Whatever way you look at it, it’s far more cost effective to retain an existing customer than it is to win a new one. Customer retention is a crucial part of growing your business. 

And the best way to keep a customers is to listen to them. Customers are a great source of ideas and suggestions for ways that you can make your business even better.

By listening to your customer and putting the best ideas into action, not only will you keep your customers but it will also help you to attract more customers.

Getting customer feedback is vital to building a successful business. So how can you be sure that your customers are sharing their thoughts?

We’ve put together a list of tips to help you get more useful feedback. 

1. Be Receptive
If you’re seen to be actively looking for a customer’s feedback then they far more likely to offer it. It can be tempting to hide away from it, but feedback (whether negative or positive) is too important to ignore.

2. Act on it
If a customer makes a great suggestion, or points out a flaw, then do something about it. No-one is going to keep offering feedback unless they see that it has been taken on board.

3. Reward engagement
Incentivise the feedback process by rewarding your customers for their time and effort. It doesn’t have to anything major; it could be a small discount on their next purchase, or even just a simple acknowledge.

4. Make it easy
The landing page, or home page, of your website should have clear instructions on how a customer can get in touch with you. The more steps or actions it takes to talk to you the less likely the customer will bother. If you are conducting a survey make sure to keep it short. No-one wants to spend 15 minutes filling out a form. A longer survey doesn’t necessarily mean more detailed feedback. And while we’re on that subject…

5. Ask better questions
Try to avoid questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. Use open-ended questions (how would you describe our level of service, why did you choose us etc) that encourage the customer to open up and reveal more about their experience and motivations.

Keep your customers talking and listen to what they have to say, you’ll be rewarded for your efforts in long-term loyalty and a business that better reflects your customers needs.

If you’ve got plans to