5 Simple Ways to Collect Customer Feedback (and Increase Your Revenue)

When it comes to customers, it’s important that you’re clear about what they need and how you’re providing that. The best and most widely used way for that is getting feedback. By now, everyone is totally aware of the impact of customer feedback on one’s business. Collecting customer feedback and analyzing this data to provide better customer services is a core component of any successful business.

With so many options and methods to choose from, it can be overwhelming for businesses to decide where and how to start. Today, there are dozens of choices and with the ever-changing demands of the customers, it’s very easy to fall behind and lose out to the competition. That’s where feedback helps you out.

Customer feedback is a powerful tool in your arsenal, as it not only gives you valuable insight into what customers need, but also how you can provide it. With customer feedback at our disposal, we can analyze our current standing and take the necessary measures to make improvements.

The importance of customer feedback

One of the chief aims of any business is to generate revenue. Every business owner wants to increase revenue and get as many customers as possible; they want to provide the best products and create the best customer experience. This is only possible through real-time customer feedback. Feedback makes it possible for you to understand the needs of your customers. What do they like about your product? What are the aspects of your business that require improvements? How can you make customers stay with you?

Customer feedback provides valuable insight that can answer all these questions and much more. With all this information, you can easily work on your running products and services and take steps to improve the ones that are in development.

So how can you go about collecting customer feedback? This information can be obtained in many ways; the trick is to choose the one that’s right for your business and suits your customers.

Here are the few options:

1. Customer feedback surveys

Customer feedback surveys are designed to ask certain questions from your customers. Through these surveys, you can determine how customers feel about your business and what areas may need improvement. The most important aspect of this method is designing the survey and deciding what questions you should include.

There are many customer satisfaction survey apps you can use to easily create custom surveys. The main aspects of a good survey include:

• Asking the right questions
• Writing open-ended questions rather than close-ended
• Ignore long and difficult to understand questions
• Use rating scales and charts
• Include questions that are beneficial for your business

Customer feedback surveys are widely considered the most effective way of getting feedback from your customers. If you’ve designed the survey with them in mind and according to the nature of your business, you’re set to succeed.

2. Follow-up emails

Whoever says that sending emails to get feedback is an obsolete method isn’t not telling you the truth. It’s true that most people may not check their emails regularly, but a large portion of business customers rely on emails for their professional life. Emails are one of the easiest ways to communicate with your customers.

Follow-up emails are sent when someone buys a product or a service has been provided. Email offers a wide range of choices; you can send polls, surveys, newsletters and questionnaires through emails. You can create emails by yourself or there are many providers that offer templates. Many companies provide automated email services that can really help you in getting feedback on a large scale.

3. Live chat

Live chat is getting popular with every passing day. It’s simple, easy to use and personalized. The best thing about live chat is that your customers feel like they’re having a real conversation over the phone. With everyone texting all day long on their phones, live chats feel natural and can really help to understand what the customers want and think. This way they stay on your website for longer and you can resolve issues they’re facing right on the spot.

4. Social media channels

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are being used widely by different demographics. These social media channels won’t only connect you with your present customers but also can be one of the biggest fronts to earn new business. Through social media, you can easily connect with your customers, know their interests and understand them better. You can send them direct messages, reply in comments or tag them in surveys and pools. You can create polls and surveys on social media to know what people think about your product or business. It’ll give you a far wider audience to get feedback from and you can use it to improve your current standing.

5. Ask directly for opinion

Some things can’t be determined through surveys or messages. But with direct interactions, you achieve much more. This method isn’t used as widely as it should be, so adopting it to your strategy doing can make you stand out.

The best way to ask someone about anything is to ask them directly. With this, you not only get first-hand feedback but you also can watch the person, study their body language and listen to their tone of voice.

When using emails, surveys or any other digital method, we’re not sure if the customer is going to respond or when. But with direct interaction, be it via telephone, video call of face-to-face, you get immediate feedback. So next time when deciding to get feedback from customers, don’t rule out asking them directly.

So these are some of the most common and effective ways to get feedback from your customers. It’s important to note that it’s one thing to get feedback and another to actually use it to improve your business model.

Effect of customer feedback on revenue

When it comes to revenue, the more the better, but to increase the revenue you need not just customers but loyal cheerleaders and advocates of your brand. And to turn customers into loyal ones, you need to provide them what they really want on a regular basis. For that, you need to know what clicks with them.

This is why it’s necessary to understand your customers and their opinions. Through real-time feedback, you can easily make amends that your business needs. Once you’ve taken steps that your customers want and you provide them what they want, they’ll stay with you through thick and thin. This will significantly increase your revenue. You’ll not only have a loyal customer base for the long-term, but also endorsers of your brand.

Word of mouth remains one of the strongest forms of advertisement, and with loyal customers, you’ll get this exposure that can open room for many new possible customers.

Closing thoughts

As the old saying goes, the customer is always right. It’s crucial to know what’s important for your customers; they can help you change every aspect of your business for good. Even your most pressing concerns and goals can be achieved through the acknowledging the feedback your services and products receive, so based on your business and audience, use every possible channel for getting feedback and use this data to incorporate your business with this information.