In business, customer feedback is the basis of maintaining sales and a positive corporate image. Many studies show that over 83% of customers value the opinion of their friends and families while they are about to make a significant purchase decision. Moreover, most internet shoppers will check your review on Yelp, Angie’s List and other review sites before making a purchase decision. It is, therefore, crucial to have in place mechanisms to not only obtain feedback from your customers but also utilize it for the betterment of your business. However, obtaining positive and handling negative feedback can be rather complex. These few tips will steer you in the right direction:
- Use a survey
When designing a survey, place open-ended questions first to encourage your customer to put out their thoughts without limitations. You can add multiple choice or scales later on. Remember to have as few as five questions and make them count when you are dealing with B2C clients. Use simple questions and avoid technical jargon. You can get a customized survey from SurveyMonkey or Survey Anyplace.
- Monitor your website’s analytics
Your website is a goldmine for tracking your visitors‘ activities and deriving feedback without necessarily asking. just leave the site. Have a small comment box labeled “Tell us your experience and how we can improve it” clearly labeled at the bottom. You may use pop-ups but don’t make them large and irritating. This could generate negative feedback and reduce traffic.
- Social media
Most people nowadays take to their favorite networks to show off to their friends their best experiences or their brand new watch or milkshake they had that morning. Surf through the major networks and check out hashtags and searches about your product. Set up Google Alert for relevant keywords. Also, check social forums such as Quora and Reddit for chatter about your brand. Creatively affix the positive reviews in your marketing campaigns. Do not shy away from posting that five-star review on Twitter.
- Increase your online presence.
Use SEO to optimize your websites with search engines. What’s more, you can open sponsored pages and posts on a major social network such as Facebook and Instagram to reach out to scores of users. The more visible you are online, the more review you get, and the better you look to prospective customers.
- Offer incentives to encourage reviews
Most of the reviews that customers volunteer are negative. Silence often means that everything’s fine, but you still need those positive reviews so offer gifts, discounts or free samples to get those positive reviews rolling in.
- Have personalized responders
Your customers are human, and automated responses like “Thanks we’ll check on that” tend to put them off. A better, warmer response would be “Hey Charlie, we have received your feedback and agree that the app’s new update is lagging. What can we do to improve it?”
- Reach out to your customers
Large banks and businesses go as far as buying their high-value clients lunch and discussing their previous transactions. Call or email your customers and ask about their last acquisition from your store. Ask them while on the ground to obtain real-time feedback. Open up the communication channels, and your customers may respond positively.
- Engage with your reviewers
Proper responses to both positive and negative reviews cast a good impression on both existing and potential customers. To leverage negative reviews; apologize and promise to amend the errors noted. Take them as opportunities to improve your services. Be respectful and professional, offer guidance and use flawless grammar.
How to leverage customer feedback
Customer reviews have lots of advantages for your business. However, to get the most out them, you should come up with a strategy that:
- Encourage the customers to send your reviews and feedback about your products and services. You can automate your review requests, have a review form, or set up a custom URL to review websites. However, asking for the reviews in person is known to do the trick. Make sure to include customer reviews on your site regularly.
- Uses Pictures and videos. These are known to have the highest impact on influencing people. Hence, you should put up photos and video recordings provided by your customers. Such testimonials are extremely useful.
- That increases the popularity of your products by displaying third-party reviews from Google local, Yelp, and Maps. These reviews are highly effective since you do not directly seek them.
Customer reviews are invaluable to a business. There is an opportunity for getting insights from customers and interact with them, especially where the business concern is too large to be on the ground with them. Customers feel valued and appreciated when asked for their opinions and feedback. It negates the prevailing view that customers are only useful when they are buying. Remember to do what you promise to do to generate more positive reviews.