If you’ve ever received not-so-great feedback about your business, I don’t need to tell you that it’s not exactly fun. However, just because some of the feedback you get is negative, it doesn’t negate the benefits of collecting it.
The Business Benefits of Collecting Feedback
Robyn Rivera
5 reasons to collect more feedback
#1. Provide a better customer experience
Collecting feedback allows you to see your customer experience from the customer perspective. You can be doing everything right in your mind and still end up providing a subpar customer experience. But, it’s not your perspective that really matters at the end of the day; it’s your customers’.
That’s why, in order to provide the kind of experience that your customers will rave about, you’ll need to learn to look at things from their perspective. Of course, you could empathize and try to see things from their point of view, but collecting feedback is the only way to really find out what they’re thinking.
Positive feedback will reinforce what you’re getting right, while negative feedback will help you learn about areas that need improvement. When you get feedback about your business, use it to make adjustments for the better.
#2. Develop better products and/or services
Whether you’re selling products or offering services, it’s all about meeting a need. The better you can meet that need, the better your products and/or services will perform. Of course, you also need the right kind of exposure for your products or services, but that’s another conversation.
Collecting feedback about your products or services is the best way to identify what your customers’ needs are, and how you can better fulfill them.
If a customer has a negative experience with your products or services, you want to hear about it. It may not always be fun to hear negative feedback, but it helps you fine-tune your offerings to better meet the needs of your customers.
Also, if one person has had a negative experience, chances are, others have, too. Just as you won’t hear about every positive experience, you also won’t hear about every negative experience.
#3. Get more conversions
There’s no such thing as an industry that doesn’t have competition, which means that you are probably not the only business offering whatever it is that you offer online. So, how do you differentiate yourself from the others and convince customers to give you a chance? Reviews!
Every plumber, nail salon, real estate agent, and ecommerce store will tell you that what they offer is the best of the best. When everyone claims to be the best, it doesn’t mean much, but when your customers say it, it means everything.
Reviews are one of the best ways to build social proof these days, and they are incredibly powerful. When people see that others have had a good experience with you in the past, it helps them feel more comfortable with giving you a chance themselves.
#4. Decrease your cost per acquisition
It costs a lot of money to attract new customers to your business, and even more to build enough trust to get them to make a purchase or schedule an appointment. People don’t often work with a business the first time they’re introduced to it. It takes exposure after exposure after exposure for most people to recognize and trust a business enough to want to work with it.
Customer feedback makes it possible to fast-forward through this process because it helps to build trust a lot more quickly. With customer reviews, your customers don’t need to see ad after ad in order to give you a chance, and that can help you save a lot more.
Customer reviews are a lot like referrals. They cost nothing and get people in the door extremely effectively.
#5. Show your customers that you care about what they think
As I mentioned before, every business has to contend with its fair share of competition, and one effective way to gain an edge on your competition is to simply show your customers that you value what they think, how they feel, and what they have to say.
A lot of consumers realize that mistakes happen because we are all human, and while no one is happy when a mistake happens, it gives you peace of mind to know that the business you’re working with will take care of it when it does.
Actively seeking feedback shows your customers that you want to hear about any mistakes that were made, as well as about any other feedback they may have. And, when you respond to that feedback, you show them that you really care about what they’re saying and are using it to better your business.
Collecting feedback is important for so many reasons, and even a one-star review can be immensely beneficial for your business. But, you shouldn’t bank on your customers writing reviews on their own.
The sad fact is that most customers won’t write a review on their own, but the good news is that most will if you ask them to. So, make it a point to ask for a review every time, whether that happens in person or in a follow-up email.
Reviews can help to support your business website like nothing else, and you can get even more out of them by displaying them on your website with a widget.
If your current website doesn’t support a reviews widget, or you want to build a website that’s more reflective of your fantastic online reputation, consider building your own with the Websites 360® website builder. Get started today by choosing your design template!
Orginally published on 7/14/20