How to Collect and Use Customer Feedback

When you’re making strategic decisions for your WordPress business, you must use data to drive those decisions. Having first-hand knowledge about your customers and their needs is a powerful way to make your business successful. 

So how do you do it? One of the best methods is customer feedback. 

Customer feedback is information that customers provide about your brand, products and services, and their experience. If you ask customers directly, customer feedback can focus on information you want, such as what customers think about your pricing, communication, and quality of your products and services. 

Collecting and using customer feedback is crucial for your business. In this article, you’ll learn why and how to collect feedback and ways to use it for your success. 

Why collect customer feedback? 

Customer needs are something every agency owner and freelancer needs to meet. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be a guessing game. Whether it’s direct or indirect, customer feedback can help you:

• Learn if you’re meeting your customers’ needs
• Find customer pain points
• Discover areas of improvement 
• Uncover your unique selling points

In addition, acting on customer feedback improves customers’ impression of your business. Customers want to be seen and heard. Showing them you listen builds a stronger relationship between customers and your brand. As a result, you will:

• Reduce churn 
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty 
• Foster a customer-centric culture 

Now that you know why you should collect it, let’s explore how you can. 

How to collect customer feedback 

Collecting customer feedback is the first step in using it for a positive business impact. These five methods are direct and indirect ways you can obtain feedback. 

Send customer surveys 

Customer surveys are an easy way to collect customer feedback. With a survey, you create a few questions you want to ask customers, then use a tool like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to send it. 

It can include questions such as: 

• How would you rate the quality of our product/service? 
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company?
• Are there any changes we can make to improve your experience with us?
• Do you have any additional comments or concerns? 

The shorter your survey is, the more likely it will be completed. If you want to build a longer survey, try to incentivize customers with a freebie or gift card. 

Once you’ve created your survey, send it to your customers via email. You can say something like:

Hi [customer name], 

We hope you’re doing well. Your experience and opinion matter to us, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. Can you please take a moment to share your feedback by clicking [survey link]? Your insights are important to us and help us improve. 

Thank you for being a valued customer!  

Best regards, 

[your name]

You can also add a survey link to your email signature, marketing materials, invoices, and website. 

Schedule an in-person meeting or virtual call 

Depending on your business and customers, it may be more effective to ask for feedback when you’re face-to-face. You can either ask for feedback at the end of a normal conversation or create an entire meeting to collect feedback. 

You can opt for an interview-style or casual meeting. Regardless, make the customer feel comfortable and ask questions that require detailed responses. Use open-ended survey questions to get started. 

Since collecting customer feedback is through a conversation, be an active listener. Here’s how: 

• Fully focus on what the customer says
• Ask open-ended questions
• Don’t interrupt them 
• Show that you’re listening with nonverbal cues, like nodding your head and smiling 

Use email 

If sending a survey or scheduling a one-on-one isn’t for you, ask in an email. Customers may be encouraged to answer if there’s only one question to answer. You can send this during or after projects or when the customer is most active. 

Since you’re only asking one question, make it count. It should be open-ended so the customer can’t give a one-word response. Here’s a few examples:

• What can we do to improve your experience with us? 
• If someone asked you about [company], what would you tell them?
• Why did you choose to work with us?

You can also ask specific questions related to the project you recently finished or other aspects of your business, such as customer service, pricing, or a new service. 

Monitor social media and review sites 

Not all customer feedback will be from questions you ask directly. Many customers will leave their own feedback if they feel strongly. They will turn to social media and review sites to leave it. 

It’s important to monitor your own profiles on all sites to not only stay connected with loyal customers, but also see what others are saying about your business. Even small comments can provide valuable insights. They’re not replying directly to you, so they may provide less generic answers and valuable insights. 

Plus, if the reviews are good, you turn them into client testimonials and use them in your marketing materials or testimonials page. 

Check your analytics 

Similar to monitoring social media and review sites, you should be checking your analytics. These analytics will show you how others are interacting with your business (if at all). Here’s where to check:

• Your website. If you don’t already, be sure your website has a Google Analytics tag. Google Analytics is a free service that tells you how users navigate your website. This translates to indirect customer feedback because it shows what pages users find most valuable, what information they’re looking for (and if they found it), and more. 
• Social media. Watching your social media metrics can show you how customers perceive your brand, whether positive or negative. Unlike monitoring your social media comments, DMs, and mentions, focus on your analytics. See how many impressions you get versus how many comments, shares, and likes you get. Low engagement can indicate a need for improvement. 
• Email. Like social media, checking your email metrics can indicate positive or negative customer feedback. For example, high conversions and engagement indicate positive customer feedback. Conversely, low opens and clicks can indicate low customer interest. A rise in unsubscribes may show customer dissatisfaction. 

Ways to use customer feedback 

After collecting customer feedback, it’s time to use it! 

The first thing you should do is identify themes and patterns. Ultimately, you can’t act on every piece of customer feedback, but you can satisfy the majority of customers. 

For example, if you ask customers what you can improve on, and 60% of them say your response time, you should improve it. On the other hand, if only one customer says they don’t like your logo, you probably don’t need to change it. 

Here’s more ways you can use customer feedback:

• Improve customer experience and provide better customer service 
• Refine marketing, sales, and customer service strategies 
• Build trustworthiness 
• Evolve your products and services
• Make data-driven decisions 

Once you start implementing customer feedback, keep your customers informed about changes.

Additional tips  

There are a few more things to keep in mind when you’re collecting and using customer feedback:

• Acknowledge the feedback you receive. 
• Maintain a positive attitude, even when you receive negative feedback. 
• Thank the customer for the time and offer an incentive if it’s appropriate. 
• Don’t be too demanding or pushy, but you can send follow-up reminders to those that haven’t provided feedback. 
• Make it easy to provide feedback. 
• Assess feedback and explore potential solutions and consequences. 

Keep customers happy with Solid Suite 

Collecting and using customer feedback should be an integral part of your business strategy. To get started doing it in your WordPress business, use the tips in this article. 

If you want to keep your customers happy, consider implementing a solid foundation for all of your client sites. With Solid Suite, your sites will have essential WordPress security features with Solid Security Pro and Solid Backups. Plus, you’ll be able to manage any number of sites with Solid Central to quickly deliver updates and other tasks. Get it now–the risk is on us.