Managing a business is just like learning how to ride a bike: once you know how to do it, you’ll never forget. But the hard part is actually learning how to handle the wheels. Many tools can help you forge a successful business, and a good manager takes advantage of all of them.
Customer feedback is widely considered one of the best instruments to measure satisfaction and to see if there is any more room for improvement. But is customer feedback that necessary and it is, to what extent should we make use of it? Remember that customer feedback is only one tool and that there are many other we can use. These are all valid questions, all of which we will discuss at length in this article.
About Customer Feedback
In layman’s terms, customer feedback is a way of letting your clients known that the company knows how to listen. Thus, in this case, “to listen” means to hear the customer’s appraisal of your products or services.
But everybody knows how to listen, why is this so important? Because paying attention to what your customers want or need can be the difference between success or utter failure. Think of it this way: if a client finds out that your company is not a good listener, it will turn their attention to another.
Any good entrepreneur knows that the client’s satisfaction is, without the shadow of a doubt, one of the most important aspects of business. You can rate a customer’s satisfaction simply by paying attention to what they have to say.
There are a number of methods currently employed to get feedbacks from a client, the most popular by far being the so-called surveys.
As surveys are used to measure satisfaction, talking to one or two clients just isn’t enough. Imagine how your decisional tree would look like if you would have to make a decision based on a handful of customer’s feedbacks, out of which a third or maybe more are negative.
We should not discard all other tools and favor customer feedback. That would be ill-advised. Customer feedbacks are, indeed, important, because it’s basically the first thing that can tell you if your company is doing well or not.
The Importance of Customer Feedback
Like any other tool used to measure overall customer satisfaction, customer feedback has its pros and cons, strong points and limitation. As always, it’s entirely up to you how this data should be used. Customer feedback data extracted from online surveys and phone-based questionnaires are considered the foundation of innovation.
Picture the following scenario, if you will: your company operates in a B2B fashion and produces electric components. These components will be sold to other companies, which, in turn, will use them to manufacture other products. In this case, the so-called customer feedback comes directly from the companies.
Imagine what would happen if one or two companies, when filling out customer satisfaction surveys will say that they discarded some of your products? This is without a doubt, your cue. If you choose to ignore this sign, you’ll probably wake up having fewer customers. To act upon it means that you will have traced the problem, solved it and rethought your manufacturing and sales strategy. The same mind frame applies for the SaaS industry as well.
Moreover, it’s also equally important to know how to interpret this data. Bear in mind that due to the so-called human nature, customer feedback may be considered reliable or not. This means that no matter how good the survey is, there is always a marginal chance that the customer feedback might not reflect the actual quality of the service.
Thus, we should pay attention to what our customers have to say in regard to the company’s product, but, at the same time, we should not base our entire faculty of decision-making solely on opinions.
The Tools of the Trade
As mentioned before, customer feedback is just one of the tools use to assess a company’s status quo. However, there are more things to be taken into consideration when we make a decision.
The first aspect we should never lose track of is the problem of quality. How good are the products or the service I’m offering and how do they fare against my competitors? You should also think about whether your customers any reasons to complain about the quality of your products.
Every company out there wants to deliver top-notch products and to have positive customer feedbacks. But what’s wrong with the negative ones, some constructive criticism every now and then? Only through constructive criticism we can rise above expectations and to better ourselves.
So, all in all, apart from this nifty tool, we can use other factors to assess the quality of our company’s products and services. Internal feedbacks are always a great source of information, even though they can sometimes be biased towards the company. Take into consideration the fact that no employee will say that something is wrong with the enterprise.
Research can also be considered another aspect that ensures your business’s success. Take your time to research the latest trends and to check out what your competitors have to offer. Then and only them you will have a better idea about what’s happening in the market and the steps you will have to take in order to make sure that your company doesn’t lose its appeal.
Customer Feedback – A SWOT Approach
To see whether customer feedback can be considered a reliable evaluating factor, we shall submit it to a SWOT analysis.
Strong Points of Using Customer Feedback:
- All services and products are directed towards one or more customers. Naturally, the client’s opinion on the quality of your services matters above everything else.
- Can measure satisfaction.
- Easy to use and implement. With so many customer feedback surveys out there, each company can measure overall client satisfaction without the need for highly specialized computer software.
- Can often dictate the company’s policy. Entire companies have undergone changes after reviewing customer feedbacks.
- The most reliable quality control tool you’ll ever get.
- Demonstrates that your company takes care of its clients
Weak Points of customer feedback:
- Highly dependent on data analysis. Unless the data is interpreted correct, these results can often be confusing and misleading.
- Variety. Sometimes variety can be regarded a positive aspect, but when it comes to completing customer feedback surveys, variety often translates in too many stuff to complete. As we know, one survey alone cannot account for overall client’s satisfaction, and too many surveys can stress out the customers.
- Privacy issues. Nowadays, most surveys are filled over the Internet. And with so many stuff floating around the grand web, customers are confused when it comes to data privacy. More specifically, most of them don’t know whether their personal data will be used by the company towards improving products/services or if will be used for other means.
- Feedback volatility. Bear in mind that every customer will assess your products or services according to their own, and often, personal criteria. Moreover, short-term vs. long-term assessments are also factors which should be taken into account. Short-term customer feedbacks are solely based how useful the product at that very moment while long-terms appraisals are focused more on quality. The only problem is that most feedbacks are based on criteria which favor short-term utility over quality.
- Social Media can be very unreliable when it comes to feedback.
Opportunities:
- Improve on quality. Quite often, the customer can give you more insight on the quality of your products that a thousand experts.
- Company improvement. While striving to improve the quality of the products, the company will also grow a little. Improved products often translate as refined methods, better technical capabilities and more focus on research.
Threats:
- Customer feedbacks are just one of the tools used to assess your company’s status quo. And like any other tool, it can either help your company or damage it.
Our Conclusions
Customer feedback is a great way to see whether your company is headed in the right direction or not. Also, this kind of tool is widely considering the catalyst of innovation.
Like any other analyses tool, customer feedback can be considered both reliable and unreliable at the same time. It can indeed answer some questions about your products or services, but it shouldn’t be the only tool used in order to make a decision.
The core philosophy of using this kind of system is that the customer matters above everything else, including the employees. Of course, we cannot dismiss the fact that we are still living in the age of consumerism, where everything can be classified into three large categories: supplier, service, and client.
Should one of these links be missing, that the entire chain would be broken. Indeed, the client’s opinion is very important when you want to evaluate your company, but it should not be used as an executioner’s block.
From the very beginning, you should know that some feedback will be good. Customers will always complain, not matter how good your product is or will be. Only you, and you alone must figure out how to take advantage of this situation.
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