How to Find out What Your Customers Are Saying About You

Did you know that 62 percent of consumers say they are more likely to buy a company’s product/service if the company asks for their opinions, according to research? Knowing what your customers are saying about your business can help you gain insights that you can use to improve your product/service and better target customer needs.

But how do you find out what your customers actually think about you? While there are many ways of collecting feedback from customers, here are the most popular ones:

Long Form-Based Surveys: These surveys are the most common form of collecting customer feedback. Long form surveys are typically survey forms that include a set of questions, which are most often sent via email.

However, one important thing to remember is that you must never ask too many questions as part of the survey, and you should strive to keep it as short as possible. According to QuickTapSurvey, “The connection between the number of questions in a survey and the time spent answering each question is not linear. The more questions you ask, the less time your respondents spend, on average, answering each question.” Essentially, the more questions you ask your survey participants, the more likely they are to rush through, ultimately affecting the quality and reliability of the data.

In order to keep the surveys short, you must only ask questions that deliver your end goals. It is also important to ensure that every question you ask serves a clear purpose.

Additionally, multiple-choice questions will usually provide answers based on your own assumptions; therefore, ask open-ended questions to know what the customer is actually thinking.

Customer Interviews: If you want to understand your customers, talk to them. By reaching out to them directly, you will be opening up conversations that wouldn’t happen otherwise. While tests and surveys offer a lot of data, they cannot tell you what your customers truly feel about your product/service. With direct customer interviews, you can also challenge any false assumptions that may have developed over time.

However, for this method to work, you have to be genuinely interested in wanting to understand any problems your customers may be facing and offer solutions. Never treat these as sales calls.

Transactional Emails: Transactional emails are triggered by user actions, such as upgrading to a new level or signing up for/exiting a service. While these emails are usually treated as customary notices, transactional emails can be used as powerful tools to start a dialogue with customers. According to a study by Experian, transactional emails receive eight times the opens compared to non-transactional marketing emails. This is because people actually want to receive these emails. For example, they want to know if they were able to successfully sign up for a particular service. By asking the right questions, you are likely to get effective responses in these emails.

Suggestion Boards: Suggestion boards allow users to collaborate on ideas with your business as well as with other users. They can use these boards to create feedback posts that can be upvoted or downvoted by other users. Posts with maximum comments or upvotes can help you discover what the majority of your consumers are seeking.

Ensure that the boards are easy to navigate, and the users are able to add new posts conveniently. The key here is to create relevant categories and make them searchable.

You can use a service such as Aha! to create suggestion boards.

Google Alerts: Google has a tool that sends you alerts in the form of emails every time a new result or page is posted about your company. All you need to do is subscribe to Google Alerts and track every word that comes up about your business.

You can use this tool to know when new information is posted that mentions you or your organization’s name, or any other parameters you set up including press releases, new articles or reviews.

Social Media: Social media networks can give you access to candid feedback from users. Therefore, in order to stay on top of what your customers (or even those who don’t use your products/services) are saying about your company on social media, sign up for alerts on every platform that offers this feature.

Another way to follow what people are saying about your brand is to use hashtags on social media sites.

A tool like Sentiment can help you track and monitor your company’s online presence by searching through social networks, photo and video sharing websites, review sites and so on to find mentions about your business.

In-App Surveys: App users are constantly coming up with ways their apps can work better for them. It could be a feature that they are looking for or maybe they found something that is broken. And usually, they will not get in touch with your customer support team unless the problem is really big.

To know what your customers are looking for, you can offer a survey while they are using the app. However, keep the survey short, and stick to two or three questions that are pertinent to the page where they’re displayed.

You can use a platform like Intercom to trigger in-app surveys.

What to Do with Customer Feedback

If you handle it right, the conversation between your brand and your consumers can become the biggest growth driver for your company. Here are three ways you can make the most of customer feedback:

Identify Areas for Product Improvement/Development: The real insight on how you can improve a product/service usually comes from the ones who use the product/service on a regular basis. Therefore, listen to your customers, as they might have some exciting ideas that you did not think of. This will not only make them appreciate your willingness to listen, but you will also be able to set yourself apart from your competitors.

One of the best examples of how customer insights can be used for product development is LEGO IDEAS. Here, anyone can submit their own designs and the ones that get more than 10,000 votes from the community undergo review. And if the review is favorable, they are turned into new LEGO sets.

Find Your Niche: Most startups are not a hundred percent confident about the verticals they need to focus on, and end up spending large amounts of money on trial and experimentation. Feedback from clients can be a good way to find your niche.

Motivate Your Employees: Use customer feedback as a secret driver to motivate your team members. For instance, if you’ve heard good things being said about a feature, let the person who built the feature know, and ensure that others know it too.

Alternately, in case of negative reviews, share them with the person who built the feature and let them talk to the angry customer directly, so that they feel in charge of that feature and will be prepared to take more ownership in the future.