Customer Feedback Loops for Happier Customers and Higher Revenue
A stellar customer experience can take your company from good to great. Research from McKinsey suggests brands that can improve the customer journey will experience 10 to 15 percent higher revenues – while also lowering their costs by 15 to 20 percent. Add to that the rising expectations of customers and the importance of customer loyalty, and you can see why brands place such emphasis on “being the best” in service.
But how do you know if your business, marketing, and service strategies are working? The answer: customer feedback loops.
What Is a Customer Feedback Loop?
The customer feedback loop is a process of using customer (or employee) feedback to create better products, services, and experiences with your brand.
This practice of responding to customer feedback in a meaningful way creates a loop – when customers know that their comments and opinions are valued, they feel empowered and encouraged to keep sharing them. Your company can then use that feedback to continually improve.
Ideally, collecting, analyzing, and acting upon customer feedback should be an ongoing process. This “lather, rinse, repeat” approach can be broken down into the following steps:
- Gather – Collect feedback via multiple platforms and methods to gain the most complete picture you can
- Act – Make changes based on what your employees and customers tell you
- Analyze – To see whether the change made an impact on conversions, retention, sales, or other KPIs
- Repeat – Do the whole process over and over again as you continue to refine and improve
How and Where to Collect Feedback
Today’s customer journey is complex, with multiple entry points, and interactions splintered across distinct platforms. So how do you collect and measure data about how your customers feel about your brand, product, and/or service? There are a number of options, including:
- Surveys
- Focus groups
- 1-to-1 conversations or interviews
- Website analytics
- Online product reviews
- Feedback on returned items
- Email open and click-through rates
- Social media comments and post engagements
The best methods for data collection and analysis will depend on the particulars of your brand, your buyer’s journey, and your business goals.
When to Use Customer Feedback Loops
There’s really never a bad time to listen to your customers. But if you’re wondering when to use customer feedback loops for the best possible ROI, here are a few suggestions:
- Before launching a new product – To get insights into the right price point, packaging, market placement, and feature development
- After the initial launch – To capture initial reactions and discover low-hanging fruit opportunities for improvement
- When sales are lagging – To understand why customers are churning, and whether the problem is product, feature, or service-based
- When sales are great – To figure out which offers, messages, products, or product features are driving the most revenue (and therefore what you should keep doing or potentially expand upon)
Beyond understanding how customers react to a campaign, product, or message, capturing ongoing customer insights can lead to further product innovations, new ideas, and untapped markets.
In summary, a true feedback loop combines information with action to support a customer-oriented culture. Without information about your customers, you can’t take action. Or at the very least, you’re acting based on assumptions and guesses – which is not a solid strategy for growth.
If you’re ready to start collecting data around your product and the customer journey, let’s talk! Voccii® has decades of experience helping enterprises find ways to improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, and discover new opportunities.
