Customer feedback is important to your business
How confronting would it be if you asked your clients what they thought of your business and what they experience when they engage you, your staff and your touch points?
This is the question that many small to medium businesses don’t ask because either the truth might be confronting or they don’t realise that this could the most important piece of information they need to ensure their business succeeds into the future.
To truly understand your core purpose, you must first ask yourself what it is.
If you are running a business to be profitable and sustainable, then sitting at the heart of that enterprise is the customer or client. Without them, how can your business succeed or even exist?
Business author and Professor Michael LeBoeuf coined the phrase “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.”
Sam Walton, creator of Walmart once said “There is only one boss… the customer. And he can fire everybody from the Chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
The key to understanding what your customers/clients think about your business is to create opportunities to seek and receive their feedback. And then once you have it, to analyse it and use that critical knowledge throughout every aspect of your business in the search for growth and improvement.
Once you have reached that point of understanding, the knowledge it brings can be the catalyst that drives your business forward.
The power of spreading what others think of your business is clear. For product and service-based business, word-of-mouth and social media can be significant drivers of repeat and new business.
You might be surprised by the percentage of people who research a business before they engage with it. What are they like? What do other people think of them? Are they trustworthy? What’s their credibility like?
By utilising the proven methodology of reviews and testimonials to showcase and enhance your business’ performance and capability, your reach is exponentially magnified. With the nature of internet, online reviews and testimonials have the greatest reach, but using them in your print marketing and engagement can be a valuable way to enhance your messaging.
The most effective places to seek positive reviews and testimonials is:
- Existing satisfied customers/clients
- Long-term business relationships
- Internal staff and team members
- Ad hoc customers/clients to test against existing relationships
Existing customers/clients
This feedback cohort is the most important source because they already deal with you and know that the experience is a positive one. You already have a trust relationship. As their experience has been positive there is good likelihood that your request for a review or testimonial will be met favourably. You may even be able to leverage your relationship in order to guide them towards feedback about a specific area your business if you need it.
Long-term business relationships
There is an existing trust relationship with those business collaborators and partners that you have been dealing with for an extended period of time. Even though the relationship may be different to the ‘business-customer’ transactional relationship, the fact that there has been a long term ‘peer-peer’ relationship counts for a lot as most business will only form sustainable relationships with other businesses that they can trust and feel valued engaging with.
Internal staff and team members
You should never discount the power of using your own people to spread the word about your business. Don’t underestimate the nature of networks. Even a small internal team has their own familial and social networks that can drive volumes of review feedback.
Ad hoc customers and clients
Bias is the element in any feedback loop that has the potential to skew your results. For you to understand the truth of how the wider world sees your business you need to capture the feedback of ad hoc customers/clients to test against the feedback you are getting from existing and satisfied customers/clients.
How to go about sourcing your reviews and testimonials
Like every other process that you employ in your business, it is important to create a strategy around how to source your reviews.
The best time to engage with customers/clients, even trusted, positive ones, is immediately after their experience in order to capture that positivity.
Your feedback loop should be a structured and ongoing process, so you could automate it via your CRM or have a consistent staff member reaching out to a defined prospect list by email. Your list consists of known and regular customers/clients so you already have access to their contact details (name and email address).
For the ad hoc feedback you are trying to capture, you will need to formulate a methodology for getting access to names and emails from those unknown customers/clients.
- Point of sale request for name and email
- QR code on receipt or sign at point of sale
What sort of information are you going to capture?
In order to make the most of the opportunity, you should seek to give some guidance to those you are sourcing feedback for review and testimonials.
Some guidelines might include:
- Did our staff greet you by name and make you feel welcome and valued?
- How was the atmosphere and environment when you visited our business?
- What was your purpose for engaging with us?
- Did our staff assist you to achieve your purpose?
- Did you have a positive experience dealing with our business?
- Did you experience any problems or issues engaging with us?
- Did we fall short, meet or exceed your expectations?
- What would you say to another customer/client about who hasn’t engaged with us before?
The purpose of this type of feedback is to capture a surface level view of how customers/clients see and engage with your business.
If you receive specific feedback about aspects of your business that need attention then ensure that you deal with it immediately. If one customer/client has seen something that you need to fix then you can bet that others are seeing/experiencing it too.
Platforms to host your reviews
There are a wide variety of platforms that host reviews and testimonials. The important thing is to identify the platform(s) that are going to be the most effective for your business.
- Your own website
Specific industry website – depending on your business (eg Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc)
Presenting your reviews and testimonials creatively
There are lots of ways to showcase the feedback you have gathered in order to impress new customers/clients.
- Your website is a good starting point for using your reviews and testimonials. But make sure you place them in the most visible pages to make sure you are making the most of the opportunity for new customers/clients to see them.
- Social media has become a powerful way to showcase your business. The particular platform you choose will depend on the demographic that your business appeals to most.
- Videography trumps photography trumps just words.
- Quirky and unique trumps plain and repetitive.
- Use colour theory to choose the most suitable colour scheme for your target audience.
- Understand the ‘Less is more’ principle for capturing attention, especially when using text.
- Use the review as part of the overall story of your business. It is not an end in itself. Your prospective customer/client firstly needs to understand how your business can benefit them and this review/testimonial is a positive reinforcement of that message from an independent third party to invoke trust.
- Including a suitable image(s) of real people will humanise your business and make it relatable.
An important point to finish with is that you need to be constantly monitoring your feedback loop to leverage the best value from it. And when someone gives you a good review, ALWAYS return the favour and reply to them with a positive comment and thanks. A potential customer/client will notice your follow up and see that you are a proactive, grateful and sincere business – one that is worth another look!
Keep an eye on our website where we will soon talk about “how to analyse and manage negative reviews”.
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