Don't Be Afraid to Ask for Customer Feedback

Are you struggling to hone in on your brand’s best message and how to share that story with your customers? Or, worse yet, are you seeing an unsettling trend of customers failing to renew and sales declining month after month? If so, it’s time to gather some customer input. Here are some creative ways to capture your customer feedback and use it to correct course and move toward better retention and sales.

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1. Customer Satisfaction Surveys

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This is a tried and true method of gathering customer input for a reason: it works. We like, and use ourselves, the Net Promoter Score, but you can always create simple surveys in SurveyMonkey and many other marketing automation platforms. Remember to ask specific questions, and leave room for further explanation.

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Next, decide how to use customer satisfaction survey results. Some useful approaches include routing product complaints directly to the product department and/or meeting weekly with the executive team to share customer issues and brainstorm resolutions. However you make it happen, the point is that you have to act on the feedback you receive.

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2. Get Personal

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Most businesses don’t sell the way people used to, person-to-person over coffee or lunch, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get honest feedback by spending some time with your customers. This isn’t a scalable solution since it takes more time than other methods, but it could lead to information goldmines.

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We recommend reaching out to the top 10 percent of your best customers and inviting them to a meal, or even a focus group of customers at your office. This will make them feel valued, and will get you real, unfiltered feedback into why some customers have been leaving and your sales have been falling. You may even learn some interesting feedback that leads to innovation ideas for your team.

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3. Review Your Reviews

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Review sites can be tough to read, but they can provide a wealth of insight into prospect and customer perspectives. Make a plan to review your reviews every few weeks, in-depth. Gather them and share them with the team members who can help you act on what information you’ve gathered. Whenever possible, answer back directly and publicly to anyone who has taken the time to leave you a comment. This is a best practice that shows other potential buyers you take customer input seriously.

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After taking these steps, you’ll have a much clearer idea of what stories you need to tell in order to resonate with your customers. You’ll know what needs to be fixed, or at least further evaluated, to improve sales and customer retention. All of this takes time, but the end results are wildly worth it. Need help executing this? Give us a call.