Customer Feedback is Crucial to Your Small Business - Use It!

It's great to receive positive feedback from customers. It makes you feel appreciated, like you're doing a fantastic job. Negative feedback or feedback containing tips for improvement doesn't always feel so great and usually, this type of feedback is usually met with resistance and disappointment. Some businesses even ignored completely.

What you might not realise, is that every piece of feedback you receive whether good, bad or somewhere in between is crucial to the success of your business and this week, I'm going to show you how to use it.

You need to start thinking of your feedback as your number one marketing tool. It's a great way of providing a unique insight that you can utilise to improve your services, products and your overall business.

So, what can customer feedback be used for?

1.) Website Testimonials

The first thing that I do when I receive a positive piece of feedback is to add it to my testimonials page. This is a great way of showcasing all of the fantastic things that customers have to say about my service and it's useful for potential new clients so that they can see the quality of service that I provide before deciding whether or not to get in touch.

If you don't have a testimonials page for your service-based business you should make it a priority to create one; gather your existing testimonials or send a quick request to your clients and fill that page!

Do you run a product-based business? No problem, instead of a testimonials page, create an account with a review service like TrustPilot and link it to your website so that new customers can see it. Send the link to your customers, add it to all of your customer correspondence and wait for the reviews to roll in.

2.) Customer Satisfaction

Are your customers happy with your business? Is there anything they'd like you to improve? How do you know? 

It's simple, ask them. You can email or post a survey, give them a call or use a feedback tool/app. Ask your customers what they like about your business and what they don't like. Listen to their feedback and make changes where you can to improve the overall quality of service that your customers receive.

If you operate a customer help-desk, most software will provide a way of tracking customer satisfaction by allowing customers to rate their experience. This is an extremely useful way of monitoring customer satisfaction over time to see if your staff/methods are improving.

3.) Products and Services

There's a famous quote that reads, "Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers."

Through the use of feedback you can identify what products and services your customers are actually looking for. This type of feedback is extremely useful during the product creation process to ensure that the products/services you are creating fulfil the needs of your customer or solve their problems.

Apple are a great example of doing just this, they listen to what their customers want and they create a product that exceeds their expectations. Do this, and your business will start to create its own loyal following. 

4.) Customer Retention

A happy customer is a returning customer. Repeat that to yourself daily and do everything you can to ensure that your customers are happy each time they use your service or buy your products.

​If you find out that your customer is unhappy through feedback, you then have the opportunity to try to combat this negative experience before you lose their business.

By requesting feedback, your customer knows that you are invested in providing an improved service and that you'd like them to contribute to the growth and evolution of your business.

A customer who feels invested in your business and valued by you is one that will not only want to remain your customer, but one who will also recommend your business to others, therefore growing your customer base. 

What have we learned?

Gathering customer feedback shouldn't be the last thing on your to-do list, it's a crucial aspect of the overall marketing strategy for your business. 

It can help to shape your products and services, grow your customer base and improve the overall happiness of your customers. 

Remember that there's no such thing as too much feedback and whether you gather it via a phone call, email, survey or in person, using the tips above will help to make that feedback work hard for your business!