Customer feedback is information provided by customers about their experience with a product or service, helping teams understand where they can improve. It is very important to get feedback from your customers as their opinion is a resource for improving customer experience and adjusting your services to their needs. This data can be collected with different types of surveys which are prompted by closing a deal or conversation with a customer, but you can also find the reviews your clients post online (unprompted feedback) and collect them using customer engagement tools. Both sources are important to get a full picture of how your customers perceive your business, and by full picture, we mean the good, the bad and the ugly! Now this is not to discourage you from getting feedbacks, it is just the truth that you cannot simply ignore. Top perfoming businesses are at the apex of their game because they understand the importance customer feedback, know how to get it and how to use it to their advantage. They practically live out the saying “Feedback is the breakfast of Champions!”, so, feedback is really important for your business, whether positive or negative! In fact, negative feedback is good for your business, you just need to know how to leverage them!
Having established why customer feedback is quite important to your business and how to get them, the next question to address if none of your feedback collection methods are working is why your customers are not giving you feedback! If there is one thing customers love to do, it is being able to give their opinions on your products or service. However, when you go about getting their feedback the wrong way, they would rather not share their opinions with you! Here are 3 possible reasons why you are not getting feedback from your customers:
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Your feedback procedure is too long
It is good to get every bit of information when it comes to getting feedback, but this can lead to really long forms and processes for your customers. If your customer needs to walk through a long, drawn-out process in order to provide feedback on your product or service, it might not be the best way to go about it. There is a much better way to get all the information you need from your customers without overwhelming them and that is, collecting them bit by bit with intentionality or simply narrowing down the information you need from them to the very important ones.
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You bombard your customers with feedback requests
From the previous point it is tempting to say that you would send out short feedback froms to your customers consistently, but one reason why it’s tough to get feedback is if you’re consistently asking for feedback. If you bombard your customers with requests, they may be hesitant to provide the feedback you need. You should instead create a standard procedure for how often you should ask for feedback from your customers. For example, you might want to ask your customers for feedback every 2-3 months. This would help ensure that you don’t overwhelm them with requests and still get actionable insights from the responses.
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You do not use your customers feedback
As much as customers love being able to share their opinion about your product or service, making them feel unheard can discourage them and move them to your competition. Many organizations receive feedback from customers, but fail to use it. This can be because of a lack of knowledge about how to use the feedback or simply because of apathy. For example, if your business is getting customer feedback about a certain product or service, and you fail to act accordingly or at least offer a valid explanation, your customers will assume that you do not care for them. If this happens frequently enough, you could lose business and see an increase in complaints rather than improve your product.
A bonus tip is to appreciate your customers for taking out the time to give reviews or feedback about your brand, this will prove that you value their opinion and encourage them to share feedback even when you do not ask.