An unhappy customer who tells you what they don't like is not an enemy, but your helper. It is a person who gives you the opportunity to grow. Learn to see an unsatisfied customer as your best friend.
Selpway Trading ltd specialists told us about the ways to collect feedback and how to use it.
Ways to gather feedbackCustomer feedback. This can be testimonials on your website, on your company's social networks, on feedback service sites, etc. You can collect feedback when communicating via private messages, feedback can be presented in the form of videos, audio recordings - all according to your taste (and with the customer's consent, of course).
Social media analysis. Many customers use social media to express their opinions about products and services. Analysing this feedback can help you understand what customers think about your products, what image is being created, what they are happy with and what they would like to change and improve.
Targeted research. In this case, you carry out targeted research yourself or use specialist companies that offer services to collect feedback and analyse the information obtained.
Directed research methods:
- Questionnaires. You can send a questionnaire to a customer after they have received a service or purchased goods from your company. You can also use your customer base and send questionnaires to everyone on a topic of interest to you.
- Interview. You communicate with the customer online or offline. During the interview you can find out a lot of interesting and useful information about their experience of interacting with your product or service.
Whether you use a questionnaire or an interview depends on the purpose of your research. If you already know the specific questions you want to ask, you can create a questionnaire that lists the questions and answer options. This will make it easier for the client to answer.
When is the best time to conduct an interview? When you are researching a topic on which you have not yet formed an opinion or gathered enough information to formulate all the questions in the questionnaire. During the interview, the client may not only answer the questions you ask, but also provide additional information that you had not considered. In the early stages of gathering customer feedback, interviews are preferable.
- Focus groups. In this approach, you invite not just one customer to be interviewed, but several at the same time. Small groups of people meet and, with the help of a moderator, discuss a given topic. This option is often used by large companies - it is labour intensive and requires specialist skills. But it can save you money when it comes to making expensive decisions, such as what kind of ad to run.
- You can immediately test your hypotheses on a small sample of the target audience. Group discussion brings up many different aspects of the research. Many participants will open up and talk more about topics related to your product or service as the research progresses.