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Are you looking to take your business to the next level? Ask your customers for honest feedback. Knowing what’s on your customers’ minds can help you deliver a service that meets their expectations, solves their problems, and fulfills their needs.
It's important to gather feedback in a smart way. Consider these questions before you start collecting feedback:
- What part of the customer experience do I want to improve?
- What will I do with the information that I collect?
After outlining your goals, begin looking at the best ways you can gather feedback from current and new customers.
One-on-One Customer Feedback
Feedback collection can happen anywhere and at any time! Why not start collecting feedback when your customer is visiting your business for a scheduled appointment or class. Prepare a script or dialogue that you plan to have with each client before their arrival. Rehearse your script ahead of time to get into the flow of collecting feedback. Before long, you will find yourself naturally working questions in as a part of your routine. Save feedback collected as customer notes. in your customer’s profile so you can retrieve that information at any time.
Customer Feedback Surveys
Although creating a survey takes a little more strategy, they provide an opportunity to poll your customers on questions that might go unanswered during one-on-ones. Good tips to remember when you’re building your customer surveys: keep them short, ask questions with your end-goal in mind, and ask one question at a time!
The best time to ask your customers to fill out a quick survey is at the end of their service. Prepare your materials and have your surveys ready to go with a clipboard and pen. Make this process seamless and quick. If you’re using booking software like Vagaro which offers built in email marketing tools and a form builder, it’s really easy to build and send surveys. Once clients have completed their survey, their responses will be saved to their customer profile for you to view later.
Customer Feedback on Social Media
Staying up to date with social media can provide useful, candid feedback from customers. If the social media platform has a nifty search engine, you can look up relevant hashtags, location tags, and key terms to see what others are saying about your business.
Beyond direct comments and mentions, you can also collect information through the built-in polling tools such as Instagram Story Poll or Twitter Poll. Social media polls are a fun way to build your brand, engage with your audience and gain invaluable feedback.
Online Reviews
Love it or hate it, just about every business has online reviews. Sites like Facebook, Google, and Yelp contain a wealth of customer feedback just waiting for you to review. As much we would like to dismiss online reviews, they’re not something you want to ignore completely. According to this Nielsen Study, 4 out of 5 users visit sites like Yelp when preparing to spend money. In fact, around 72% of consumers have mentioned that they trust online reviews. just as much as personal recommendations. There will always be a few negative reviews, but don’t let them scare you. Having a balance of reviews gives your business more credibility. Take the negative reviews with stride and use the resulting insights to improve your service. In time, quality reviews will roll in and outweigh the bad ones.
Incentives for Customer Feedback
If you struggle to get answers from your customers, it may be time to introduce an incentive. Incentives can increase survey response rates by 5 to 20 percent. When planning incentives, make sure It's something you can financially handle. Incentives can be anything from a discount, a giveaway, or an account credit.
By being pro-active and regularly asking for customer input, you can easily and cheaply gain valuable insights to guide your business decisions. The bonus: By asking clients for feedback, you are making them feel valued and heard. As a result, they are more likely to support and stay with your brand.