Are you looking for ways to get more customer feedback in your business? If not you probably should. Are you relying on the 5, 10, or 15 online reviews you got last month? In most businesses less than 5% of customers provide feedback but there are so many benefits from hearing from more customers.
Here are a few reasons why getting more feedback matters and even a few tips to hear from more customers.
- Improving Customer Service – The most obvious benefit is how feedback can validate whether your employees are doing a good job and identify where there are opportunities for improvement. Do you think you are getting enough feedback already? You probably aren’t. Here is an interesting statistic. According to Lee Resources International, for every person that complains, 26 go quietly into the night and don’t say anything. A complaint is a gift and you should do whatever you can to encourage more feedback from customers.
Additionally, just the act of asking for customer feedback demonstrates that you care about the service they received. Employees know that more customers will provide feedback so they step up their game and have a greater focus on every experience. When we placed a customer service kiosk in Pita Jungle that asked customers to rate the service provided by employees, the ratings on Yelp and Google increased by 13%, which, according to a Harvard Business School report, can lead to a 5-9% increase in revenue. Check out our case study on Pita Jungle here, . Case Study – ServiceGuru
- Customer Retention and Increased Profitability – Providing great customer service helps improve customer retention. Did you know that by increasing customer retention by as little as 5%, profit can increase anywhere from 25% to a whopping 95%, according to Bain & Company.
Considering the cost to acquire a new customer can be 5 times more than retaining a current customer, what are you doing to improve retention? Getting feedback from as many customers as possible and uncovering those that tend to go away quietly (without providing any reason why) is key to improving customer retention and profitability.
- Employee Recognition – Did you know that employee recognition is the key to employee satisfaction? Despite this fact only about 35% of employees have received recognition for good work in the last year according to TalentLyft.
Providing recognition should not be something that happens occasionally. Reinforcing great work and great customer service should be something you strive for every day. If you are not collecting enough feedback or more importantly feedback that is tied specifically to your individual employees, it can be hard to identify who is doing a great job.
Find a way to gather input that is specific to the employee whether that’s tying customer transactions to service experiences or by having customers identify the employee involved.
- Customer Insights about New Products or Services – Customers are a great source of insight into what new products or services you should offer. By implementing a simple survey system within your business you can gauge interest before making a commitment to providing the product or service.
Be sure to provide both open ended questions, yes or no questions or even on a 5 star scale to determine interest.
Questions like:
“What menu item do you wish we offered?”
“Would you use a home delivery service if offered?”
“If there is one thing we could improve about our business, what would it be?”
What insights would you like to know from the customer perspective?
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I’d love to hear how you are generating and using more customer feedback. Drop me an email and Mike@serviceguru.com with your success stories.