Why customer feedback can make or break your business ❓
The famous management guru Peter Drucker gave a simple definition of what exactly a Business means. He said : “Business is Serving your Customers, profitably!”.
Businesses are all about “Customers”. So, every business out there is getting success by either providing a solution to some already existing problem or by fixing a loophole in a well established system. Here, the customer is the primary entity that defines the problem. And feedback is the basis for improving on the solution, such that your customer stays with you, even when multiple solutions exists out there.
The critics of Customer Feedback often quote Henry Ford 🚗, who famously said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” This was even quoted by Steve Jobs in one of his interview with Forbes. But technology giants like Apple also rely on customer experience and feedback management. Although, they may not go to their customers directly to get opinion, they do use “dogfooding” technique (getting the employees to test a new feature, before rolling it out to the public). And when the customer feedback process is skipped , even Apple runs into problems, like the one they faced when they changed the position of the Power Button in Mac Book Pro 2013. This decision got huge negative comments from customers despite it being an improvement over the earlier version. All this, because the decision was taken inside-out without taking in customer’s opinion.
While it’s true that customers cannot possibly think of a break-through product or help you to invent the next-generation technology, but that doesn’t mean that getting their feedback or opinion is a waste of time. Why you ask? Read on… 💬
The 5 most important benefits of getting Customer feedback:
1. It helps you to get unbiased opinion about your service/product. It can be negative or positive, prompted or unprompted. While negative feedbacks signifies new challenges ahead, but they also provides opportunity to bring in new customers. The positive ones will motivate and inspire you to work even harder.
2. Customers will realize that you consider them important and that their opinion matters. This brings a sense of ownership in them, that will definitely create a lasting bond between your product and the customer.
3. The feedback can be used in analytics to take future business decisions which will save a lot of money and man-hours.
4. Feedback brings a scope of innovation with them as the product team may find valuable insights regarding a loophole in existing solution.
5. It results in Customer-satisfaction when the voice of customer is heard and addressed effectively. A satisfied customer remains loyal to a brand. And the marketing that is achieved by word-of-mouth, is extraordinarily effective. So a satisfied customer is likely to become your brand-ambassador which will definitely bring new loyal customers.
Finally, let’s quote Steve Jobs one more time, but this time, him being in support of Customer Feedback. He said this in Apple’s 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference :
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. . . . As we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with: What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? … Not starting with: Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how we’re going to market that. And I think that’s the right path to take.”
Hence, Customer Feedback has the ability to turn your business upside-down. Using it to your advantage will not only help your business to survive and stay relevant, it can help you to create innovative solutions that may change the world 😉
