User feedback collection: how to make it serve your business goals
Let me guess: you’re a businessman, a businesswoman, or a person interested in doing business. Well, in some sense we all are. So, how do you know if your customer is happy or not? At the end of this article, you will get to know why it is important to collect user feedback and how to collect them.
One way through which you can check the quality of your product is by collecting user feedback. Doing this is indirectly a means of measuring the value of a business.
Why is User Feedback Important?
Naturally, you might be wondering if customer feedback is that important as it’s always mentioned and talked about.
The answer to this particular question is a straight YES! Through customer feedback, you can identify the shortcomings, issues, and problems of your product and fix, improve or overcome them.
Customers are the backbone of any business. A business can sustain through customer satisfaction even if the product is an average one. By saying product I also mean even websites.
Many companies overlook the power of getting info from their customers on what they think and how they feel about a feature, a product, or an experience. Hence, they lack sales and spend even more on marketing services.
Whereas asking customers how they feel about the product can generate an immense amount of information to help build the marketing strategy and define the main elements of potential improvement.
Collecting user feedback gives you an edge over the competition.
Ultimately, collecting user feedback allows you:
- Identify your product’s shortcomings and rectify them
- Build a deeper connection with your customers
- Understand your competitor’s shortcomings
- What the customer actually wants
By now, you might be like “That’s great. But how do I collect them?”. I’ve got you covered.
How to Collect Feedback from Users and Clients?
First of all, you need a clear-cut intention for collecting user reviews. Next, you have to notify the customers why you’re collecting them and ensure their response is only for the improvement of the product. Doing this will build trust.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What would they ask? What would be the most important thing for them?
With that said, here are several effective ways to collect customer reviews:
1. Through email channels
Email is a great way to gather feedback. In fact, many companies use this method quite effectively. What you can do is try to send personalized email campaigns. Personalization is the best method to improve click rates, and, the more clicks there are, the better the survey results are.
Customers won’t click a link in the email if it’s a waste of their time. So, it’s advisable to be brief and directly show why the feedback is important and what it is for.
2. Social media
Everyone is on social media. So, most probably at least a part of your audience is somewhere there using a social media channel. So, depending on the sphere and the channel, you can definitely try using social media for collecting feedback. Be it Instagram stories or Linkedin polls, if you know where your audience is, go there and use them.
3. Popups
Popups on a website or an app are another way to quickly ask questions to users and visitors and get info in several seconds. Don’t overdo the trick with popups as they tend to be very annoying if too much.
4. Transactional feedback
Feedbacks are a way to get some value. But values always go two ways, so it needs to provide mutual value to both parties.
So give it a careful thought that you could offer something valuable in return for the review. It could be a live chat session, a free trial of your product, or anything else.
How Can User Feedback Improve Your Business Strategy?
First of all, it can obviously increase your revenue to a much larger scale. Customers will become loyal to your product if you take their feedback seriously and work on it. Collecting feedback is the first step. The next one is essentially putting it to use. Changes, improvements, bug fixes should all be a result of analyzing the feedback data you’ve received.
It’s not about generating leads anymore. It’s about how loyal your customers will stay. The product’s shortcomings can be identified through negative reviews. You’ll know exactly what a user wants from your product and plan accordingly.
You could quickly turn your users through negative feedback. Imagine a person looking to unsubscribe from your services, you could quickly turn him over by offering him/her discounts or free gifts. This will help you with customer retention.
Conclusion
A business can expand by collecting customer feedback. By this, you could:
- Plan ahead the future of your business
- Understand the customer’s needs
- Identify your shortcomings and rectify them
- Have an edge over competitors
- Improve brand value and trust between you and your customers
Did you now understand how important collecting feedback is?
What tools do you intend to use for collecting it?