Considering customer feedback is essential to succeed in business today.  Luckily, there are numerous ways to collect such data, either by passively receiving it or actively seeking it out. There are many reasons to collect this information.  Some of it obvious, such as finding out what you are doing right and what you could be doing better.  Other reasons are less obvious, such as the fact that if you are noticeably seeking customer feedback, you must believe in your own products and sincerely want your customers to be happy with them.

In order to collect customer feedback, you’ll want to find more than one method and make sure you have an effective means to compile, store, and access the information.  First, let’s take a look at some of the best ways to get quality customer feedback.

How to Get Top Quality Customer Feedback

#1 Live chat

You see it often on websites lately.  A chat window pops-up automatically as soon as you arrive on the website asking if you have any questions.  This can also be very effective to receive feedback.   While live chatting with your customers, take into consideration any unsolicited feedback they provide.  Whether or not they provide that type of feedback, ask them outright for direct feedback.

#2 Send Emails

Once your customers have had ample time to use your product or service, send emails to ask for feedback.  Often, customers don’t think to provide feedback unless they have a complaint.  Make sure you reach out to those types of customers via email for their thoughts, reviews, testimonials, or simply raw feedback.

#3 Conduct Surveys

Conducting brief and simple surveys is a very effective way to get feedback.  Surveys will allow you to ask pointed questions about different aspects of your product or brand and allow for honest feedback.  There are numerous online survey software options available.  Some with templates for customer feedback, such as SurveyMonkey.  Or, you can use a service such as Bizrate to send surveys and collect the information for you.  Allowing for the opportunity to respond to surveys anonymously will help you get accurate information, even from those that might be too timid to give negative feedback with their name attached.

#4 Social Media

Social media has so many benefits for marketers in this digital age.  Asking for customer feedback is no different.  Reach out to your customers via your company’s various social media platforms by private message or post a survey or request for feedback.  Some of them offer ways to conduct polls that may interest your customers because it is fun and easy to participate.  You’ll also want to make sure you are actively listening for any unsolicited feedback by finding mentions of your products or brand.  Zendesk found that customers communicate bad experiences on social media 49% of the time and good experiences only 38% of the time.  You’ll be more likely to get feedback on some of those good experiences if you ask for them.

#5 Measure 

Using a Net Promoter Score (NPS), you can get direct measurable data by asking questions to your customers and asking for a response on a scale of 0 to 10.  This type of hard, measurable data will allow you to measure more objectively how you are doing.  Asking for this type of feedback on a regular basis will help you find trends in how you are doing month to month, for instance.  Retently put together a very good list of NPS survey question and response templates to help solicit this type of information.

#6 Ask for All Feedback

It’d be nice to get all positive feedback all the time, but it’s just not possible.  Make sure you ask for any and all feedback and not just the good stuff.  This not only shows your customers that you really care what they think, but that you want to improve whatever you can to make their experience better.

#7 Ask Your Customers Directly

Let’s not lose sight of asking for feedback the good ol’ fashioned way:  ask them directly whenever you have the opportunity to speak to them.  If you happen to be talking to them about your next latest and greatest product, ask them how their current one is doing.  If you come across someone using your product, ask them what they think.  There is a number of ways to make these types of individual interactions happen.   Take advantage of these interactions by asking your customers directly.

What to Do With Your Customer Feedback

Now that you have all of your feedback, what do you do with it?  This is where a solution such as an effective customer relationship management (CRM) software can help.  CRMs allow you to collect all of the feedback you’ve received and store them with each individual customer.  This will help you with your future interactions by knowing what they like and dislike about your products.

Agile CRM by 500apps is one such solution that not only allows you to manage all of your customer contacts but allows you to automate your sales, marketing and service capabilities.  It is an all-in-one solution that can combine all of your contact management, project management, email marketing, and much more in one very affordable app.

Once you have your customer feedback and you have implemented any improvements you deem appropriate, you will continually notice an increase in customer satisfaction and, ultimately, an increase in sales.

If you would like to see if Agile CRM is right for your team, give it a try for free for your first 10 users.