How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Your Business

What is one way a business can use customer feedback to improve its business? 

To help you get the most out of your customer feedback, we asked business professionals this question for their insights. From sending timely surveys to addressing negative reviews quickly, there are several things you can do with customer feedback to improve your organization.

Here are 11 tips to using customer feedback for improvements:

• Test Products and Build a Loyal Base
• Reach Out for More Details
• Send Timely Surveys
• Address Negative Reviews Quickly
• Keep Up With Social Media Mentions
• Collect Feedback to Update Services
• Make Continuous Improvements
• Group Together Common Strengths and Weaknesses
• Improve Training Processes
• Look for Frequently Used Keywords
• Utilize Chatbots for Data Collection

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Send Timely Surveys  

Customers appreciate the opportunity to give their feedback, which is why so many consumers read reviews to research products and services before making a purchase. Make it easy for customers to provide their feedback directly to you so you can address their needs before they turn to a public space. 

This gives business owners the opportunity to acknowledge both positive and negative customer surveys and take action as needed. Send surveys soon after you have served a customer for their honest feedback and send them a friendly reply or solution to build a lasting customer relationship.

Randall S Smalley II, Cruise America

Group Together Common Strengths and Weaknesses

It is easy to become blind to your organization’s strengths and weaknesses when you are so deeply involved internally. However, customer feedback is a great way to reveal these traits! Start by gathering all your customer feedback (both positive and negative) across all platforms and grouping them together by common themes. 

Can you find any new language to describe your service/product? If so, highlight these on your website, social media, or in your next email campaign. With the negative feedback, send these off to the department that may be able to work on these improvements and seek changes.

Thylan Le, Markitors

Reach Out for More Details

In many cases, customer feedback may report symptoms and not root problems. By reaching out to the customers who were willing to provide their initial feedback and ask further questions, the business can get more insightful information to improve its services. Customer feedback can also be a very important growth engine for a business. For example, when we designed our mainstream predictive text software, we built it for the average typist. Thanks to the feedback we got from some of our customers, we realized that our software could also help people with disabilities. By understanding their needs, we’ve added dedicated support for these customers, and now our product better serves them as well.

Guy Katabi, Lightkey

Address Negative Reviews Quickly

Customer satisfaction is a key indicator of our performance as a company. We use a reputation management company to gather reviews, which helps us gauge the customer experience. This helps us identify areas where we need to make improvements or offer new products and services. It’s important for us to know what our clients are saying about us so we can attend to any concerns they may have. Negative feedback can be addressed quickly and usually results in stronger customer relationships in the long run.

Henry Babichenko, Eurodenture

Keep Up With Social Media Mentions

In my opinion, customers have never had it easier to provide feedback on your products or services. I believe that the days of writing feedback (both positive and negative) in an old-fashioned letter or communicating over the phone are in the past. 

Customers are instead using social media to share their ideas, rather than telling their friends in person, which means you have a goldmine of information at your disposal. Positive feedback, when used correctly, can help your business grow tremendously. Even negative feedback can help in the development of your products and services, as well as your reputation.

Allan Switalski, LendThrive

Collect Feedback to Update Services

As a veneer stone system design company, we document and save every piece of feedback from our customers. If a large number of customers leave similar comments, we analyze if our product or service is lacking a crucial feature or needs to be updated. 

We then collect all input so our development team can make improvements to our service. After we execute these adjustments, we update our clients about the improvements. These positive updates build confidence in the client, laying the groundwork for a stable, long-term partnership.

Todd Sriro, Be.On Stone

Make Continuous Improvements 

For business success, especially in the tech space, we rely on feedback for continuous improvement opportunities. Without feedback, as a company, we can potentially waste resources on the wrong things. 

By listening and being guided by feedback, our efforts can ultimately provide maximum customer satisfaction. While some customers may have some unique issues, by and large, most issues might be common pain points that can easily be addressed in ways that enhance our quality and overall service or product delivery models.

Giota Gavala, Comidor

Improve Training Processes

Customer feedback is great because you are getting direct reviews of your product and service. It helps to either update or create an improved training plan for your new hires for better customer service. Customer service is usually the number one complaint clients have, so listening to feedback and implementing it is key to customer loyalty and the return of their business.

Michael Jankie, Natural Patch

Look for Frequently Used Keywords 

If you allow your customers to provide you with feedback, this can be a great source of information you can use to improve your business. If you collect the data from the customer feedback forms, take a look at any keywords being used or issues that seem to be the most reported on. 

If more than a few of your customers have taken the time to write to you on an issue they've experienced, there’s likely even more that didn’t tell you about it. If you effectively and promptly resolve the issue and get back to the customers who wrote to you, this will improve customer satisfaction of past and future customers.

Tom Mumford, Undergrads

Utilize Chatbots for Data Collection

In the age of eCommerce, more and more companies are sending out feedback surveys in exchange for a discount or free product. However, such a strategy has a low conversion rate and is simply another “offer” in someone's inbox. 

In order to create a more proactive approach, consider implementing a chat box function online. Have a virtual assistant answer all questions and then chart each question. Then, after 1-2 months, analyze all questions and create an FAQ landing page that proactively answers the most popular queries.

Lori Price, PixieLane

Test Products and Build a Loyal Base 

We have a network of lash experts, all of whom started out as customers, who put new products through a rigorous testing program. At our company, we rely on their product feedback so that we only have the best eyelash extension supplies to offer our potential customers. Our strategy of having products tested and approved by loyal customers is an excellent way to constantly improve what we offer and create a strong customer base.

Vanessa Molica, The Lash Professional

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