Collecting customer reviews should be part of any business strategy. Using them in a way that has a real impact may be challenging. However, customer feedback business growth is achievable with the right plan.
Long-term business success requires many elements. A customer experience strategy that leverages feedback is crucial. It’s time to learn how you can create this in your organization. Find out about the link between feedback and customer retention. Then, find out how to use feedback to innovate and the customer feedback tools that help.
More Than Stars: The Real Power of Feedback
Reviews from your customers help you establish social proof. Almost every potential customer reads reviews. When there are many and most are positive, it boosts your credibility and reputation. Both are essential for growth.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. A star review isn’t really customer feedback. It’s a passive response.
You want more details for it to be actionable.
So how do you get customer feedback that fuels business growth?
A customer experience strategy is the gateway to understanding customer satisfaction impact. It can then positively shape your business.
There are two distinct avenues for this:
- Collecting solicited customer opinions through surveys and questionnaires
- Monitoring unsolicited customer feedback on websites, social media platforms, and review sites
Both are vital in transforming this customer intelligence into actionable steps. What you have direct control over is the solicited feedback. It’s critical to evaluate how you’re pursuing this now and if it’s useful.
For example, if you only send a Net Promotor Score (NPS) survey, it’s only one question. It only asks if they’d recommend you to a friend or colleague. It’s a rated scoring of 0 to 10. It assesses customer loyalty but usually lacks context.
More open-ended specific questions provide more feedback. These surveys take more time to complete versus NPS. So keep these surveys brief and relevant to the customer.
You may even incentivize people to respond with a future discount or other “reward.” Motivating consumers to reply can boost the number of responses you receive.
This invaluable information then has the ability to impact your next moves. Business decisions that customer feedback can influence include:
- What products and services you should keep, expand, or drop
- Identifying friction in the customer journey to correct it
- How you train and encourage employees who interact with customers
- Operational changes that boost efficiency
- Customer retention and loyalty strategies
- Predicting customer behavior and responding proactively
You make lots of business decisions every day. Customer feedback is the customer’s voice, and it should have a place in these processes. When it does, you have a customer-centric outlook. It reveals the links between feedback and customer retention.
The Link Between Feedback and Customer Retention
The feedback of a customer has much to do with how loyal they’ll be to your company. When there is dissatisfaction in the feedback, it becomes much harder to retain customers.
What Drives Loyalty?
Understanding this complex connection starts with knowing what drives loyalty. One way to do this is with CSAT, a customer satisfaction model. It’s a rating of 1 to 10, with higher numbers expressing the greatest satisfaction.
The survey is specific to the product or feature, revealing how pleased they are with it. You can spot trends in data for what you’re doing well and what needs work.
You want to know what’s the root of whether a customer remains loyal or doesn’t. Based on responses, you can track the feedback as it relates to their own definitions of satisfaction. This includes the quality of the work or the responsiveness of staff.
To do this well, you need a feedback-retention loop.
The Feedback-Retention Loop
There are two areas to focus on in the feedback-retention loop. This “loop” is an essential part of ensuring feedback drives retention. It has these components:
- Gathering: Using all methods to gain feedback from customers
- Segmenting: Defining groups of customers that would have feedback differences (e.g., new customers vs. existing ones)
- Analyzing: Applying customer feedback tools to find trends and patterns in the data
- Acting: Taking steps to change or fix processes, services, or products to meet customer expectations
Why is the feedback-retention loop so vital?
It reveals hidden problems because they’re responding objectively. They will bring up pain points you weren’t aware of because of your subjective perspective. Bringing these to light can help you with minimizing customer churn.
Churn Indicators
The other link between feedback and customer retention is uncovering churn risk. What are you looking for in feedback that could hint at churn risk?
Low CSAT or NPS scores are indicators of churn. Beyond a simple low rating, you’ll need to analyze the data to reveal its insights. If the customer submits responses to open-ended questions, you can find the causes of dissatisfaction.
It’s not just solicited feedback to consider. You can also add context by searching for reviews from customers on third-party sites. Another option is reviewing past interactions they have had with customer service.
You’ll need a workflow for responding to these to stop the creep of churn. Otherwise, customers will assume their feedback and business mean little to you.
If available, real-time customer insights can allow you to resolve the issue immediately. Doing so shows your unfailing commitment to their satisfaction. It can be very effective in building stronger relationships.
Using Feedback to Innovate and Improve Operations
Customer feedback business growth also aligns with innovation and improvement in your operations. There may be gaps, inefficiencies, or other problems in your workflows. Customers feel and experience these.
Innovation Impacts
Feedback can directly tie into your innovation efforts. These responses provide insights that should influence how you innovate your services.
What is customer feedback innovation? It’s introducing new ideas and technology to enhance products or services. These initiatives should improve customer experience and satisfaction.
These can be big or small. Here are some scenarios:
- You may learn that a service repeatedly has low scores and numerous complaints. With specific information, you can either revamp it or discontinue it.
- A brand you use in projects may have consistent issues, which tells you it’s time to replace it.
- You identify a service that many customers request in their surveys. It’s an indication you should look into it and create a plan to make it happen.
Some of the best ideas come directly from your customers. You want to meet their needs, and feedback provides practical information to help you accomplish this.
Improving Operations
To achieve improvement in workflows, begin by digging into the data. You’re looking for patterns in operational workflows that impact customer satisfaction. Some examples include:
- A lack of confirmation or reminder notifications (if absent, customers could feel you didn’t communicate effectively)
- Expectation gaps for customers if they didn’t have clarity around their responsibilities to ready an area for work
- Customers not having information on technicians coming to their homes, which could make them uncomfortable
These operational disconnects are all solvable. By using customer engagement technology, you can:
- Strengthen communication
- Set expectations
- Inform customer of who’ll be working at their property
Innovations and improvements don’t happen by chance. A foundation for collecting and analyzing feedback is necessary. It starts with having the right customer feedback tools.
How Tools Like pulseM Turn Feedback into Growth
Technology is a pillar of customer feedback business growth. Having review management software as part of your tech stack lets you automate and track feedback.
An example of this platform is pulseM. Let’s review the capabilities it provides:
- Streamline review requests. Use pulseM to automate messages requesting review and feedback.
- Manage online reputation. Every review is part of your online reputation. The software enhances positive reviews while enabling a fast response to negative ones.
- Access actionable data. The platform does the feedback analysis for you. As a result, you can view insights and take steps to innovate or improve.
- Keep customers aware. Send confirmation texts and appointment reminders. It can also deliver bios of the technicians arriving. Customers appreciate receiving these communications.
- Incentivize employees. pulseM also has built-in employee incentives when they earn reviews. This motivation translates to technicians reminding customers about leaving feedback.
- Continue conversations. You can use two-way texting to interact with customers after the service call is complete. Live chat is also available for online visitors. More communication and addressing needs lead to higher customer satisfaction.
- Nurture existing customer relationships. Continue marketing to current customers. It will evolve, and pulseM has features for customer marketing. It assists with strategic engagement, which fosters repeat business.
All these features and their benefits are available. When put into motion, they deliver the business outcomes you desire, including:
- Increases in reviews, which bolsters your reputation and reliability
- Higher team member engagement, which usually correlates to better experiences for customers
- Revenue growth as a result of customers remaining loyal and recommending you to peers
- More efficient workflows, which save time and make technology simpler for employees
- Less manual work for staff with automation features in customer review management software
Customer feedback for business growth can be a strong pillar for your company. By seeking and analyzing it, you can make data-driven decisions. These may enable customer retention and increase revenue.
Key Takeaways for Growth-Minded Businesses
- Ask open-ended questions to get more context.
- Respond to positive and negative reviews.
- Analyze all feedback to determine loyalty drivers, areas of dissatisfaction, and trends.
- Build feedback loops into business processes.
- Prioritize continuous improvement.
- Compare review management software for home services.
Get started on this last takeaway today by booking a demo with pulseM.