If you’re a business owner, you already know how important customer feedback is to the overall success of your business. Like it or not, your business’s future depends on how happy your customers are with the services you provide. For a durable, long term business to succeed, it means the ability to roll with changes and keep those customers coming back for more.
The same way environmentalists take their cues from Mother Earth in hopes of a safer world for future generations, ensuring the future of your business means listening to what customers have to say and implementing it. If you’ve ever wondered about best practices for using customer feedback, read on.
Getting Help with Customer Services and Satisfaction
No one person or group can fix climate change and global warming in a day. The same is true with your business. The great news is that small businesses now have help, thanks to technology. Programs and applications like Voice of the Customer are going a long way in customer satisfaction surveys, data, and more. Voice of the Customer services helps you to build a truly customer-centric business quickly. VoC software can keep the guesswork out of customer thinking, wants, and needs, and leave you to do the implementation.
Sticking with the environmentalist analogy, consider your business’s overall sustainability. Your customers are the seeds. For your business to grow, you have to water them and do what you can to give them a quality place to depend on. From being willing to listen to their ideas and build them into your brand to being open-minded about trying new products and business model designs, your ability to find new ways to keep your customers happy is what will help your business bloom even in the hardest of times.
Implementing Customer Feedback
Change can be hard. It can be expensive, too, but that’s not always a bad thing long term. Maybe your customers have been complaining about plastic straws or waste they see when it comes to disposable products. If they’re telling you why you should go green, it’s in your best interest to listen. Use products they recommend, make a plan to reduce that amount of waste your business emits, and communicate with them about how seriously you’re taking the environmental impact and carbon footprint of your business. Let your customers know about changes you’ve made to your brand based on their feedback. Thank them, and watch as new buyers come in.
Bringing Customers into Your Brand
An easy way to make customers part of your brand is by giving them a sense of accomplishment. When you make changes based on customer feedback, celebrate it. Name a menu item after them, hold contests for the best sustainable recommendation, give out a gift card for the person with the best recycling plan, and more. Don’t forget your employees, either. They are part of your business and might even bring in new customers as well.
Maybe the pandemic has meant less money for your business. A way to a brighter future is by being open with your customers about your struggles and letting them in on how you’ve worked to become a happier person during hard times. Whether it’s that you’ve volunteered your business’ services, taken shutdown time to rethink renewable energy in your business, or even spent time off building a more sustainable life, tell them about it. By staying in contact with customers and becoming more relatable, you’re opening a space for them to become part of the process. With their ownership in your success, they’ll be more inclined to route for you.
Like any relationship, this works both ways. Take an interest in your customers, too. Consider free or charitable events on an annual basis. Become invested in what they care about, too.
At the end of the day, customer feedback will be a necessity for the future of your business. No business can survive when it’s entirely self-sufficient. Businesses are part of a team and a bigger community. By making customers and customer service a top priority, your hard work will translate into a better place for not only you but the people who support you, too.
