7 Ways To Fuel Your Business With Customer Comments And Testimonials
Whether you are looking for a fresh way to approach your target market or an additional
product or service to sell to your current customer base or you simply want to keep your finger on the pulse of customer satisfaction, having formal, consistent outreach to your customers soliciting their feedback is crucial to growing your business. While there are dozens of reasons for knowing what is on the minds of your customers, here are seven important benefits that business owners can gain from customer comments and testimonials.Having a process for receiving customer feedback and testimonials proves your commitment to listening and your openness to dialog. It sends a message that customer feedback matters and that any instances of surpassing or disappointing customer expectations is likely to be noticed by management. Another advantage to be had when systematically inviting and gathering customer feedback is that the benefits the customers speak to (what is it about your products and/or services that has helped them) is more likely to be the benefits that will resonate with and attract future customers. Listen for the priority and value they give to particular products and services. It may indicate changes that would make your marketing messages more powerful.
No matter your products, services or market; it is not unusual to have marketing materials, website content, fulfillment letters, etc. that are ridden with jargon, acronyms, and phrases of murky meaning. The third benefit of customer feedback is the chance to listen carefully to the vocabulary of your customers and use that language to replace the hackneyed phrases and jargon. Your messaging will be resuscitated, crisp, specific and, most importantly, more appealing to future prospects.
The fourth benefit of consistent customer feedback is that customer ideas and suggestions can help you profitably expand your portfolio. It is easier and more profitable to sell to existing customers than to try to sell to new customers, so who better than existing customers to provide ideas on how you might encourage repeat business by adding to the current product and service offering?
Customer comments can provide excellent ideas for blog and website content. People visiting your website or blog are probably curious about what others have to say about your company. Also, frequent content additions to your blog and website is attractive to the search engines and will start to boost your organic ranking. Customer comments may result in new key words that you may wish to focus on.
Customer feedback is the opportunity to transform a customer of convenience into a raving fan. The sixth advantage is that if you receive information that a customer had less than a stellar experience, addressing it quickly and with sincerity goes a long way in preserving the relationship and may be the needed attention (as well as internal correction) to allow that tentative customer to become an enthusiastic fan. Additionally, if it's not an isolated incident, and instead it turns out to be a systemic problem causing the negative feedback, you have the opportunity to fix the problem before it becomes an issue for other customers.
The final benefit is uncovering frequent negative feedback from a single customer that is unreasonable and not due to a product flaw, and regardless of your staff going above and beyond to assist this customer, may indicate that this is a customer that needs to be fired or urged to find another alternative. There are some people that you will not be able to make happy and if they are a toxic customer (and toxic customers do exist) it could be that the time has come to say enough's enough and that it's in everyone's best interest to sever the relationship.
There are four core questions that customers need to be asked: What caused you to begin looking for the product/service? Why did you choose our company? What advantages have you seen since purchasing our product/service? Is there anything we could do better? The open-ended nature of these questions allows customers to address the details that are important to them (versus ranking items on a scale that may or may not be important to them at all). When you receive their comments, let them know that their comments have been read and thank them for taking the time. When employees are praised in the comments, recognize the employee. If action is required, let the customer know immediately what you intend to do and when you plan to do it. Encourage ongoing communication. By putting this simple process in place, you will soon see positive results in your business.
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