Articles, Business, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service Excellence

The Importance of Customer Feedback and Various Methods to Collect It

The Importance of Customer Feedback and Various Methods to Collect It
The Importance of Customer Feedback and Various Methods to Collect It

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“Are your customers important to you?”

Your answer to that question should be yes. Ultimately, customers are the key to the success of your business. Your company exists because of the customers. Without them, your business would sink into oblivion. Therefore, what your customers think of your brand is the most crucial aspect in maintaining a business. That’s why your company needs customer feedback.

Customer Feedback? What is that? 

According to Lexico, customer feedback is defined as “feedback provided to a business by those who use its products and services.” Simply put, customer feedback is the information given by your customers regarding whether the products and services they get from your company live up to their expectations. Customer feedback is closely associated with customer satisfaction and customer experience, which, basically, affect every single area of your business, including customer loyalty, sales, revenue, cash flow, and employee welfare.

Is It Necessary to Acquire Customer Feedback?

Yes! Yes! And Yes!

Customer feedback is an essential tool to measure how your company is doing. Does your company already provide what your customer wants? Or does your company need to make adjustments in order to fit your customers’ needs more accurately? Only with customer feedback will you be able to answer those questions.

Customer feedback gives you insights into every aspect of your business. Bottom line is there is no other source better than customer feedback to measure the quality of a company. Having knowledge on how your clients perceive your brand, you will be able to recognize which areas need improvements. Therefore, you can take the necessary steps to sort out the vulnerable parts of your company, while keeping up the good work on your company’s forte.

How Do You Collect Customer Feedback?

  • Survey

Survey is the easiest and the most common method to collect customer feedback; yet, it is also the most effective. With survey, you can set the questions that suit your company’s needs. The survey can be short or a longer one. You can also decide whether you want to ask questions about specific issues or about your company and its services in the big picture. There are also numerous formats you can choose, such as multiple choice questionnaire, polls, open-ended questions, and so on.

Therefore, the flexibility of this method allows you to customize it in accordance with your company’s needs. The main reason most customers prefer survey compared to any other method is because it’s very convenient for them. Survey can be filled independently by the customers and it doesn’t usually take much of their time.

  • Interview

Interview is the second most common practice in collecting customer feedback. Interview can be conducted at the premise right after your customer finishes a transaction, or it can also be conducted via phone call. Directly reaching out to customers for feedback in a live conversation prompts them to give honest and candid opinion.

However, interviews are usually carried out in open-ended questions, which make this method a bit inconvenient for the customers because it takes longer time than filling in survey.

  • Social Media

Who doesn’t use social media nowadays? Not only can you utilize social media as a tool to effectively promote your brand, but you can also use it to gather customer feedback. Through social media, you can ask customers’ opinions on your brand, what you can improve, and also their preferences.

Using social media as a platform to gather customer feedback may seem effortless; yet, it has flaws. One of the biggest flaw of this method is that you cannot ask questions as specific as you can be when you use survey or interview.

Those are the top three methods to collect customer feedback and there are still many other methods that haven’t been mentioned yet. Although you have numerous options, you don’t have to feel overwhelmed. The key is to choose the method that suits your company the best. That being said, if you opt for using survey, you should really consider utilizing SMARTSURVEYS.

SMARTSURVEYS: The Best Customer Feedback Solution in 2021

SMARTSURVEYS is a customer feedback platform that is designed to effectively obtain customers’ opinions, concerns, needs, suggestions, and preferences in real-time. Our highly efficient digital surveys ensure the effortlessness of filling them in; therefore, it wouldn’t be a bother to your customers.

To your advantage, SMARTSURVEYS offers the flexibility of methods and applications. Hence, you can create questionnaires or polls with ease and adjust them in accordance with your company’s needs. Based on accurate real-time result of service-based surveys, SMARTSURVEYS allows you to monitor customer satisfaction as well as market demand. That way, you can take necessary improvements to boost customer experience and take your company to the next level.

Learn more about SMARTSURVEYS here and let our solutions help you gather customer feedback accurately and efficiently.

Read also:

  1. Is It Necessary to Ask for Customer Feedback?
  2. Your Business’ Service Performance: Good or Bad? . . . and What You can Do about It

  3. 5 Key Steps to Achieve Positive Customer Experience