Customer Feedback! The who, what, whys?

In the second Viewpoint Podcast, Ali, Ben and Connor talk about customer feedback and its importance to an organisation.

You can listen to the full podcast here:

Kicking off, when should you be looking into customer feedback as a business? The answer is; as soon as possible. Customer feedback and opinions can highlight aspects that need improving in your business. They can also give you directions and information on where to assign manpower and resources.

So how do you know what to ask? You can start off asking broad questions. 0-10 questions on metrics you use for your business. But always include a “more comments” section. This will let your customers volunteer improvements that you may not have considered. This also lets you take that comment and ask other customers whether they agree. 

Some of the most powerful companies in the world use a customer first model. Companies like Amazon, Facebook and Twitter will make changes rapidly based on what the user (or customer) asks for. To quote Ben in the podcast “they get the barebones of a product out, get opinions and feedback, then revise and improve”.  To take Twitter as an example. They recently tried a paid blue check mark. The idea died within 2 weeks. However the information learned has been used to re-release the idea in a new form. 

Another point made in the podcast is to acknowledge your feedback in context. When getting feedback, depending on your feedback system, you may only hear from the 5% of people that are super happy and the 5% of people that are super unhappy. Making changes based on this may not be the best use of resources. For example, if you send out 100 orders and receive 3 emails that say “my order didn’t turn up” or “delivery was slow” you might be inclined to put a lot of effort into improving delivery. However it may be that 97% of deliveries were completely fine, and a vast amount of improvement isn’t required. 

The key is to get a well rounded picture of all your customers. The customers who love you, the customers who dislike you, and the customers in the middle (who probably make up the majority).