5 Ways You Can Revolutionize Your Business Through Customer Feedback

Enjoy this Guest Blog Post by Kathryn Ewing, Marketing Manager at GuildQuality,
the nation’s leader in customer satisfaction surveying for the building industry.

GuildQuality is a Sponsor of The Jeff Shore Sales Leadership Summit

As a sales leader, you understand how important your customers are to your business. After all, where would you be without them?

While it’s important to continue to acquire new customers and new business, it’s equally as important to maintain relationships with those you’ve already worked with.

Past customers already know you, so they’re not as tough of a sell, and they’re a great source for referral business.

So, how do you actually go about ensuring that your customers are satisfied enough to stay with you or refer you to their friends and family?

We suggest taking a proactive, not reactive, approach to maintaining those relationships by setting up a process to collect customer feedback.

Whether you go with a third party or use your own process, there are some major benefits to gathering feedback from your customers.

Learn How Customers Really Feel

Not all of your customers are going to let you know when there’s a problem.

In fact, 96% of customers don’t complain to the companies they work with.

That means you’re only hearing from 4% of your unhappy customers.

HelpScout-Stat-Image

Image from HelpScout.com

Let all of your customers’ voices be heard and uncover issues through satisfaction surveys.

Was your team professional? Did the customer feel they got fair value for their investment? Would they recommend your company to their friends and family?

These are all answers you’ll know if you begin collecting feedback from your customers.

Make Internal Improvements

Once you start listening to your customers, you’ll begin to uncover extremely valuable feedback about your company.

Instead of filing it away in a cabinet somewhere, actually use those responses to make improvements.

For example, maybe a company sees a trend of low scores on communication – they could take that as an opportunity to re-evaluate how everyone on the team interacts with customers and find ways to make that communication better.

Your customers are your greatest resource for ways to enhance your business. Always be looking for ways to use what you’re customers are saying to improve your processes and provide exceptional experiences.

Avoid Future or Repeat Issues

When customers start giving you feedback, chances are there will come a time where they bring up issues or problems.

Maybe something broke in their new home and all it takes is a visit from one of your team members to fix it.

That problem can be solved quickly and can turn a negative experience into a positive one.

Proactively reaching out to your customers can also provide an opportunity to intercept problems before they reach the public eye.

Instead of waiting until you read a negative review or tweet from an angry customer along with the rest of the internet, wouldn’t you rather hear about an issue in a survey that only you and your team can see?

This gives you a chance to make things right before that problem ever gets outside your company.

Promote Positive Feedback

Nothing feels better than to hear positive words from a customer. Whether in an email, in person, or in an online review, having a customer sing your company’s praises can make your day and can be extremely beneficial for your business.

If you’ve got a process in place to gather feedback from your customers, you’re giving your company ample opportunity to collect positive comments and reviews that can then be used in your marketing.

Post positive customer stories on social media and on your website so that potential customers will find it when they’re doing research on your company.

Whether you’ve already got a process in place for collecting customer feedback or are just starting out, it’s beneficial for your business in so many ways.

The infographic below shows our process at , so check it out or click here to learn more.

GuildQuality Infographic

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About the Author: Kathryn Ewing

Kathryn Ewing is the Marketing Manager at GuildQuality the nation’s leader in customer satisfaction surveying for the building industry. GuildQuality works with nearly 2,000 quality-minded homebuilders, remodelers and contractors and we’ve surveyed over 1 million homeowners since 2003. Kathryn has experience in digital and social media marketing and has been a member of the GuildQuality team since 2013.