20 Feb 2018
Collecting customer feedback is crucial for improving your business. Understand why listening to your customers can boost credibility, engagement, and ultimately, loyalty and revenue.
There are many reasons to listen to and consider your customers' feedback at every touchpoint with your company.
Successful companies swear by gathering feedback from their customers and use it as a basis for implementing business improvements. Timely resolution of potential issues and consequently higher customer loyalty are just some of the benefits that collecting customer opinions brings.
However, if you decide to collect opinions simply because successful companies do, but you don't intend to use the information obtained, you will benefit very little from it. Think of obtained opinions as a tool that helps you:
The goal of collecting feedback is therefore to increase customer loyalty. You can only increase loyalty through better services and products, and by providing a better customer experience. If you know what bothers customers during their interaction with your company, what they like, and what they still desire, and you implement the acquired information into your business operations (resolve potential issues, encourage customer-friendly employee behavior, etc.), you will increase loyalty and long-term profitability. This is known as “customer driven decisions” abroad.
This is especially important for companies selling products and services that a customer buys for the first time or very rarely (e.g., once a decade). This customer doesn't know the market well enough to choose the best provider. By collecting your customers' reviews, you build a credibility index that can demonstrate your customer satisfaction. If your existing customers are satisfied, a new customer is very likely to be satisfied as well.
When a company has multiple branches, it's difficult to have a good overview of the service quality in each one. By asking customers for feedback, you get a constant insight into their satisfaction. Furthermore, employees in the branch know that every customer is a potential mystery shopper, which makes them more engaged in their work. No one wants to explain why they were, perhaps only for a moment, unfriendly to a customer.
Similar to branches, you likely can't say with certainty what experience your customers have when interacting with a field representative. This could be a marketer or sales representative, an insurance or real estate agent, a service technician who visits the customer on behalf of your company, etc. All these employees represent your company and are the customer's point of contact. Customer loyalty to your company also depends on how satisfied customers are with this employee. These employees will also try harder in their work because they will know that the company monitors their interactions with customers. Your company will thus gain real insight into the situation in the field, and you can use this data for employee training.
No matter how hard your employees try, a poor customer experience can sometimes occur. Make it easy for customers to report potential problems. If you invite them to provide feedback immediately after a service is completed, they will tell you about their experience. You will be able to resolve the issue, and the customer will likely not express their dissatisfaction elsewhere.
All the mentioned advantages of collecting customer feedback ultimately lead to increased loyalty. Customers tell you their expectations, which you must meet or even exceed. Fulfilled expectations mean satisfaction. If you incorporate meeting expectations into your company's business strategy, it will definitely increase your customer loyalty and attract new ones.