Using customer feedback for success

Recently Small Biz Trends published an article chockfull of reasons to have your customers fill out customer satisfaction surveys.

We all know that getting feedback allows businesses to find areas to improve upon and areas they’re doing well in, as well as allowing for mistakes to be corrected. But what else can these surveys do to help create a more successful business?

Here are Small Biz Trends’ “18 ways customer feedback will grow your business”:

  
1. Increase retention just by asking— simply asking for customers’ opinions makes them feel important, causing them to be more loyal to your company.
2. Find out what they’re unhappy about— use surveys to find areas in which your company isn’t doing a great job; this also allows you to correct a problem with a dissatisfied customer.
3. Find out what you can do better— surveys offer you the chance to improve upon things that aren’t necessarily bad, but could simply be better.
4. Find your strengths and use them to your advantage— promote these strengths; use them to sell your business to the market.
5. Prioritize changes in your business— you may have many things you want to change in your business; surveys allow you to see which you be most important.
6. Monitor changes in satisfaction over time— after you’ve done surveys for a while, you can see if the changes you’ve made are working.
7. Identify what is working by tracking those changes— similarly to number six, you can see changes in satisfaction in areas of your business over time.
8. Improve your business’s public reviews— you can encourage satisfied customers to leave online reviews.
9. Find sources for customer testimonials— use positive responses as testimonials in advertising.
10. Improve your overall reputation— as you collect testimonials and online reviews from these surveys, your company’s reputation will improve.
11. rack your company’s growth— identify your new customers, returning customers and dissatisfied customers who are likely to leave your business.
12. Create new sales opportunities— use surveys to find when your customers are most satisfied with your services, allowing for easier selling success in the future.
13. Help your staff understand your customers— share survey results with employees to help them understand customers and improve their customer interaction.
14. Provide incentives to improve service— use survey results to identify areas in which you can encourage your employees to improve through incentives.
15. Increase employee morale— make employees feel more connected with the company by letting them know what they’re doing well and helping them improve in areas where they’re not.
16. Find out how to win back lost clients— find ways to fix problems that you can report to lost customers or prevent other customers from leaving for the same reasons.
17. Get feedback about new products or initiatives— find out what is and isn’t working with new ventures.
18. Create brand advocates— overall, surveys make customers happier, which, in turn, makes them more loyal to you.  

For the full, original article, please click here.