No matter the industry, the product, or the consumer, customer feedback is always essential. This is not a revolutionary concept – any smart business knows that taking customer feedback, both positive and negative, into consideration is the only way to ensure that you stay current and relevant.
Here are some of the reasons customer feedback is critical:
- Customer feedback is central to understanding your customers’ needs and developing your customer service strategy. After all, if you don’t know what they want, or what customers believe is working or not working, how can you improve on what you currently offer or deliver something that meets those needs?
- On that same note, customer feedback can help you to understand customer behaviour, and this personal and demographic data can give you the knowledge to assist in personalizing the customer experience and ensuring that people feel valued.
This is all great – but how do you use that feedback?
- Create fans! Social media has become an important medium when it comes to feedback about a company. Customers who don’t return because of a poor customer experience seldom communicate their dis-satisfaction to the company. They do tell many friends though – which can adversely impact your bottom line. Truly hear your customers’ message about their views, opinions and feelings about your services and products – and use that information. Respond to any comments quickly, especially those online!
- Develop loyalty programs. Don’t just collect customer feedback – thank those individuals and show your appreciation for that feedback through rewards or incentives – they are, after all, helping you out by providing it.
- Share that feedback with your team to ensure unification. Keeping everyone informed helps employees gain a sense of purpose and helps to create transparency within an organization. It also helps everyone remain on the same page.
In order to reap the benefits of customer feedback – both negative and positive – this feedback needs to be taken seriously, in a timely fashion. Take ownership of an issue and work hard to remedy it. In order to bring about change, you first need to know why and what those changes should be – otherwise what is the point – and you need to actually use that information to enact change.
The companies that realize the value of customer feedback, both positive and negative, and react promptly to these opportunities to enhance their customer experience will enjoy long term growth.
For more about customer feedback and making improvements, especially with regard to sustainable packaging, please contact Packaging Technologies Inc. by calling 1-800-303-5883.
