If you work in the marketing or PR sector, you know that customer feedback and reviews are essential to your company’s success. You also likely know just how challenging it can be to get customers—even those who are happy—to leave a review for you. If you’re lucky enough to get regular customer feedback, here are some ways you can use it to improve your business.
1. Be Candid About Your Security Tactics
If your company recently became interested in becoming more cyber-secure, or simply goes to great lengths to protect customer data, this is something you should shout from the rooftops. Customers love knowing that their data is safe with a company and that a company takes their personal data security seriously. For example, if you have recently enabled Secure Shell (SSH) on your servers, write a blog post called “What is SSH” to explain to your customers exactly what this is and how it benefits them. Then, ask them to weigh in on your new security upgrades. Their (hopefully) happy feedback will speak volumes for your company.
2. Ask Happy Customers For Reviews
There are hundreds of review sites out there, and who can forget good old Google reviews? Take the time to ask your happiest customers to write online reviews. If necessary, incentivize these reviews by offering gift cards, free add-ons to your products, and other enticing prizes. Once you begin to get some good information, record in it your customer data platform so that everyone in the company has access. This way, everyone in the company —from your sales team to your accounting department—can see what customers really think of you and what you can do collectively to improve if needed.
3. Run Live Chat on Your Website
Talk to your customers in real-time by adding a live chat widget to your website. Unfortunately, you may find that customers visit your live chat to complain, but this is still a great way to get customer data and record their feedback. If you find that the same issues are coming up regularly, this could also mean that something within your company or product could use some reworking. The ability to talk to your customers in real-time—whether the experience is positive or negative—can give you some essential insight into how your offerings are perceived by the market and what you should do to improve if needed.
4. Write a Case Study
Case studies take a deep dive into a customer’s experience with your company or product. They are a great way to show the market that your company or product can help people and what exactly it can do to make other companies’ lives easier. If you have a customer who is particularly happy and seems willing to talk, ask them if they would allow you to feature them in a case study where you pick their brain to learn exactly how your company has helped them. Oftentimes, you won’t be able to use your customers’ names (particularly if they work in a field where security is essential, like health care or banking), but you can still write the study and use a pseudonym.
5. Do a Survey
Send a survey to your customers asking for their feedback on your company or products. This is the easiest way to get candid feedback from your customer base, and you can even allow people to answer anonymously if you think you’ll get more answers that way. Ask questions regarding their level of happiness with your offerings, but also feel free to dig a bit deeper and ask what could be improved. Just remember to keep the survey short so people don’t lose interest—2 minutes or less is the gold standard.
Getting customer feedback can be tough, and getting feedback that you can use to improve your business can seem nearly impossible. Use these tips above to collect useful data about your customers and how they use your products and services.
