If you’re not already capturing customer feedback, you could be missing out on valuable opportunities to improve and grow your business.
Customer feedback is more important than ever!
It provides you with vital information on:
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your customers’ likes and dislikes
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market trends
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how competitive your business is
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how to improve your products or services
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how to develop customer service
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the role of your online touch points
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opportunities for business growth
Below we’re taking a look at 7 key ways you can start capturing customer feedback to make informed decisions about how to improve and grow your business.
Listen on social media
Whether you’ve asked your audience to or not, it’s likely that someone is already talking about your brand online. Start listening to customers who are tagging your business in posts, or mentioning key words relating your business. Monitoring both positive and negative comments from your customers could help you to further promote your business by, for example, retweeting fantastic reviews or enable you to improve your service by acting on complaints. If you’re not already active on social media, it will be worthwhile to conduct a search, understand what users are saying about your business and consider setting up a business profile.
Choose a dedicated review site
One simple way to get started with capturing customer feedback is to choose a dedicated platform for collecting reviews. By hosting reviews on your website or directing users to a specific platform, you can encourage more customers to get involved and make review management much easier by having a centralised location to evaluate responses.
Choose an industry/product specific site
Another way to better position your business and attract reviews from your audience is to choose an industry, sector or product specific review website or platform such as TripAdvisor, Amazon reviews or Checkatrade. This more specialised or targeted approach to customer reviews should encourage more specific, higher quality reviews from customers, compared to that of a generic review platform or social media.
Let customers know you’re looking for reviews
Once you’ve decided on your review platform/s, the next steps is to let customers know about them. Start by hosting links or buttons on your website directing visitors to your review platform and encourage customers to share their thoughts, comments and ideas with you! You could also decide to develop these customer relationships by responding to individuals and thanking them for their review, answering queries or handling complaints.
Offer something in return for a detailed review
When you’re just getting started, it can be difficult to build up a solid base of reviews. If you’ve only got 1 or 2 reviews, customers might be put off or not bother if they think you’re not actively searching for reviews. An easy way to start growing your online reviews is to offer something in return. This could be something as simple as a 10% discount or extra 100 points on a customer loyalty card.
Use email marketing to promote your reviews
Another way to create awareness of your chosen online review platforms is to include a clear call to action or review button in all of your email marketing communications. You could also send personalised emails to customers a few weeks after their purchase to ask them about their experience and thoughts on the product or service.
Promote your reviews
Finally, don’t forget that customers reviews aren’t just useful for your business! Reviews act as a valuable online ‘word of mouth’ tool for potential customers. Ensure you’re sharing reviews across your website or ratings on specific items in order to help customers in their decision to purchase. Online reviews add an important touch of authenticity and reliability to your business and specific products so it’s important you’re not hiding your reviews but making the most of them!