Times of economic uncertainty have an uncanny knack of focusing our attention on the performance of our business, particularly if sales figures begin to slide. For those lucky enough to be enjoying buoyant sales, the temptation is to maintain the status quo, but as always, the potential exists to do better for the sake of our customers and in doing so, our balance sheets too.
Whilst still at school, undoubtedly many of us received report cards that stated ‘could do better’ for some of our subjects, but infuriatingly few teachers provided concrete actions which could be taken to make those improvements. This same situation can present itself when we ask our customers direct ‘how are we doing?’
Providing clients with the opportunity to give feedback is a no-brainer, but it is important to find out more than just ‘on a scale of 1-10, how did we do?’ every time you make a sale. The customer needs the space and encouragement to elaborate on their initial rating so you have some genuinely useful feedback with which to work.
By far the easiest way to garner feedback is to provide your clients with a short online survey which should give some indication of each of the key points of your service. If they loved your product or service, provide space for them to comment. If they hated the experience, don’t shy away from the criticism, but welcome it – if one customer hated your service, it is unlikely they are alone.
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Once you have some feedback from customers, take the time to analyse what they have said and look for common elements. If you are getting praise for something look at how you can apply that to other areas of your business. Likewise, if receiving negative comments, don’t ignore them but look at putting things right for future transactions. You would also be well advised to contact those customers and offer to rectify the situation for them to – try and turn a negative to a positive for them as it will enhance your brand reputation in doing so.
Next time we will talk about the secondary benefits of customer feedback
We can help design online questionnaires, email shots or mass mailers to elicit the information you need to improve the effectiveness of your business. If you would like advice on soliciting customer feedback or putting the findings or consumer research into effect, get in contact with Tech Write today.
