Why customer feedback is key to running a successful business

Doing your best for customers is part of running your own business and boosting your sales. Yet it’s difficult to know how well your product or service works for them if you never ask for customer feedback. Most successful small businesses ask for customer feedback and there are many advantages of making it a regular part of your marketing strategy.

• Why customer feedback is important 
• How to ask for feedback from your customers
• Using your website and email questionnaires
• Thinking about Instagram stories
• Monitoring social media 

Customer feedback is vital for finding out whether you’re doing a good job and where you can improve. Feedback, both positive and negative, will help you refine your product/service for your audience. 

Happy customers could be your best advertising channel. As brand ambassadors, they tell their friends, and remain loyal to you. By asking customers for their views, it shows you care about what they have to say and value their insights, which in itself can reflect well on your business.

Asking for feedback can feel like a trip to the dentist – an uncomfortable but necessary evil. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Instead, try and think of feedback as an opportunity to improve your business.

So, how do you go about getting it?

Your website is a useful tool for collecting customer feedback. You can gather actionable data on all visitors to your site, which pages they land on, for how long, what makes them bounce off and how they view your design. Use this information to improve the layout, redesign pages that aren’t performing well, and promote the ones that get more visitors. By installing a simple plugin, you can also use a live chat feature on your site to get immediate feedback through conversations you have with them.

Sending out a customer feedback survey via email is a popular option after a customer or client has spent money with you, and it can yield some really interesting insights. 

You might get a low take-up rate because not everyone you email will have the time or inclination to fill out the questionnaire. The average survey response is around 33% with 5% to 30% typical, and a response above 50% generally considered as great. If your results are at the lower end of the scale, don’t let that deter you. Offering an additional incentive, for example the chance to win a prize or money off a next order, can increase the number of people who do respond.

Surveys should be a regular part of your sales process because the data you can glean from them can be invaluable. You can be specific about the questions you ask to receive feedback on existing products or services as well as products that you’re planning to launch. You can also automate the process with tools like Hubspot, so that emails are sent at a set time after someone receives their order.

Instagram Stories is a way of sharing videos and photos that disappear after 24 hours. It’s a quick and effective way to get information on a particular topic. Simply pose questions on your Instagram Stories alongside a relevant photo and gather responses. As your post won’t be saved to your regular feed, you don’t have to worry about sharing a less than perfect image. 

Instagram is just one social media platform among many. Regularly check your posts and videos across channels to view and respond to any comments and how prospective customers react to your brand. You may find some precious nuggets of useful information that are useful to your business.

At the end of the day, the better the product fits your customers, the better chance you have of running a successful small business. Gathering customer feedback is vital to this process.

While you focus on gathering customer feedback, make sure to keep on top of your business finances. Countingup is the business current account automates time consuming bookkeeping admin so that you can focus on making your dream venture a success. Find out more here.