Getting inside the consumer’s head has always been the goal of marketing. More than a few strategies and technologies exist to make this happen, many focused on customer feedback.
Finding out exactly what your customer thinks about you is a powerful thing. We know this and it’s why we built a balanced approach in our product, helping you capture customer feedback (1st-party reviews) and 3rd-party online reviews.
Now we fully understand the merits of 3rd-party reviews on Google, Facebook and other sites, but we firmly believe they are not the brightest star in evaluating customer experience, customer feedback is.
5 Reasons Customer Feedback Rules
1- Context. While getting a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rating or 5-star rating is simple to understand, it’s customer feedback that fills in the blanks. Words provide the context as to why your customer’s experience was a 2, a 4 or a perfect 5-stars.
2- A Broader View. A customer who leaves you a 5-star rating can still have something they didn’t like and a 1-star review could have had one thing they loved about your business. If you aren’t finding out “why” they gave you their rating, you are missing most of the story.
3- Volume. More customers will tell you directly how you did versus telling the world in an online review. Not every customer cares to share their opinion with everyone, but they will directly with the business.
We have years of data on this and the percentage of your customer that will give you feedback over write you a 3rd-party review can be as much as 10x. The more data and feedback you have from customers, the more you learn.
4- Clarity. While most 3rd-party review sites allow the customer to just rate and write comments, a good customer feedback process will get you better details. In not only asking for open text feedback, but asking specific survey questions you get clear insight on specific areas of your business. (Our service lets you ask 4 survey questions in Ultimate Mode.)
Combining a couple focused survey questions will give you clarity on important areas and also prompt your customer what to write about when they share their words.
5- Action. What you learn in your customer feedback informs you on what you need to take action on. Your soup is served cold too often, your installer is always late, or your signage for parking is confusing. All of these details wouldn’t be uncovered with just a rating.
Once you know the problem areas or even just averages ones that could be made outstanding, you can take action. Taking action and improving is what builds a great business.
Building A Natural Review Ecosystem Using Customer Feedback
The best way to earn amazing reviews is by being an amazing business. The best way to be an amazing business is to listen to your customers.
It’s because of this we stress how important customer feedback is for your business and to leverage those features in our offering. Customer feedback can power your success and lead you to running a business that consistently earns great reviews.
