Getting customers to give you feedback about their experiences can be one of the most effective ways to improve and grow your business. Here's how to make getting that feedback and implementing it easy.
Remember when you were a kid and you knew everything? Naps were boring, vegetables were gross and learning math was a waste of time. Hopefully, you had adults in your life who made you get your rest, eat your broccoli and do your homework. It turns out, you didn't always know what was best for you.
Interacting with customers is a little like raising kids. They want you to have lower prices, more employees and shorter wait times. What they don't understand is that lowering your prices any more would make it impossible to turn a profit, as would hiring more employees. If you did slash your prices and bring on new staff, you might have to close up shop within months.
But if you ignore your customers' complaints about your high prices and inattentive employees, they'll stop bringing you their business altogether. They'll write you off as someone who doesn't care about them as customers.
So no, the customer isn't always right and doesn't always know best. But just as you can't raise happy, healthy kids without listening to their wants and needs, you can't create and keep customer loyalty without asking your customers for their input - and, just as importantly, using that input to improve your business.
How Do I Get Feedback?
Every business owner or manager gets some customer feedback without even trying.
Maybe it's a regular diner at your restaurant who complains to a manager about the quality of the coffee every single week, yet continues to come in every week and order the coffee. Maybe you get snippy emails from people who feel deeply offended that there was snow on your sidewalk (during a blizzard) or that an employee took 45 minutes to respond to an email (that came in during her lunch break). Maybe you've even been accosted in the grocery store by customers who recognize you and want to tell you everything you're doing wrong.
At least they're being honest, and honest feedback is priceless in any business that involves customer service. But unless you're reaching out to hear what all your customers have to say, you'll only have the feedback of your most complaint-happy regulars.
That's the issue that customer feedback software solves. In the past, finding out what your customers have to say required you to reach out to them individually or pay a company a ton of money to conduct surveys. That's not the case any more as there are now a number of effective and easy-to-use customer feedback software platforms available.
Essentially, using software that automates the process of getting feedback takes the time and effort out of the practice. You get all that useful feedback without putting in the work of going out and asking for it.
So What Does Customer Feedback Software Do?
There are a lot of programs out there, and they all work in slightly different ways. Some customer feedback software is designed to allow business owners to design their own surveys, which they then email to their customers.
Others place widgets on the company's website. When customers click on the widgets, they're prompted to give feedback of some kind. Comprehensive software programs should also help businesses get more online reviews, which reveal a ton about how your customers feel about you.
The most effective types of feedback software offer a wide range of customizable features. That's something every business owner should look for in a software program. A mom-and-pop sandwich shop has different needs than a real estate agent or a contractor.
But all of those companies can benefit from customer feedback. In fact, any business that works with customers can benefit from feedback. Even a company whose customers are 100 percent satisfied with its service should consistently collect feedback - if only to find out when the satisfaction rate drops to 99 percent, and why.
Which Software Program Is Right for My Business?
ReputationStacker has the features to help any business of any size reach its feedback goals. The automated system collects honest feedback from your customers, and it includes tools that make it easy to take action on that feedback to improve and grow your business.
It also has the added benefit of segmenting your happy customers and getting them to post reviews on the online review sites of your choice, which leverages customer feedback in a way that greatly helps grow your business by attracting new customers.
Prices range from just $39 to $99 a month depending on the features you choose. Considering how much you would have to pay an employee to contact customers, collect their feedback and summarize it, it's easy to see that automating your customer feedback system is a smart business decision.
Summarize That for Me?
No problem - you're busy, after all, which is why customer feedback software can improve the way you do business. You can use a customizable but easy-to-use software program to reach out to your customers and find out what you're doing well and what you need to do better.
A system like ReputationStacker not only provides you with actionable feedback, but also gets your happy customers to post more online reviews, and alerts you when new reviews come in. When it's this easy to find out what you need to do to grow your business, why wouldn't you do it?
