Customer feedback is imperative to the success of a business. With the increased adoption of social media, it has become increasingly simple for companies to collect customer feedback using tools such as Facebook or Twitter. However, the question remains how to collect customer feedback best and turn it into actionable insights that help businesses gain an edge over their competitors.
It is no secret that collecting customer feedback can hugely impact your business. Your customers might be able to teach you more about your product than you realize.
Customer feedback is valuable for improving the quality of your product or service and differentiating yourself from competitors. But how do you get useful information from customer feedback? In this post, we will look at ten best practices for using Voice of Customer (VoC) techniques to get customer feedback that meets your business needs.
1. Use Surveys
Surveys are one of the most common VoC techniques, but are also the most effective. They allow you to gather information from many people in a short time, making them great for getting feedback on new products or services. Surveys can be conducted online or offline, but both have advantages and disadvantages.
Online surveys are great for reaching a large number of people quickly and efficiently, but the results may not be as accurate as those from an offline survey due to self-selection bias. Offline surveys can be more challenging to administer, but they’re less likely to suffer from self-selection bias because they are administered by trained staff in person or over the phone.
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2. Conduct Interviews
One of the best ways to get real-world insight into what customers want is to conduct interviews with them. It allows you to learn how they think and feel about your brand or product and also enables you to ask specific questions that will help you improve their experience.
Interviews are quick, easy, and inexpensive – all you need is a phone and a list of questions! Even better, if you don’t have time for interviews, you can outsource them through sites like UserTesting or UserTestingNow and quickly get results.
3. Do Observations
It is an effortless VoC technique that works well when you have a small number of customers or when your customers are in one place. The idea is simple: observe your customers in action and see what they do. It can be as simple as looking over a shoulder or watching them from across the room. You can also use tools like screen capture software to take screenshots while they’re using your product. It helps you see how they use it and where they get stuck. It’s important not to interrupt them while they’re doing this — let them do their thing and then ask questions later if needed.
4. Hold Focus Groups
Focus groups are one of the most popular VoC techniques. In this method, a group of customers sit together and discuss a topic for about an hour. The moderator asks questions and observes the conversation to understand what the customers think about a particular topic or product. The focus group moderator then summarizes the discussion and provides recommendations based on the findings from all participants.
The focus group moderator should be present during all sessions and be able to collect data during breaks as well if someone needs clarification on something said earlier in the session. If you have multiple sessions scheduled for different locations or countries, make sure that there is someone from each participating location present at each session so that there is no confusion when comparing notes later on.
Monitoring social media for mentions is one of the best ways to gain insights into how customers feel about your product or service. You can also monitor social media for specific keywords and hashtags related to your brand or industry. These tools allow you to search multiple platforms and track mentions over time. Some companies even use sentiment analysis tools to determine if the comments they receive are positive, negative, or neutral.
6. Track Customer Behavior Data
Tracking customer behavior data is one of the best ways to gain valuable insights into what your customers want and need. This can be accomplished by using analytics software, like Google Analytics, which allows you to see what types of people visit your website, how much time they spend on each page, and other details about their behavior.
7. Leverage Survey Results
Surveys are a great way to get customer feedback, but there are some things you should keep in mind when creating them. First, ensure that you ask only one question at a time so that respondents don’t have trouble answering them. Also, keep your surveys short and simple so they can be completed quickly and you don’t lose respondents before they have time to answer all questions in detail. Finally, ensure that all questions are relevant to get accurate answers from respondents instead of just generalizations about their experiences with your business.
Email communication tools such as SurveyMonkey or Typeform allow you to create a survey and send it out to a list of people in your database. This makes it easy for you to get feedback from many people quickly and easily. You can also use these tools to create polls with multiple choice answers or free text fields so that users can provide their comments about something specific that they might want to be changed or improved upon in your business or organization’s product or service offering. This type of feedback is beneficial because it gives you insight into what your customers want but do not know how else to ask for it!
9. Keep a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs)
One of the best ways to reach out to your customers is by keeping a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs). This is important because most customers will have questions about your product or service, which can be answered in advance by creating an FAQ page. It’s also important to keep this page updated so that you don’t miss out on any important questions that may come up from time to time.
10. Train Staff to Ask Questions When Opportunities Arise
Training staff members to ask questions whenever they see an opportunity is one of the best ways to gather valuable customer feedback. For example, if a customer asks for help with something or mentions how happy they are with a product or service, ask them why they feel this way. It’s easy for staff members to forget that asking questions is part of their job description.
Conclusion
Whether you’re a designer, marketer, or another business owner, these techniques should help you collect valuable customer feedback. And although these ten techniques are just a sampling of the numerous VoC methods available, they can all be used with little effort or cost. You don’t need to recruit thousands of participants or spend much money to get results. Instead, the best part is that many of the techniques listed here can be implemented immediately and even while you go about your daily routine. In other words, there’s no reason not to give one a try today and start hearing what your customers have to say.
Stanley Deepak is an accomplished sales and marketing professional with 15+ years of experience. He loves tech products and book reading. He writes on philosophy and culture on LinkedIn.
Published August 19, 2022, Updated August 19, 2022
