Posted by Almost every business, if not all, receives feedback from its customers. In fact, 36% of consumers share their experience with a company, no matter if it’s good or bad. This means that you can receive compliments on your customer service, products, or services, which is good for your business. But you might also get negative feedback on your customer service or what you offer occasionally.
While it may be tempting to discard feedback after reading it, the best course of action is to use it to improve customer satisfaction and business success. You should listen to what your customers are saying and use their comments to improve your marketing strategy.
What to do with customer feedback?
There are many things you can do with the feedback provided by your customers. Here are some of the best ways how to use customer feedback for your business:
1. Share them with your team members
Letting your team members know how customers feel about your company’s products and services will help them learn about their rooms for improvement. Your customers’ feedback will also help you ensure that all your employees are on the same page when it comes to customer service and providing a good experience for customers.
But before sharing every feedback with your whole staff, you should categorize them first. This will make relaying and understanding information much easier because each team will only receive the comments that affect their department.
Here are the categories you should use when grouping the customer feedback that you receive:
2. Product feedback
This kind of feedback focuses on suggestions and complaints about the products or services you offer. It can be further grouped into the following subcategories:
- Major product bugs
- Minor product bugs
- Feature requests
3. Customer service feedback
Customers care about how you interact with them aside from the products or services you provide. That’s why they also often offer feedback on your social media customer service.
However, since comments on customer service can be quite subjective, it might be hard to group them into subcategories. Instead, you should create a system that will allow you to analyze the quality of your customer service. The key here is to understand where your customers are frustrated and think of ways to work on these stages.
4. Marketing and sales feedback
The last category you should use when organizing the customer feedback you’ve received should focus on your sales and marketing strategies. Most of the time, your customers’ comments might revolve around something promised by your sales or marketing team that wasn’t delivered on time or satisfactorily.
Similar to customer service feedback, marketing, and sales reviews are also generally subjective. So, grouping them into subcategories may be challenging. However, with the right organizational skills, you should be able to find common themes within the feedback, which will help your team address customer inquiries and issues properly.
5. Make detailed buyer personas
Buyer personas are semi-fictional characters created to represent different customer segments based on their demographics, interests, and other data points. Creating detailed buyer personas is essential for any business because it helps you tailor your products and services to the needs of those customers.
Using customer feedback for your buyer personas is a great way to gain insights into what your target customers are looking for in terms of product features, pricing, customer service, and more. Once you understand your customers better through their feedback, you can adjust or create new personas based on their preferences. This can improve your marketing strategy by focusing on promotional activities that different buyer personas can benefit from.
6. Create informational content
Customer feedback doesn’t only come as comments or ratings. Questions frequently asked by customers can also serve as feedback on your products and services or your team’s communication skills. If certain questions are often being asked by your target audience, this means that you’re lacking in terms of providing detailed information about your products and services.
To address this issue, you can use customer feedback to boost your SEO content strategy and create helpful content, such as blog posts, videos, or webinars, that will answer your customers’ questions. You can also use informational content to build relationships with customers and make them feel heard.
7. Add Reviews to Landing and Social Media Pages
Customer feedback provides great value to your website and social media pages. Adding customer feedback to your landing and social media pages can make your existing customers feel heard and appreciated.
They also allow new visitors or followers to see how happy your customers are with the products or services that you offer. When they see how many people are satisfied with your offerings, they will have more reasons to trust your brand and support your business. Surveys also show that at least 98% of consumers occasionally read reviews online before purchasing a product or paying for a service, so you should definitely add reviews to your website and social media pages.
If done right, you can also use customer testimonials to boost your SEO efforts. The key to doing this is asking the right questions when gathering feedback so they can contain the necessary keywords.
For example, instead of asking yes or no questions, ask your customers to describe the service or product they chose and what they liked about it. This strategy will push them to use keywords in their comments, which can then help you rank higher in search engine results.
8. Learn from your competitors
It’s natural for any business to want to know what other companies are doing, especially their competitors. You may have noticed that some of your rivals offer something better than you or are more successful at increasing customer loyalty and retention.
Customer feedback can help you identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. This way, you can use their weaknesses as opportunities to gain an edge over them by offering better products or services. You can do this by emphasizing the quality of your product or service that your competitors are lacking. Doing this can also help you gain new customers.
9. Address negative reviews
Negative feedback can be challenging to read, but it doesn’t have to be detrimental to your business. On the contrary, negative reviews can help you identify areas of improvement and build customer loyalty by showing that your company cares about customers’ experiences.
There are two ways to manage negative feedback. The first thing you need to do is encourage your customers to leave more reviews about your business. When there are several positive reviews on your pages, the negative feedback won’t look too alarming to your prospects.
The second strategy is to address the negative reviews and show customers that you’re taking their feedback seriously. You can do this by responding in a polite and understanding manner, apologizing for the inconvenience, and offering solutions. When your customers see how quickly you take action, they’ll be more likely to trust your brand again in the future.
10. Use customer feedback for your marketing strategy
Learning how to respond to customer feedback and using it to improve your marketing strategy is a great plus for your business. It not only helps you understand the needs of your customers but also allows you to create better content and gain new customers.
So, if you’re looking for ways to enhance your marketing efforts, start collecting customer feedback and using it in the different ways discussed above. You’ll be surprised at how much it can benefit your business!