One of the best ways for business owners to learn how they can grow and develop their organization is to get feedback from their customers. With this feedback, you can make changes to your products, marketing, supply chain, pricing, customer service and more. However, actually getting this feedback, or feedback that’s usable and helpful, can be a real challenge. To help make this easier for you, here are three tips to help your business get more feedback from its customers.
Pick The Right Format
In today’s modern world, it’s now easier than ever to get in near constant communication with your customers. Keep in mind, though, that constant communication with you isn’t necessarily what your customers want. Knowing this, it’s crucial that you pick the right ways to get in contact with your customers and illicit feedback from them. According to Shane Forster, a contributor to HubSpot.com, you can get feedback through email, surveys, social media, live chats on your website, sales calls, comment cards and more. For best results, only use a few of these methods so you’re not bombarding your client base with too many pleas for their feedback.
Be Careful With Your Questions
Once you’ve decided how you’re going to gather your customer feedback, you then have to figure out how exactly to get responses that will be helpful to you. For most businesses, this means crafting the right questions for response. According to Lars Lofgren, a contributor to KISSMetrics.com, you should try to keep your questions short and open-ended. This will encourage your recipients to invest just a short amount of time into giving you a quality response. Additionally, be sure your only asking questions that you’re prepared to use feedback from. There’s no point in wasting everyone’s time by gathering information you either can’t or won’t use right now.
Give An Incentive
To further encourage your customers to participate in a survey or to answer other questions for you, you may want to consider offering some kind of incentive for those who complete the feedback protocols. While this can get you a greater number of people participating, Shep Hyken, a contributor to Forbes.com, warns that you should be aware that some people will only offer feedback so they can then get the incentive or reward. This could throw off your results if they’re not taking the questions seriously, so just be prepared for this possibility if you choose to offer an incentive for their feedback.
If you’re looking to get more feedback from your customers so you can make meaningful changes within your organization, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you find the best ways to get input from your current market.
