What is Client Feedback?
Client feedback is information provided by clients regarding their satisfaction with your company. It provides an outside perspective, where customers share their experience with your business and help you understand where there is room for improvement.
Why Should You Ask for Client Feedback?
We know that writing survey questions and collecting responses isn’t thrilling work, but without feedback, a company will never know if customers are getting value out of their product or service. Furthermore, a company that isn’t providing value to its market will not earn loyal customers or build its client base. Next time you’re rephrasing a poll question for the tenth time to get better feedback, remember these important reasons why you’re asking for client feedback:
- Your business depends on the opinions of your customers. Their opinion is an invaluable tool for improving your customer experience and adjusting your product or service to better fit your market’s needs.
- Client feedback is a sneak peek into your word-of-mouth marketing. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool for any business, but your customers must have a positive experience to tell others. By consistently checking customer feedback, you can learn about what people are saying about your business and make adjustments accordingly.
- There’s nothing better than a fresh set of eyes. Your clients can point out kinks or come up with ideas for your product or service that you may have never thought of. Given that Thnks is an innovative, new service, our development teams value any and all feedback from new and existing users.
- It’s easier to meet the needs of your client after they’ve told you what they want. By giving your clients the opportunity to express their opinions, you will both receive valuable information for your company to improve and show your clients that you value their opinions. If you interact with your customers throughout your day-to-day business, you learn a lot about them – who they are, what they like, what they do for work, what their hobbies are, etc. You can’t determine how to improve your products and services until your customers have spent time interacting with them and developed an opinion.
- Fixing customer concerns will lead to an improved client experience and higher customer retention. Client feedback will help you understand whether your customers are satisfied with your service or product, and customer satisfaction leads to retention. Improving customer satisfaction can be achieved by making changes to the client’s shopping experience, making improvements to the product or service itself, or even rectifying a bad customer experience. In fact, working quickly and instantly improving a not-so-great experience for a client is not only a chance to win them back but also an opportunity to build a long-lasting customer relationship. Since repeat customers make up a whopping 65% of a company’s business, this is probably the most important reason to collect feedback.
How to Collect Better Client Feedback
In order to collect accurate information and receive the proper responses, it is essential that businesses pay close attention to how they’re gathering feedback. Follow these tips to improve the number and quality of responses that you receive:
- Reach out. Contact your clients after you’ve done business. Each one likely has an opinion they can share but won’t go to the effort to reach out on their own.
- Offer incentives. Survey participation is completely voluntary to ensure accuracy, but giving an incentive like a free product or discount can help you receive more entries from your clients. Or send a Thnks!
- Have a conversation when possible. While polls and surveys are extremely valuable methods of collecting customer data, data is only one lens through which to view your customers. Your backend data might report all the numbers you are looking for, but it will never be as valuable or give you the same insight as speaking with members of your market one-on-one. Their opinions help you ensure that your business is providing the best version of its product or service and delivering the highest quality customer experience.
- Ask a mix of questions. With too many open-ended questions, customers can actually give you less information. Try asking a few open-ended questions to give the customers free rein to express their opinions and then focusing questions on something more specific that you’d like to learn about from there. Simple and easy questions will ease your clients into giving you the most helpful feedback possible!
How to Use Client Feedback
Once you’ve compiled your feedback, deciding what to do with it is the most important part of the process. Your customers know that you’ve heard their concerns, and now it is your turn to show that you’ve heard their opinion and taken action to improve. Here are the best ways to accomplish this:
- Drive product ‘roadmap’ with feedback. This is a popular metaphor in the business world, and it refers to the genius ideas your clients can come up with simply by using your product or service. No matter how hard you try to put yourself in their shoes, you’ll never come up with some of the exciting ideas that occur to the upper percentile of users. So, listen to everything your customers have to say and record everything. Not only will your customers appreciate your willingness to listen and implement their ideas, but you will set yourself apart from your competitors, as a business that genuinely cares.
- Publish customer reviews. 93% of people have said that online reviews have influenced their purchasing decisions, and 97% of people will read product reviews when researching a new product. Customer reviews have overwhelmingly become a key factor in online shopping, and consumer services. Publishing positive client experiences for potential buyers to see can be essential in setting your business apart from competitors. By giving current and new customers access to product reviews, you are not only letting the clients speak for themselves but also showing that your business is transparent and reliable.
Given that the Thnks business model is to show genuine appreciation- we take client feedback very seriously in our planning and development process. Interested in learning more? Sign up for a demo, or click here to learn more about expressing gratitude in business!
