Why Customer Feedback Is Important To Your Business (6 Reasons)

Customer Feedback, Customer Satisfaction

Customer feedback is a marketing term that describes the process of obtaining a customer’s opinion about a business, product or service.

Customer feedback is so important because it provides marketers and business owners with insight that they can use to improve their business, products and/or overall customer experience.

The following are the top six reasons why customer feedback is important to your business.

1. It can help improve a product or service

Listening to your customers is the only way to guarantee you create a product or service that they actually want to buy. Customer feedback is commonly used throughout the product development process to ensure that the end product is something that solves a customer’s problem or fulfils a need.

The most innovative companies in the world are the best at creating products that meet their customers’ needs and exceed their expectations. Think of Apple, Virgin and Dell.

In today’s competitive business world, these companies who can intertwine product development and customer feedback will be the ones that reap strong competitive advantages, have sticky customer loyalty and earn raving customer advocates.

2. It offers the best way to measure customer satisfaction

Measuring customer satisfaction helps you determine whether your product or service meets or surpasses customer expectations. Customer feedback surveys help you measure customer satisfaction.

These can be done in person, via email, via the phone or even inside a website or mobile app. Using rating-based questions when you are measuring customer satisfaction will help you track and monitor how happy (or unhappy) your customers are over time.

3. It provides actionable insight to create a better customer experience

Improving the customer experience should be the primary reason you gather customer feedback. The process of winning new business and retaining existing customers is getting harder and harder. Offering an amazing experience that keeps your customers coming back and referring their friends to you is the best way you can stand out from your competition.

To create an amazing experience, you need to ask your customers what they want and use the insight to create a consistent, personalized experience. If you can create an experience that is better than your competitors, your customers will remain loyal and ignore tempting competitive offers.

4. It can help improve customer retention

Customer feedback offers a direct line of communication with your customer so you can determine if they are not happy with the product or service you are delivering before you lose their business.

A happy customer is a retained customer. By requesting customer feedback surveys regularly, you can ensure that you keep the finger on the pulse. If a customer becomes frustrated or perceives a competitive offer to be better, they will start exploring their options and may cancel their contract or stop doing business with you. By listening to your unhappy customers, you can use the feedback to ensure all of customers have a better experience and continue wanting to do business with you.

5. It delivers tangible data that can be used to make better business decisions

The best business decisions are based off data, not hunches. Too many times business owners and marketers make big calls based off inaccurate data. Customer feedback is the holy grail of tangible data. You can gather real insight into how your customers really feel about the product or service you deliver.

Use this feedback to guide your business and marketing decisions. If a large percentage of customers suggest a product feature or want an additional customer service channel, listen to them! Your customers are your livelihood.

6. It can be used to identify customer advocates

Customer advocates are your best marketing campaigns. They offer tremendous value at very little cost. But how do you identify advocates?

Customer feedback. When you gather feedback from your customers, advocates are the ones who give you high scores. Contact these customers and build stronger, mutually-beneficial relationships.

Don’t be afraid to ask for a testimonial or referral– more times than not, these advocates want to help you.

Gather customer feedback to improve your business, product, service and experience

Customer feedback shouldn’t be an exercise that you put at the bottom of the pile, outsource to another firm or pawn off to an intern. It’s one of the most important components of any successful business.

Customer feedback provides you with valuable insight into what your customers think about your product or service. This insight can help you create a product that customers want to buy and create an experience that exceeds expectations and keeps customers coming back for more.

Remember, there’s never too much feedback – the more the better!