Why Is Customer Feedback Important for Every Business
Any business should invest as much as possible in the relationship with their customers. Sometimes, this fundamental idea behind success is easily forgotten. There are too many advertising trends and channels that prove to be a real challenge for the marketing team. Every day, there’s a new social platform or viral recipe that looks like a great organic source of new leads.
However, one of the most precious sources for the success of any business is usually not too far away. The diligently built database of customers can be of greater value than finding top notch marketing strategies. These consumers have already purchased your product, and based on their impressions, they can be easily persuaded to choose your business as their main provider, or share their valuable insights on the product. Sometimes, all we have to do is to listen and take any criticism as constructive feedback.
1. Build Your Persona
Based on your customer feedback, you can create a precise buyer persona. This is a profile of one fictional character that represents the personality of your target audience.
Even though the marketing staff has enough experience to make educated guesses about the identity of their customers, the facts have always dethroned perceptions. Gathering all the features and personality traits from your existing clientele in one place will sketch the bigger picture marketers need in their workflow.
Having a persona by your side, you will always know the most receptive channels for your campaigns and the needs of your target audience that your new product should cover. The customer profile is more than just demographics. This list of general details that are relevant for an essential segment of your audience should contain work positions, industries, passions, hobbies, social status, and even a description of a typical weekday in the customer’s life.
However, the persona of any business is usually growing and developing into new shapes and forms. The ideal audience will change over time together with trends and company’s strategies, so the best way to maximize the potential of a persona is to research and update its profile constantly.
2. Improve Customer Experience
The existing customers have already gone through the whole sales pipeline of your business. This means that they went from the status of cold leads through the series of marketing stages all the way to the finish line where they purchased your product.
So, the existing clients are familiar with your business, but they also have the capacity to compare the company practices with others and form a valid impression on the quality of your customer service. As these consumers have daily contact with all sorts of companies and services, their insights are raw and unaltered by marketing news and trends. So, they are a genuine and valuable source of improvement tips for customer experience.
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3. Find A Product’s Weak Points
No product is perfect, and this means there is always room for improvement. Any product or service is created to answer some of the needs of the consumers. Consequently, existing clients have already tested your products and they can tell you exactly what worked for them and what didn’t.
Capitalism and democracy opened a free world where anybody can enter the market. However, this also triggered an enhancement of competition, and any company should aim at over delivering their services to win the loyalty of their clients. So, stagnating the service at only one point can hinder the success of the business. It should be an ongoing process where quality is defined by meeting and even exceeding the expectations of the customers.
Many businesses simply ask new clients why they chose a particular product. Their answers can offer a different and fresh point of view that can be used to improve products and create targeted marketing campaigns.
4. Increase Customer Loyalty
Asking for feedback is a powerful way to deliver an indirect message to your clients. Their opinion matters for your company, and they feel appreciated. Especially if their feedback is put into practice, even the most exigent clients can value a well-managed business where the professional activity is performed around the clients’ actionable feedback.
More than this, an active connection between brand customers can create a powerful community. Every person feels the need to belong to a community, and setting the foundation of a warm and friendly environment is the first step to do this.
Plus, any community needs communication to survive, and all of them are two-way streets. The brand talks to its target audience about what it can offer them, while the customers talk to the brand about their opinions and experiences. A powerful community improves retention rates due to the increased loyalty among the existing clients. You can provide an efficient avenue to your customers in the form of an IT ticketing system where they can submit their feedback easily.
5. Brings in New Customers
New leads will naturally feel welcome in a community where the customer’s opinions are answered and appreciated. According to the latest findings, 88% of consumers form an opinion about a business by reading up to ten reviews. Even though this is an odd situation, as the reviews are basically product feedback from strangers, it seems that the general public has more influence on a buying decision than any marketing campaign.
So, after nourishing a relationship with the customers based on trust and open dialogue, the results will have long term effects. Even though any website or forum can have negative customer feedback, choosing to reply to it or not makes a great difference for newcomers.
The decision to leave the comments that signal a key weak point of the product unanswered can send the message that the company has no interest in serving the client. However, if the issue gets an immediate solution based on the severity of the problem, the leads would be more willing to put their trust in a proactive company.
So, these are the five main reasons why customer feedback is important for any business. Surveys will never cease to surprise managers with relevant and actionable insights that can greatly help with any business decision. We just have to listen!