register their insights and suggestions. Businesses must respond to such queries and let the customers know whether the company intends to work on such suggestions in the future. Doing this will make the customers feel that the company they trust takes them seriously.
2. How important is NPS in understanding the performance of a business?
NPS helps companies understand their current performance. However, most importantly, it helps them improve qualitatively if they pay attention to what customers have to suggest and the rationale behind their rating of a product or service.
3. How can AI help in the issue identification process and thus help resolve customer issues?
AI is a great tool when it comes to identifying what causes the most friction when a customer starts using a service/product from a particular company. The superior data analytics of AI-led customer service help identify snags faster, thus leading to more effective resolutions. Customer service is an important after-sales interaction, and it can impact customer retention and the gaining of new customer.
