July 2016
Tell Us How You Feel: 5 Reasons Why Customer Feedback is Vital to Your Business
Customers: sometimes you love them and sometimes you hate them – but we can all agree that they’re essential for your business to run. Without customers, you have no revenue, and without revenue you can’t pay yourself, your landlord, or your staff. But it’s not just their capital which makes customers an invaluable asset to your business – they’re also a great source of information, ready to be tapped into.
Customer feedback, then, is a powerful tool for drilling into that information and using your customers to do amazing things for your business. Whether it’s a quick survey, an in-depth interview, or a simple email campaign, performing customer feedback is an easy and effective method for getting more from your customer base. Here are just five benefits ready to be gained from asking:
1. Keep Customers Longer
One-time customers are great – especially if they’re making a large purchase or asking for an extensive service – but they’re even better when they come back again and again. Retaining customers has become somewhat of an art form as more and more choice becomes available to them.
By performing customer feedback, you can discover areas in the business which need to be improved upon in order to turn more of your one-time customers into retainers. To do this, ask them how the service can be improved and be sure to follow up any concerns in a personal manner to build a stronger relationship. The result? More retained customers and fewer cash flow concerns!
2. Measure Team Performance
If anyone is going to give you unfiltered, honest opinions about your team, it’ll be your customers. After all, they’ve paid to buy your product or use your service, and expect a certain standard of customer service in return.
Reaching out to ask customers about areas at which your team could use improvement, as well as encouraging positive feedback for great team members, provides you with an insight into how staff are performing in the customer-facing aspect of their role. From here, you can praise or encourage improvement as you see fit!
3. Evolve Your Services
Not sure if customers have taken to a new service or product yet? Are they just slow to warm to the idea? What could make them fall in love with it? If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. When asking any of these questions, the best people to ask are the ones who will be using your new service or buying that new product; no matter how many ‘experts’ you get into a room, none of their opinions will be as genuine or as valuable as those of the actual customers.
With honest feedback under your belt, you can tweak, evolve or scrap services as you see fit – saving you time, money and resources on trying out an idea which simply won’t work.
4. Gathering Data
Customer feedback doesn’t just provide opinions – it also provides data, which is just as important to the running of your business. Surveys are a great opportunity to find out more about the individuals engaging with your organisation, allowing you to build a better picture of who to target. This information can then assist marketing, as well as provide context to sales teams and their managers.
In addition, by adding this data to your bespoke CRM solution, you’re making it possible to create in-depth strategies, information-rich reports, and a more effective system. Who doesn’t want the best for their CRM?
5. Achieving Growth
Finally, all of these benefits relate to one final area which benefits from customer feedback: growth. Being able to identify areas for improvement and areas which are working well empowers you as the business’ owner to chart an effective course for accelerated growth. You can now grow strategically and effectively, all whilst keeping your customers very much in plain sight. In essence, this is the chance to grow with your customer base – an opportunity that’s hard to pass up!
Got plenty of data but nowhere to put it? Get in touch with Team Lunar to find out more about how our bespoke CRM solutions can help your business to grow to match your ambitions!