User Feedback: What It Really Is and Why It’s So Important to Any Business’ Success?
Feedback is on everybody’s lips these days.
There are surveys popping up on the news sites, on Social Media platforms, everywhere. It seems that somewhere, someone turned on a switch that illuminated a light bulb over the collective heads of the captains of industry, with the novel idea (at least new to them anyway) that actively listening to what the customer has to say is actually important.
This commercial renaissance, this new dialog with the buyer base, is a very good thing. Although the customer is not always right, the thing is, whether it’s about software, entertainment, dining, or whatever their purchasing focus is locked onto, the customer does know what they need, or what they would like to have regarding their user experiences.
Read further about what user feedback means, what role it plays in a business and what benefits it brings for both the business and the customers.
Table of Contents
What Is User Feedback: A Quick Definition
User feedback is defined by all the information you get from your customers about whether or not they are satisfied with your product or service. It is single-handedly one of the most meaningful and important info you are ever going to get while at your company. As soon as possible your company should be getting feedback from its customers or even potential customers.
Even when customers complain about your business, you can find a valuable resource in it and make the most out of it. There are many ways you can collect user feedback, from questionnaires, phone calls or emails, to integrated widgets that will get you the feedback with a single click.
Types of Customer and User Feedback That Businesses Can Make Use Of
In order to get feedback, you need to know your audience and how to properly ask for it. You can use a formal or informal approach and you can get a positive or negative reply.
1. Positive Feedback: What Customers Say You’re Doing Well
Positive feedback refers to parts of your product or services your users like and really find them useful.
Keep an eye on this feedback especially when you make changes, because those are your top features and adjustments are not really necessary. For example, in Jooble’s case digital marketers can easily sort job opportunities by salary, location and type of employment. Thanks to these filters, job seekers can easily find appealing opportunities.
2. Negative Feedback: What Customers Tell You to Change, Improve or Drop Out
Whether you like it or not, your users may tell you there are features or maybe updates they don’t like, or they can identify a bug and tell you to fix it.
In most of the cases, negative feedback is more valuable than positive feedback, because your users are those who pay for the product and you make the product for them.
Appzi is a widget that helps you gather both positive and negative feedback
3. Informal Customer Feedback: Conversational
Informal feedback is a simple feedback form and is one of the first types of feedback companies used, maybe without even knowing it. Once you ask your customers about whether they like your product or not, you are ahead of your competitors.
Informal customer feedback often occurs when the customers tell the business owner or the sales representative what features they can improve. It often happens face to face, through a phone call or email and it can start with the customer’s will or when somebody from your company makes a follow-up call.
4. Formal Customer Feedback: Structured
Formal customer feedback starts from a deeper insight, and you need to know exactly what you want to know from your customers. Formal feedback is planned beforehand and systematically scheduled into the official procedures of the organization.
Why Is User Feedback So Important?
Here are the top reasons in which user feedback is crucial to your business:
Customer Feedback Leads to an Upgraded Product or Service
The research from the first phase of building a new product will give you an idea of what your customers want from it and you should start from there.
It is only after your customers really test the final product when they can really tell what they like about it and what are the flaws in it. Moreover, their taste changes over time and you should keep up.
Customer feedback is the insight about your top features and the features you need to improve. Even though you are the authority in your domain, your customers have the voice and you should let them call the tune.
Customer Feedback Determines the Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction and loyalty represent your company’s performance overall. Satisfied customers lead to increased market share, lower costs, and high revenue and it is proven that a close relationship with your customers leads to a performant business.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the most accurate method that will help you measure, manage and improve your customers’ satisfaction.
The NPS is a metric that asks your users how likely they are to recommend your product or service to a friend or a colleague, and the options are based on a 0-10 point rating scale.
Gathering User Feedback Proves You Pay Attention to Their Interests
When you ask your users for their impression, you prove you care for them. When you listen to them and they see you take in consideration what they have to say, they will feel more attached to your business.
They will appreciate if you ask them if they are happy or unhappy with your product and it demonstrates you are there for them even after they paid. This way, you demonstrate you care about their wellbeing and your purpose is not to take their money.
Customer Feedback Leads to the Best Customer Experience
Nowadays, people don’t just buy products for their utility, but they also like to pay for the brand, so they can feel they belong to a particular group.
So if you provide the best customer care, they will stay loyal to your brand and products. How can you give them the best experience? By asking them what they like and then improve it.
User Feedback Boosts Customer Retention
It is simple. Customers who like your products will stay with you. Those who are unhappy will leave you for your competitors. Unless you do something.
When you are one step ahead of your competitors and you ask your users what upsets them, and then change those features, you have big chances to improve your customer retention.
Keep in mind that an unhappy customer is more likely to tell others about the bad experience, but if you are there for your users all the time, they will truly appreciate and recommend you.
Customer Feedback Helps You Inform Other Consumers
Ratings, reviews, testimonials, all these are the best assurance other customers can get from you. It doesn’t matter what you say about yourself, it matters what others say about your business.
When people need a product or service, they ask for recommendations, so if you keep your customers close, they will surely talk about you.
Customer Feedback Provides Information for Business Growth
No business that only makes decisions based on guessing has ever succeeded. Successful businesses gather data from everywhere, and they value the information from their customers very much.
Customer feedback gives you exactly the insights you need to know in order to make the products better, to make them the way your customers need them. The data can also tell you your product is fine, but you need to promote it to get more clients.
How Can User Feedback Help a Business?
Often, project managers get overly tied up in product and they forget about why they really develop the product.
This is where customer feedback intervenes because really listening to your customers shows you how people are actually putting what you’ve built to use.
Customer Feedback Helps the Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) represents the constant process of optimizing your platform to increase the number of conversions (signups, orders, leads).
Conversion rate optimization became the first choice of businesses that want to maximize their income.
Customer Feedback Leads to a Customer-Centric Product
Initially, you start from a plan and a roadmap, but you should always have the ideal customer in the center of your design. This is why you need constant communication with your users so that in the end you develop the features they really need. On top of that, you need to have a clear approach when it comes to in-house design feedback.
Customer Feedback Helps You Extend Your Database
More customers means a good product and a great return on investment. Once you listen to your actual customers and implement their feedback, more and more users will see it, will try your product or service and will become loyal customers.
Satisfied customers will tell others about your brand and this is how you extend your database with the single effort of always listening and making the product better.
Customer Feedback Allows You Improve the Customer Experience
Customer experience is the complete roadmap of your customers from first seeing an ad and taking you in consideration, to visiting your platform and buying it. But the customer experience shouldn’t stop here. Ask for feedback in the most important moments of their journey, like cart abandonment or placing the order.
Closing Thoughts
With all these details in mind, be aware of the wonders of user feedback.
This is just the beginning of your journey together with your customers. Identify what your audience likes, actively listen to what they have to say – if it’s good, but most importantly if it’s bad, and you will have the best products and services on the market. Also check out the 10 feedback form examples you could try on your website to collect user feedback.