The Importance of Leveraging Customer Feedback

Reviews, comments, and testimonials from customers have become an important currency in the world of ecommerce, and it’s vital that you understand how to leverage this feedback. For one, customer feedback can help you grade your business on performance in terms of products, services, and customer service. However, you can also use feedback to demonstrate that you’re a trustworthy company, and help encourage new customers to trust you with their business.

Reviews Have the Power to Make or Break

Most consumers these days don’t even consider purchasing a product without checking out reviews first, and 90 percent of them say that what they end up purchasing is influenced by what other customers have to say. In the worst case scenario, you could lose a big chunk of your potential clients just because of some bad reviews. Luckily, the opposite is true as well, and good reviews can grow your sales exponentially and serve to showcase your stellar customer service!

Insight You Can Gain from Feedback

Feedback isn’t just useful for attracting customer, it’s also a fantastic barometer for your performance as a seller and customer service provider. Whether customers are satisfied, dissatisfied, or see room for improvement, feedback gives you great insight into what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and what you could be doing better. Other invaluable information you can get from customer feedback includes:

• Who your happiest customers and possibly best promoters and advocates are
• Common problems that customers experience with your product
• Ways that you could better meet the needs of customers
• How to improve customer service
• Possible new products or upgrades
• Ways to set yourself apart from your competitors

Leveraging Feedback Improves the Customer Experience and Builds Trust

Did you know that the majority of dissatisfied customers complain by never shopping with you again? Or how about that over half of consumers are willing to pay for a better customer experience? You can find out how your company measures up through feedback, listening to your customers, and hearing what they have to say about what it’s like to shop with your company.

Not only will you be able to improve your customer service by doing this, but you’ll also convey to your customers that you care about them, their experience and that their opinions matter to you. In addition, it’s important to keep the negative reviews posted on social and review websites. Prove to the dissatisfied customer and any potential new customer that you’re willing to hear the customer out and address their needs. If you showcase your ability to fairly and constructively deal with a naysayer, you can turn a negative review into a highlight of your great customer service and maybe even win over the negative Nancy! All of this works towards the goal of building trust, fostering loyalty, and will encourage your customers to choose you over the competition.

 

Where to Find Feedback

The importance of leveraging customer feedback raises an important question: where do you find this feedback? It’s incredibly important to know where your product reviews are listed. You don’t want a negative review (or several) floating out there without your knowledge. It doesn’t hurt every now and then to do a quick search of your company online to see if you’re reviewed anywhere that you weren’t previously aware of. You have a number of options when it comes to collecting the feedback that’s already out there, and good sources of reviews include:

• Social media
• Amazon review pages
• Competitor’s reviews
• Analytics
• Google
• Yelp
• TripAdvisor

You can also generate your own feedback through review pages on your website, and by creating and distributing surveys among your customers. Once you have all that information, it’s important to incorporate testimonials, comments, and even case studies into the content on your website, landing pages, blogs, and marketing materials. Social proof works – trust us! 

Customer feedback is an integral part of doing business because when it comes down to it, customer opinions are the only ones that matter. If your customers aren’t satisfied, then there are major issues you need to address before you can expect previous customers to return or potential customers to trust you.

Leveraging feedback can help you improve your products, services, customer service offerings, and your business overall, not to mention that good reviews can also increase sales and help you build better relationships with customers.