How to Get Customer Feedback: 7 Easy Customer Feedback Methods to Help You Start Listening

Are customers happy with your product or service?

1. Yes
2. No
3. Maybe

As a sensible business owner, you must’ve asked yourself this question more than once—but have you ever pursued the answer?

The problem is that all too often businesses don’t find out about a problem until it’s too late. That is, until the customer has left the house. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There was a time when getting customer feedback was an elaborate, intensive, and expensive process—involving outside agencies, focus groups, and lots of legwork. Today, agencies and focus groups still exist, but there is an ever increasing wealth of solutions available to the DIY business owner—perfectly suited for small business!

Here are 7 suggestions, from the basic to the sophisticated:

Create cards to display in your retail location

This is probably the easiest method to implement if you own a retail location. Simply prepare a short questionnaire—preferably using multiple-choice or ‘yes/no’ questions at the most (remember, customer aren’t eager to fill out long forms)—and print it on a deck of index cards. Next, grab a small cardboard box with a slotted opening for the index cards. Now you’re ready to find a prominent place for both, and don’t hesitate to offer something in exchange for filling up the questionnaire—incentive goes a long way ;)

It’s also a great place to remind your customers they can join your newsletter and receive special offers and promotions by providing their email address.

Email

Email may be old, but it’s certainly still rocking. If you don’t expect an overwhelming amount of responses, feedback can be as easy to garner as firing an email to your mailing list. Just be mindful and don’t abuse your clients’ time, patience, and confidence. Carefully select and limit your questions, and don’t blast too frequently.

You can also include a standard message at the bottom of your emails and newsletters inviting feedback. (You’d probably be wiser if you don’t use your main email address for this purpose, just in case it’s picked up by spammers). A service like Zendesk can help you automate this process (and more), albeit for a fee.

Blog

Your company blog is another great place to invite feedback on specific issues via the comments section. Just be aware that comments are public. If you’d rather receive feedback privately on any given issue, choose a different method. You can still use your blog and simply include an email address at the bottom (like we did in our last post)—granted, again, that you don’t expect an overwhelming amount of responses.

Survey Software

Now that you’ve got an email list, you can also utilize the information-super-highway (aka the internet) to run surveys. There are many online applications that can help you craft the perfect customized survey and even analyze results. Check out the 2011 comparison by TopTenReviews.com of 7 popular survey services for more information. Some, like Survey Monkey or Rational Survey, even offer a basic package for free. That’s a great way to test the waters and see how you like it before making a commitment.

Social Media

With the prevalence of today’s social media platforms—most notably, Facebook and Twitter—customers from all walks of life are plugging into the hub and regularly chirp, buzz, and even sting their opinions. It’s easy to capitalize on this presence by simply running a poll or posing a question. For simple queries, you may not have to look any further.

Online Communities

Yeah, so that covered simple tasks—but what if you need something more comprehensive? Well, there are more sophisticated tools:

Get Satisfaction, for instance, lets you create communities of customers. That is, to unify all those random voices scattered in disarray and give them an orderly means of communication. The power of this tool is that you can integrate it virtually anywhere—on Facebook, on your website, via mobile devices, etc—so that you can come to where your customers already hang instead of trying to make them abandon their preferred platform in favor of the new hangout you’d just created. It can also integrate with CRM software so that all correspondence stays organized and tractable.

For more information and for comparison with similar products, check out the User Feedback Apps reviewed by AppApeal.

Experimental

For those with a more adventurous disposition: Webengage is a new initiative by Mumbai based WebKlipper to incorporate simple, single question surveys on your website. The good? According to the developer, the program lets you set rules to target specific users with specific questions. The program is currently in private beta testing, and the developer is offering a free three-month testing trial. So if you’re the kind of person who enjoys getting involved in something new during the development stages and helping to hone it in with your input, all the while taking advantage of the product, this might be for you.

For more info, check out this review by the Indian technology site PluGGd.in

Conclusion

What’s there to say? With so many options to fit any size and budget, there’s absolutely no reason any business owner should remain in the dark concerning their customers.

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