It can be scary to think about collecting customer feedback.
You might not like what you find out.
Once you launch an initiative like this, you’ll have to report the findings. But what’s the point of collecting customer feedback if the only people doing this kind of thing are companies who already feel confident that their customers love what they’re doing? That doesn’t sound very informative.
And if you think your customers might give you a lot of backlash in your feedback, that also means there’s a lot you might need to be hearing in order to make the necessary improvements to reduce those unhappy responses.
So: Should you be collecting customer feedback? Probably!
At the very least, it can help you track your progress year-over-year. If you’re doing awesome, you can be 100% positive that you never begin to slip. And if you’re not, well, it’s going to feel pretty darn awesome when you do start seeing those numbers start to trend up!
Here are some of the most common ways to start collecting customer feedback:
Customer surveys (after a download or purchase, or annually)
User testing (especially when it comes to interacting with your website or app)
Contact forms (checking boxes can be mandatory for submitting a form)
Customer service chats (great time to ask how the company is doing in general)
Contests and giveaways (can be conditional for entry into the competition)
Subscribe/unsubscribe process (asking what people expect, or didn’t like)
Social media (the most important place to engage directly with customers)
Real-time tracking (seeing how people actually engage with emails, your website, etc.)
Here’s one thing you need to know: Before you get started, you must have a plan.
It doesn’t make sense to begin collecting data without an inkling of how this information will be used. You’ll wind up without a strategic approach. You should know which areas you want to target for about three months, quarters, or years, for beneficial comparable analysis.
Think about what you hope to learn, and what you can realistically do with practical applications of this new knowledge.
If you’d like help getting started, ask Mad 4 Marketing to help you come up with a custom strategy, complete with an actionable plan to improve business based on your feedback.