Closing the Gap: How Feedback Can Perfect Your Customer Experience

A gap often exists between the type of customer service you think you are giving your customers and the reality of what your customers are experiencing. Thankfully, feedback can be the means to close this gap and perfect your customer experience so that what you think you are giving your customers is actually what they are experiencing when interacting with your brand. Read on to learn more about closing this gap and supporting your customers to boost loyalty and loyalty.

What is Customer Experience?

Before looking deeper into how feedback can change the way you interact with customers and eventually impact their experience overall, it’s helpful to look at what a customer experience is in the first place. A customer experience is any interaction between customers and a business. It includes all stages of the customer funnel or buying journey and can include marketing, customer service, and even the ease with which a customer interacts with a brand. Most customers’ experiences range from flawless to infuriating, leaving them feeling neglected, misunderstood, and simply not heard.

Why Customer Experience Matters?

Your customer experience is immensely important to the overall success of your business. Good customer experiences promote loyalty and lead to greater retention rates. Conversely, bad experiences can directly result in lost business when a customer switches to a competitor for their product or service. Thankfully, getting high-quality customer feedback can let you know as a brand where you might be lagging behind your competitors. It also helps you determine how you can ensure a good customer experience that promotes loyalty.

The Importance of Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is important because it informs you as a business what your customers are experiencing when they interact with your brand, cleaning service, software, or experience. You can then use this information to improve their experience, customer engagement, internal processes, and even services and products. Keep in mind that sometimes customer feedback might not be as positive as you were hoping. However, information that tells you the truth as it exists is immensely valuable. It shouldn’t be discouraged just because it might not be what you hope to hear.

Types of Customer Feedback

There are several types of customer feedback you can obtain that will allow you to perfect your customer experience. Some of them are as follows: 

• Customer Feedback Surveys: Customer surveys help you define your goals and identify the “why” of customer experience. Keep surveys short, create unbiased questions, and offer incentives to encourage customer participation.

• Social Media: Another way to get customer feedback is through social media channels. Track and analyze social mentions of your brand to see what customers experience when interacting with your brand. Add online polls to further boost your engagement and get even more information and insights.

• Customer Interviews: Planned interviews set up in advance allow you to ask predetermined questions about how customers feel about your business and their experience.

• Customer Focus Groups: Another type of customer feedback is obtained through customer focus groups. Gather groups of customers in person, discuss their current experiences, and consider what might be done to improve their experience. Customer groups are pretty straightforward. The group setting allows you to obtain even more opinions as customers tend to build on each other’s thoughts.

• Online Reviews: Online reviews are another way you can gather customer feedback. You can do this for products or services. Interact with these online reviews, good or bad, to encourage further engagement.

• Community Forum: Combine various channels, like social networkin,g to create community forums. This will give customers a place to talk among themselves. This is a great way to get both indirect and direct feedback from customers. Create your own community forum right on your site to encourage this type of communication.

• Customer Data and Support: Last but not least, customer support data can help you discover any issues customers are having. Software helps you track this data and show transcripts outlining support calls and more, painting a good picture of how customers are interacting with your brand.

How Feedback Can Perfect Your Customer Experience

Now that we have considered how to go about getting feedback, it’s time to consider how this information can then be used to improve your overall customer experience as a brand. Read on to learn how to put this information into action.

Add Credibility

Feedback will give you testimonials, reviews, and more that can increase your credibility and brand trustworthiness. You can use the information you have been given from the feedback and then use it to promote your brand. Having actual customer reviews and feedback from real customers is a great asset to use in various marketing avenues. 

Show You Care

Another way that feedback can improve your overall customer experience is the fact that it helps you respond to customers in the right way. If you are unaware of the problems that customers are having with your business or your service, then it is nearly impossible for you to show that you care or to fix the problem. Thankfully, even bad feedback can be beneficial as it allows you to respond and make changes to ensure a better experience overall. 

Make Changes

Customer feedback can also help you identify some significant issues with your product or service. For example, if you notice customers repeating the same problem over and over as part of their feedback, then this indicates an area that needs to be addressed. If it is related to a product, it might mean changing packaging, changing overall design, or changing another aspect of the way you do business.

Serves as a Good Road Map

Feedback can serve as a road map of sorts for your organization. It tells you if you are heading in the right direction and confirms that, or instead, it might indicate some changes that need to be made. Requesting feedback means not just hoping that you are meeting customers where they are and going down a good path as a business. It indicates that you are taking the right steps and making the right decisions. 

Gives You Good Information For Training

Business leaders often use feedback from customers to train staff in ways they can improve when interacting with customers.

Close the Gap

Thankfully, getting feedback from customers is not too difficult, and the information gleaned can be extremely valuable. Putting the tips listed above into action will ensure that you close the gap between what you want your customers to experience and what they are experiencing when interacting with your brand. Don’t be afraid of bad feedback either, because it can be beneficial as well to know what not to do.

Guest Post written by Ashley Nielsen

Ashley Nielsen earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration Marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is a freelance writer who loves to share knowledge about general business, marketing, lifestyle, wellness, and financial tips. During her free time, she enjoys being outside, staying active, reading a book, or diving deep into her favorite music.