Guides 5 m October 15, 2021

How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Performance

It’s never been easier for customers to provide feedback to businesses, and do it publicly too. Back in the day, only a handful of customers used to give feedback via letter or over the phone. But thanks to the internet, there’s never been more customer feedback available than now. And that’s a very good thing.

While some businesses aren’t happy with this, fearing that negative customer feedback might negatively impact their work, feedback is actually a great resource and a goldmine when used right. Whether positive or negative, all feedback can be used to your advantage, helping you improve performance and reach your end-of-year goals.

Top 5 Reasons Why Customer Feedback Is Important

There are so many reasons why customer feedback is important – but for now, let’s go over the five most important ones:

Helping you improve your product/service. You can never be sure what your customers want if you don’t ask them. The only way you to find out is by listening to customers. By collecting feedback, you can see in what ways you can improve your product or service and increase customer satisfaction.
Showing you value your customers’ opinions. Your customers want to know they’re being listened to and that their opinions matter. By listening to feedback and using it to improve your business, you show that you care about your customers and want them to feel valued.
Improving customer experience. With the constant improvements you make to your business and product or service, you also continuously improve customers’ experience with your company and present the business in a brand new and, hopefully, better light. Fingers crossed!
Improving customer retention. Constant feedback will help you see if your customers are satisfied with your business, and show you what changes you need to make to increase their satisfaction levels. If you have happy customers, you have repeat customers who stay loyal to your brand.
Serving as social proof. So many online merchants display feedback on their websites because today’s customers trust other customers much more than they trust the business itself. When potential customers see others are satisfied with your product or service, they’ll be more trustworthy as a result.

How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Performance & Business Metrics

No matter if good or bad, feedback is invaluable to your business. If you know how to use customer feedback, you can significantly improve your performance and business metrics.

With feedback, then, you can:

Add credibility. Positive feedback shows you’re a credible and trustworthy business with integrity. By showing this publicly, you significantly increase your business performance.
Increase sales. Thanks to the social proof that comes from reviews, people will see your business as a company they want to buy from. Online reviews have a big influence on purchasing decisions. If you have good reviews, you’ll also have high sales numbers.
Show responsibility. Getting negative feedback can be the perfect opportunity to show your customers you’re willing to admit to your mistakes and change for the better.
Guide your evolution. Negative feedback is also useful because it shows you what aspects of your products your customers don’t like. When you get a negative comment criticizing your design or branding, for instance, use that feedback to make changes and do better.
Design the roadmap to your development. If you pay close attention to your feedback, you’ll notice that customers are telling you exactly what they want to see from your business. You won’t have to spend time coming up with new ideas all the time, since your customers will be giving you those ideas.
Upsell products or services. When you know what your customers need besides the product/service they already bought from you, you can promote similar items to them. This helps with upselling and cross-selling campaigns.

Tip: If you’re looking for a way to optimize your feedback collection efforts, consider using feedback forms online. Our form builder is here to help.

How Companies Use Customer Feedback

If you want some examples of how to use customer feedback the right way, all you need to do is take a look at some successful companies.

How does Nike use customer feedback?

This sportswear giant has multiple apps they use to collect data from their customers which they later transform into insights. Thanks to apps like Nike SNEAKRS, Nike Training Club, and the Nike app, they know their customers’ likes and dislikes, purchase history, and preferences. All apps are also personalized based on customer data.

Some of their apps track running and workout statistics, and that allows Nike to assess what products each user needs. And since they also have data on customer location, they combine it all to create their physical retail location strategy.

How does Apple use customer feedback?

Apple achieves great customer satisfaction rankings thanks to the innovation and improvements they make based on the knowledge they have on customers. Apple uses multiple customer feedback strategies, such as market research and feedback surveys.

These surveys are very useful because they allow Apple to collect customer insights. The company sends these surveys by email to every customer after they make a purchase. In the surveys, Apple also includes a Net Promoter Score question that measures satisfaction and customer opinion on their newest products.

How does Amazon use customer feedback?

The leader in the world of eCommerce puts a lot of effort into customer satisfaction and makes sure there’s a minimal effort on their customers’ part. Everything needs to be perfect, from delivery and ordering to return options.

They also take pride in their delivery service experience, where they use their app and social media profiles to collect customer feedback and improve the product experience. Thanks to constant feedback, Amazon has perfected its searchability, product education, and artificial intelligence.

Conclusion: How to Use Customer Feedback Effectively

Customer feedback, as well as all the methods you use to collect it, are incredibly valuable for your business. They allow you to improve performance more than anything else. But most important of all, they allow you to create personalized experiences for your customers.

Personalization brings improved customer targeting and segmentation, both of which increase conversion rates. Feedback also helps you improve your products, adds credibility, serves as social proof, and much more. It’s an invaluable resource, so use it as much as you can!