How to make Customer Feedback Work for Your Small Business

You have probably heard this a thousand times, ‘Customer is King’. Your small business cannot grow if you don’t value them. Not just the business they bring in but what they have to say about your product, your services and whatever value you are offering apart from what you are selling. 

Your customers’ feedback can break or make your business depending on how you value it and how you act on it. Customers will always have something to say about your business whether good or bad. The same way you have something to say about the products you buy or the services you receive from another business. 

Many entrepreneurs tend to either brush off what customers say or not even bother to hear what they have to say. Others hear but don’t do anything about the feedback they get. 

With the rise of social media, there are so many ways to get feedback from customers. Customers can easily and quickly provide feedback on their experience with your brand, business, product or services. 

Customer feedback is one side of the business world you don’t want to be on the wrong side of. Some will voice their concerns genuinely, others will promote your product and others will just be outright criticizers.  It’s very important to differentiate these in order to respond and act on the feedback rightly. 

Why Customer Feedback?

Customer feedback serves as a guide for your business and helps you know what you’re doing well and wrong. What better way to know what’s working and what’s not working other than talking to people who use what you sell. 

Feedback, whether positive or negative, can serve as a beneficial guide to assist you adjust to the client experience. It also ensures that your customer is always at the center of everything you do. Remember, ‘Customer is King’ and they need to see that. 

What to do with Customer Feedback 

Act on It Immediately 

The first thing you do to any form of feedback whether negative or positive is to respond to it immediately. Customers don’t like being kept waiting. You do that, they move to the next in line. 

Businesses frequently fail to respond to customer feedback promptly. Regardless of whether the feedback is delivered online or in person, you have to find a way of responding promptly. 

The greatest method to reply effectively and quickly is to empower your employees to respond to issues and questions in real time.

Make it easy for the customer

If your customer has a concern, don’t let them be the ones pushing for the issue to be solved. Your customer should not call you twice about the same issue that was not solved the first time.

You need to take it on and come back to the customer with solutions. This comes down to the fine art of listening and observing, then creating working solutions to resolve issues. 

By understanding their various pain points you can then resolve the issue and add value to the customer’s experience.

Consider using an emotive approach.

It’s critical to recognize the emotional tone your customers use when discussing your product or service. 

The next step is to figure out if this is the kind of experience you were hoping for. If it isn’t, you should consider whether you can narrow the gap on your original goal. This is critical because when a customer feels emotional, it fosters loyalty, implying that the relationship with your company is more than just functional; it’s also emotional.

Tailor your business by using feedback.

This simply entails adapting your product or service based on the feedback, ideas, and concerns obtained. Because your consumers are the ones who use your items, their opinions are important. 

This can be a fantastic approach to gain a better understanding of your market and alter your product to better match their wants. Give them what they want. 

Identify market gaps

Sometimes the feedback you get isn’t about issues with your product, but rather about identifying requirements that aren’t being met in general. This may indicate a significant market gap beyond what you now provide. As a result, there is a larger chance of increasing market share and meeting even more client needs in the future. This could involve coming up with new products or simply changing a few aspects of how you do business to fill the gaps. 

Final Thoughts 

In today’s market, customer feedback is a given, therefore as a proactive business owner, you must have a clear strategy for how and when to use it to grow and better your business.

Taking a proactive approach to customer feedback guarantees that you never move too far from your community’s needs, even if those needs change. 

This will not only assist you in identifying market gaps, but it will also assist you in maintaining relationships with existing customers by meeting their wants, anticipating their concerns, making them feel heard, and resolving their issues. Simply, making them feel that they matter to your business.