Customer feedback is information and opinions from customers about what they think and feel about a product or service. This information can take many forms, including written responses survey responses, videos, customer reviews, social media comments, drops in the suggestion box and text messages, and others.
Customer feedback must be relevant and timely to empower businesses to do the right thing, and it needs to be an integral part of company growth. Knowing that a customer is so unhappy that they’re about to switch to your competitor is helpful, but asking them a month after they’ve already changed can be too late. While it is important to gather customer feedback, it is also imperative to know how to get the information the right way and act on it. After all, it’s good to listen, but doing something to improve the situation is what separates healthy brands from others.
The benefits of collecting customer feedback
Customers know best what they want. That’s a fact. What they think of your brand can make or break your business. Therefore, deploying ways and tools to listen to customers accurately provides many benefits to brands:
Understand customer decisions and actions
Understanding what customers think and feel is the key to explaining their actions—asking them questions after meaningful interactions will give you a better idea of how they viewed their experience. By understanding the why behind your customers’ behavior, you ensure you are making the right improvements and helping them on their journey.
Improve products and services
A long-term goal for any business is how to improve its offerings to its customers continually! The answers lie in incorporating customers in product development. Gathering customer feedback places them at the center of your product development strategy, and that’s how a brand can create products or experiences that customers need.
Measure customer satisfaction
The first step to being able to achieve or manage something is being able to measure it. This also applies to customer satisfaction, an indispensable theme in dealing with the modern customer. A satisfaction or loyalty score like the Net Promoter Score is a good start – such surveys help you spot trends as your product evolves.
Customer engagement
Asking customers for feedback is a great way to engage with them. If you do it right and show that you care about their opinion through customer feedback, it becomes a significant part of your overall engagement strategy.
Churn reduction
Customer feedback can directly lead to customer churn reduction. By doing what your customers ask for and showing that it improves their loyalty, you give them a reason to stick around. In return, you reap the benefits of customer retention and converting customers into brand ambassadors.
Make better decisions
Customer feedback lets you put your customers at the center of everything you do. By taking the pulse of their thoughts and feelings when it matters most, you can involve them in your business decisions, which, really, should be the goal of any business.
Using surveys to collect customer feedback
There are several ways to capture customer sentiment ranging from actively conducting surveys to passively using digital listening tools. Here, we briefly look at two survey methods you can use.
Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Surveys let you ask the questions you need to get your customers’ feedback when it matters most to you and them. There are several ways to conduct customer satisfaction surveys, and timing and context matter. One method we use at GeoPoll is surveying customers during or right after handling them such as by sending the customer an SMS immediately after getting served or placing two-way trigger codes or QR codes in product packaging.
Focus Groups or MROCs
Focus groups are a great way to gather in-depth insights into what customers think and expect of you. Coupled with good moderation, focus groups can provide brands with unfiltered verbal and visual customer feedback. With the advent of mobile technology, focus groups do not have to be difficult or expensive to set up – mobile-based Market Research Online Communities are a simple yet powerful way of holding focus group discussions through chat platforms such as WhatsApp.
Collect Customer Feedback in the Emerging Markets with GeoPoll
GeoPoll helps collect and turn customer voices into knowledge and insights that can guide important business decisions and improve brand health through data. With our renowned databases and mobile-based research modes tailored for use in emerging markets, we have developed platforms and experience to gather impactful consumer data.
Contact us to discuss your customer experience needs and how we can help.
