If there's one area where entrepreneurs can agree, it's that the key to any successful business is consistently delivering what customers want. Without a happy customer base making repeat purchases and recommending your business to others, even the best goods and services can go unnoticed.
To keep your customers coming back, it's important to gather genuine, actionable feedback about what your company can do better. However, not all customers are always so forthcoming with their opinions, and some may be turned off by time-consuming questionnaires. So what's the most effective way to gain detailed customer feedback?
The leaders at YEC share some of their strategies for finding out what customers really think.
1. Be Funny
Never underestimate the power of humor. People love when founders and businesses can poke fun at themselves. I once told a client "I have a bet with one of my teammates that I can get you to tell me two things we can improve on. If I can't, I lose $100. Please don't make me lose $100. They said if I win I get a free lunch tomorrow!" The client laughed hysterically and, not wanting to leave me sans lunch, gave me two pieces of feedback when before that he had said "Everything was great. No complaints!" - Kim Kaupe, The Superfan Company
2. Use A Pop-Up Survey
One way to to get customer feedback is to trigger a pop-up on your site with a quick survey asking customers for feedback on your product and/or the next features they would like you to build. Make sure the pop-up is smart, and not annoying. One way to do this is to use an exit-intent pop-up that only appears as the user is about to leave your site. Other "polite" popups include slide-ins and sticky headers. If you want to increase the amount of feedback even more, you can offer them a coupon code with a percent off in exchange for the feedback. - Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
3. Ask Purposeful Questions
Asking Socratic questions that elicit a meaningful response is a great way to get real-time feedback from customers that can turn into delivering more happiness. Asking thoughtful questions about their goals, how happy they are with how things are going and ones that avoid a simple "yes" or "no" can majorly help. We have incorporated a Customer Happiness Survey that goes out to all projects that we launch and the feedback has been very impactful. Some of the clients we expected to be extremely happy and positive still had insight into areas that we could improve. Customers that we felt were going to lay into us over a certain issue ended up being very happy with the overall body of work. The feedback we received from asking great questions helped us steer future projects much better. - Joel Mathew, Fortress Consulting
4. Incentivize Feedback
The easiest way to receive genuine and actionable feedback is to encourage feedback of any kind from as many people as possible. And the simplest way to accomplish this is to provide some sort of incentive for those who do so. You've probably noticed cashiers at many retail outlets and fast food restaurants highlighting a section of your receipt asking for customer feedback. The most successful of these campaigns have been those that offer some sort of reward in return, such as a free or heavily discounted product. Find a way to implement this strategy into your own business and you should see a significant increase in customer feedback. Then, you can sort through this raw data and identify common sticking points or concerns that should be addressed in order to move forward. - Bryce Welker, Crush The CPA Exam
5. Create A Facebook Community
Building a community around your brand is a key to success! Having direct access to your client base in an open community allows you to create discussions about current products, services and create surveys for new products. Facebook groups are a real-time approach to gaining customer feedback as most people are on Facebook daily. It's much easier to acquire this data via social media as people are already on it opposed to having to send someone back to your brand's website. This strategy will also show your customers you are open to their feedback which will be a huge win for your business. - Mikey Moran, Private Label Extensions
6. Target Clients Who've Turned You Down
I’m never pleased to find out I didn’t win a project, but I do relish the opportunity to get very blunt feedback from whomever I pitched to. The key element there is that they have nothing to lose from just telling you how it is, and they might even feel a sense of obligation to give you actionable feedback after all the effort you put in that turned out to be for nothing. Look for customers who might be in a similar situation and gather info from them. It’s similar to how doing an exit interview can be an excellent way to gather forthright and blunt feedback. - Ryan D Matzner, Fueled
7. Use Conversational Forms
People don't like filling out long surveys and many of them will start and then become bored and quit. So in the event that you need your customers to give you a lot of detailed feedback, make sure your surveys are conversational. Conversational forms are more enjoyable for your customers to fill out. Instead of filling out an answer and having to scroll down or click to the next question, conversational forms ask one question at a time and then automatically move on to the next question. It's more like a face-to-face conversation and it boosts form completion. - Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
8. Ask Immediately
At my business, we use a feedback software after every single appointment that texts clients and asks them about their experience working with us. This helps rapidly understand where any issues arise, and give us the opportunity to address and remedy problems straightaway (before they get to online review sites like Yelp). We also get a lot of feedback when we try something new, and this helps us make a more informed decision going forward. - Rachel Beider, PRESS Modern Massage
9. Ensure Confidentiality
Advise your consumers that their response will confidential and anonymous. If users know the information will be confidential and anonymous they will be likely to provide candid feedback. Some consumers may hold back on their true feelings if the response is not anonymous due to fear of souring their relationship with you. Therefore, soliciting feedback via Google or other third-party companies who publish the responses may not work well if you want honest and candid responses from your clients. The drawback to this philosophy is if clients have praise about your services the praise will not be published and visible to potential clients researching your company. My advice would be to use a hybrid system of collecting both confidential and public responses. - Matthew Podolsky, Florida Law Advisers, P.A.
10. Analyze Live Chat Transcripts
Reviewing transcripts of live chats can be time-consuming, but this is one of the best ways to get genuine, valuable customer feedback. By analyzing the chats, you will be able to identify inefficiencies, and none of the information will be tainted by other potential customer biases. The most frequently mentioned topics will be those issues that you should address if you want to better serve your customers. Also, unlike surveys or online feedback platforms, you don’t have to ask the customers to do anything. - Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker
11. Observe Customer Actions
This is especially relevant for SaaS or other software businesses, but it works for everything from websites to delivering physical products. The solution is to observe customers in the wild and see how they interact with your offerings, and where they get hung up. As the creator of your business, you're very clear on how things work, but seeing things through the eyes of customers is always going to provide insights. One reason you want to observe is because people may say one thing to be nice, but what they actually think and do might be a totally different thing. Seeing where people get stuck and frustrated is also something that customers might not want to share for fear of looking dumb - so observation is key here. - Nathalie Lussier, AccessAlly
12. Make Feedback The Culture
Inviting customers to feel part of the culture of the company will help them express what they think about the service they're receiving in a more focused way. In our company, even though we interact with a lot of customers, we have the chance to listen to each one of them at least once a month and provide customized answers to their requirements. - Alfredo Atanacio, Uassist.ME
