Asking for Customer Feedback? 3 Reasons Your Business Should Be

Many small business owners have a very rocky relationship when it comes to customer feedback. When the feedback is positive, you feel like you’re on cloud nine. When the feedback is negative, you feel like screaming some ‘choice’ words into your pillow. However, whether they’re good, bad, or ugly — customer feedback is vital to growing your small business.

Not 100% sure why customer feedback is so important? Well, give me a minute of your time and I’ll quickly explain to you why your business NEEDS to be gathering customer feedback as often as possible.

Here are the 3 biggest reasons why if your small business doesn’t already collect customer feedback it should start to, sooner than later!

1. Gauge your performance

Customer feedback can be one of the best ways for you to get an accurate picture of how your business is actually performing. A best practice when conducting a customer survey is to always make it anonymous. This way customers won’t feel uncomfortable answering honestly.

In the end, your customers are your bread and butter, and their opinions are the only opinions that really matter. So, you need to make sure you’re giving them an outlet to voice your opinion. You can use their feedback and comments to gauge the performance of multiple aspects of your business such as:

1. Offered Services

2. Offered Products/Product Packages

3. Employee Aptitude

4. Specials/Promotions

With this information, you can then either maintain or make alterations in order to better appease your customers’ wants.

2. Show customers that you value their opinions

In many cases, your customers are looking for one simple thing — for you to care. Asking for their feedback is the BEST way for you to show it. By asking for their feedback you’re letting them know that they matter, on an individual level, and that you’re willing to listen to what they have to say. Let your customers know you appreciate their patronage and that you care about their continued attendance.

3. Promote repeat business

Did you know that on average returning customers spend 67% more than those who are new to your business? Makes sense, right? Repeat customers are already comfortable with your business. They know what they want and they know they’re getting a great value for their spending. That’s why promoting repeat business should always be a small business owner’s top priority.

Customer feedback helps to generate repeat customers because it gives you the building blocks for tailoring services, products, employees — whatever — toward a perfect fit for what your customers want. By collecting customer feedback, you know with 100% certainty whether your customers are satisfied or not, and what to fix if need be. If you can appease their needs, they’ll obviously never want to leave.