How often do you ask your customers for their honest feedback? Maybe they give it to you anyways, without asking, if they love what you’ve been providing them.
Or maybe it’s the alternative?
Ask for Feedback Regularly
Make it a habit to ask for your customers’ opinions. Add it to your calendar today and set the task to repeat every six months. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn simply by asking on a regular basis.
Who doesn’t love sharing their opinion about something they use or care about?
Offer a Platform for Anonymous Feedback
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like giving negative when I know my name is going to be attached to it. When you look at Facebook, Yelp, or other public facing sites that allow you to leave reviews they also force you to include your name which links to your own profile. Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. Missing out on negative feedback because someone doesn’t want you to know who they are could threaten the success of your business.
If you want your customers to give you unbridled feedback you have to offer a platform for them to do so.
One of the most cost-effective ways to ask for feedback is to use a free survey tool such as SurveyMonkey or an interactive form service like Typeform.
From the start of your survey or form, make it clear that the feedback you are receiving will be anonymous and never used publicly. Also make sure to include a space for your customer to submit any feedback they’d like instead of forcing multiple choice questions. Open-ended feedback is much more valuable and doesn’t limit your user in what they can say.
Your customer’s time is valuable. Avoid a lengthy survey or form and let your reviewers know how long it might take them to complete right from the start. Show them you value their time.
Managing Negative Feedback
Nobody likes to be criticized but it’s essential for the growth of your business to understand you aren’t perfect and you will make mistakes. It’s how you handle those missteps that propels you from good to great.
Steps to Manage Negative Feedback
- Once you’ve received some feedback from your customers, compile all of the negative feedback into a spreadsheet.
- Weed out any feedback that doesn’t spark actionable change and isn’t constructive.
- Create four columns: Feedback, What To Change, Date To Change and People Responsible.
- Prioritize your projects based on effort and investment needed as well as the impact the change could have to your business.
Some of the items may be small enough to start doing right away. It could be as easy as adding a smiley face to your customer service emails to improve your tone 🙂
Turning Negativity into Positive Change
Consider publicizing any changes you make to your audience. Show them you are listening and are taking their feedback seriously. Allow them to publicly respond to your news in hopes their once negative feedback will be positive for new customers to see.
What changes have you made to your business because of something a customer has mentioned?
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