The True Value of Customer Feedback

Reviews and suggestions are both aspects of customer feedback that can help brands to identify ways they can strengthen and build both their presence and their products. By being open to the thoughts of your audience, you could see a drastic change in how your business performs. CT Shirts, a leading men’s suits retailer, investigated the true value of customer feedback.

Always listening means always improving

It’s worryingly easy for brands to fall into stagnation when it comes to monitoring how their products do in terms of sales. Globally, we’re currently experiencing a stark demographic shift in the market, with millennial and generation Z shoppers acting as turning points in terms of what customer wants from a purchase. If a product or service goes unchanged for a prolonged period, it can’t meet these ever-changing needs of these new customer requirements.  

Whether you’re in the initial stages of product development or you’re looking to carry out a refresh on your existing services, you should consider exploring ways to contact current and potential customers to better understand their thoughts on your product.

By pursuing these lines of enquiry, you can identify any flaws, experiences, and preferences which could prove fundamental for distinguishing your business and product in a congested market. These kind of insights are a valuable tool for brands who are aiming to improve their products, but if they’re not utilizing their findings in the right way, the whole process becomes pointless.

The thriving beauty and skincare business Glossier is a great example of this, as the team includes dedicated customer service agents who work closely with the marketing department to listen to customer experiences. By listening to customer feedback, they promote a culture of improvement.

A satisfied customer is a happy customer

Customer satisfaction often goes overlooked, and this opens the floodgates to all your market competitors. If you’re smart with your approach to customer feedback, then you can boost your satisfaction rates and develop consumer loyalty. For example, every home has its own stock of ‘household name’ products that are absolute essentials on every shopping trip, and the reason these products have achieved such status is by sustaining a consistently high level of customer satisfaction.

One of the best ways to target levels of satisfaction within your audience is by simply asking questions, and there are a few smart metric strategies that you could employ to help. One example is the Net Promoter Score known as NPS, which allows your business to understand the responses from your customers relating to your product or service. Through a series of simple questions with answers based on a 0-10 rating scale - 0 being most negative and 10 being most positive - you can develop an idea of how satisfied your customers feel towards your brand.

The UK cosmetics experts Lush have topped a plethora of polls based on customer satisfaction and experience. From their revolutionized tablet-based till payments to the ethical, transparent brand character, the business has become a customer satisfaction force to be reckoned with. Many of the stores branches are experimenting with both visual search technologies and voice activated assistants, showing just how much they value their customer satisfaction.

More than just a target audience

Purchases are based on far more than just necessity nowadays, and brands can’t afford to be losing out on sales to rival companies who place more value in the people who buy their products.

Personalization has taken the marketing industry by storm, and for a brand to succeed they need to include engaging elements in their market strategies, while also accounting for the human element that customers look for in an ever-automated world. Building strong customer relationships is more important than ever and listening to feedback from your audience is inherent to this. A recent survey from Infosys found that 31% of respondents said that they want their shopping experience to be far more personalized than it currently is.

Many companies have also become more accommodating of customers’ marketing preferences, and this is a great example of how listening to customer feedback can develop a positive perception of your brand. The retail industry is leading the way in this demonstration.

As brick and mortar stores are gradually being left behind in the fast-moving digital age, marketers are constantly under pressure to evolve and nurture the data they have on customers. Convenience is a sought-after aspect amongst the new, younger market demographic, and by listening to customer feedback, you can devise ways to make your brand appeal to a potentially larger audience. Coffee giant Starbucks made their digital app ultra-convenient by using locational data as well as previous orders to make getting that essential caffeine hit a streamlined service. Introduced as part of their rewards system, the customizable options helped revenue to soar to $2.56 billion.

Listening to the opinions of your customers on your products and services will prove invaluable in the long run, and it’s an essential consideration for any business that aims to thrive in the evolving, modern market.