How to Collect Customer Feedback and What to Do With It

March 16, 2015
Category: Achieve Consistent Business Success,Business Tips,Eliminate Problems and Fires,Get and Keep Your Ideal Clients

You may not realize it, but you have easy access to a goldmine of information you can use to improve your business.

Customer Feedback!

Yet, as important as customer feedback can be, most business owners don’t systematically collect or use customer feedback. You may handle customer complaints and share the occasional positive feedback with your team for encouragement, but you can do so much more with it!

Why Collecting Customer Feedback is Important

As you know, your customers are crucial for success and continuous growth of your business. And what they have to say about their experience with your business is equally important and valuable. Collecting customer feedback allows you to accomplish several things. It:

1. Shows the customer that you care about their satisfaction.
2. Helps you identify problems that hold your business back and prevents your customers from being completely satisfied with your business.
3. Enables you to resolve problems before you lose the customer.
4. Helps you turn a dissatisfied customer into a loyal customer who is happy to refer you.

As you well know, some are eager (maybe even too eager!) to provide feedback whether you ask for it or not. But others will quietly move to another company without even letting you know they had an issue. To cover all your bases, it’s important for you to systematically gather unsolicited customer feedback and to reach out to your customers to get feedback as well.

Unsolicited Customer Feedback

Your customers are free to share their opinions and feedback whether you ask for it or not. If they are not happy, they might complain to your crew, call your office, rant to their Facebook friends or write a public online review.

Not surprisingly, people tend to be more vocal (and public) about their experience when they are not happy with services. In fact, research shows that a highly satisfied customer will tell 9 people, but a dissatisfied customer will tell 22. But if you make things right, many will rave about your responsiveness and willingness to go the extra mile.

Whatever the source, it’s important that you have a procedure in place to collect the unsolicited customer feedback so that you can see the trends and use them to improve your business.

Ask Your Customers for Feedback

Because not all of your customers will freely tell you what they think, it is important that you reach out regularly to ask them. There are different ways you can do this: by phone, email survey, mail survey included with your bill and a return envelope. Do whatever works best for your business.

The key is to simply ask your customer this question: “How would you rate us on a scale from one to 10?” If it’s less than 10, follow up with a question on what you could improve to get a 10. Don’t argue—just write down the answer and thank the customer.

It’s important to note that you should always encourage honest feedback. Don’t offer incentives, such as a gift card, to customers who fill out your surveys. You want the truth, not a sugar-coated testimonial.

What to Do With Customer Feedback

So, you have all this feedback pouring in—some you requested; some just shows up online on your Yelp, Goolge Plus, Facebook or other public business listings. What do you do with all this information? Here are a few ideas.

Using Negative Feedback to Your Advantage

Let’s be honest, no one likes to get negative feedback. But if you do receive customer complaints or less than 10/10 rating, don’t panic. Look at it as an opportunity for improvement.

• First of all, never argue with a customer, especially publicly.
• Fast response is crucial. If a customer calls or emails with a problem, get back to them with an apology and a solution within 24 hours.
• Let the customer know you will use their feedback to make improvements in your business. You don’t have to follow their suggestions exactly, but make the customer feel like their feedback is valued and will be considered.
• Make a list of the problems that frequently come up in customer feedback and bring them up one by one on weekly team meetings to brainstorm solutions.
• Have someone on your team actively monitor your online reputation and track what’s being said about your business on social media and forums.
• If you receive a negative online review, publicly (and politely) respond to it and then reach out to the customer offline to fix the issue. Prompt them to update their review once the customer is satisfied.

As a business owner running a 7-figure contracting business, you should know that you can’t make everyone happy, no matter how much you try.

Do your best to achieve high customer satisfaction rates, but don’t pull your hair out over negative online reviews. In fact, multiple studies have shown that negative reviews add authenticity to your overall review profile. When your business is consistently rated 5-stars, people may get suspicious based on the “too good to be true” mentality.

Using Positive Feedback

What do you do when you get a compliment? You say “thank you” and move on. But when your business gets a compliment from a customer, you should use it to your advantage:

• If your customer is singing your praises, ask them to write an online review on Google or Yelp. Customer feedback carries more weight when it’s shared by the customer, rather than repeated by you. It’s called third-party endorsement.
• If your customer can’t leave an online review for some reason, ask them if you can use their feedback and name as a testimonial on your website.
• Identify your most vocal customers and use them when new leads ask you for references.
• If possible, track which crew/foreman gets the most positive reviews. Reward them to incentivize the rest or have them teach a workshop on customer service to other field employees.

Will This Work For My Business?

Now that you’re a 7-figure business with lots of clients, employees and moving parts, collecting customer feedback can be hugely beneficial to you. It will help you catch problems before they get out of hand, identify areas that need improvement, as well as areas of strength, so that you can build a stronger, more profitable business. And since you can’t be everywhere all of the time, gathering customer feedback can help you maintain control without having to micromanage.

But in order to make it work, you need to have a system in place. You have to commit resources to gather, analyze and use customer feedback consistently and systematically, if you want to see results. But it’s worth it!

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