The importance of customer feedback on sales plans

Every year, businesses spend vast amounts of money into advertising and promotion of their products and services in order to improve their operational results and profitability and remain viable in the competitive marketplace. However, listening to their customers and know first-hand what their customers need is a fundamental of goof customer service that enables businesses to find out if their products do what they promise to do.

Customer feedback can provide a firm with the benefit of knowing beyond any doubt if customers are satisfied by using its products or services. Consumers enter a relationship with a firm in the hope of getting satisfied after using a particular product and generally, if their satisfaction is repeated and continuous it gets transformed into customer loyalty. Many businesses make the mistake of assuming that their customers are satisfied and base their service policies on such assumptions. However, when they realize they are off target, profits are declining and they start losing market share to competition, customers are further dissatisfied and at that point it is quite useless to use customer feedback in order to find out what went wrong and which product attribute did not meet their customers’ needs.

Not being in tune with customers is like being in a surreal situation. The way businesses think customers feel about their products may be totally wrong and this will most likely lead to ineffective market segmentation and product development, which eventually will have a major impact on the firm’s profitability and market share. On the contrary, by listening to customers’ needs and wants, businesses can customize their products and services to meet customer expectations and demands and ultimately be more successful.

Firms should be actively seeking for customer feedback and there are numerous ways to do that.

Customers can fill in a feedback form that can be mailed or delivered to their home or office address. The questions on the feedback form should be structured in a way that the customer is prompted to provide the right kind of information about the firm’s products or services.

Another type of customer feedback is to fill in an online form or to participate in an interactive forum. This type of customer feedback is ideally used when customers are in majority online customers.

Many firms use email- or phone-surveys to get customer feedback, but generally customers do not like this type of providing their opinion. Particularly, customers who are dissatisfied, feel like they are wasting their time by having to take these surveys as well.

Many businesses are afraid of customer feedback because they do not know how to handle customer complaints and negative opinions about their products or services. Businesses dislike negative comments, but it is better to get a negative feedback early, while there is still time for anticipation. For instance, if a firm introduces new services that aim to improve customer relationship management and customers do not like these services, the sooner the firm knows that, the better for its marketing strategies.

On the other hand, customer feedback is not always negative. Generally, customers are really happy to provide their opinion about a firm’s products and services and they are even happier to do so when they are satisfied by their relationship with the firm. Businesses that know what they are doing well, can save themselves from the trap of changing something their customers really like. This will facilitate their effort to fix their deficiencies and improve their end-product.

The key to making the most out of customer feedback is to pull all customer suggestions together and discover common patterns of customer behavior. In doing so, firms can provide better solutions to their existing customer and drive significant improvements to attract new customers. In any case, this is a win-win situation.

Moreover, firms need to make it easy and quick for customers to provide feedback. Customers value their time more than any company’s products or services. Therefore, they should be encouraged to provide feedback quickly and easily and, even better, anonymously so that they are more honest. Finally, customers should be appreciated for providing feedback. Any feedback, positive or negative, is valuable for the firm and therefore, customers should be compensated for their time and effort. Typically, customers get compensated with discounts or gifts for their feedback.

Overall, customer feedback is a way to keep contact with customers. Businesses that isolate themselves from their customers contribute to their own decline. On the contrary, businesses that take advantage of their environment have a chance of adapting to their customer needs and become more successful through increased sales and profitability.