Thursday, January 26, 2012

Feeding on Customer Feedback (Recon Thursday/Process)



Hello everyone. Welcome back to Once a Day Marketing.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, and today is Recon Thursday where we get you thinking about your company, your market and your competition.  Before we begin I’d like to learn a little more about my product Once a Day Marketing.  Whenever you get a chance, please send me a comment.  It’s very easy to do, just drop it below any one of my video blogs.  Also, it would be great if you shared my blogs with your friends.  I’m always looking to build our customer base.

Today’s topic is “Feeding on Customer Feedback.” 

How do you feed on your customer’s feedback?  I think it’s very important to make sure you frequently ask them about your product or service.  Think back, when was the last time you actually took the time to ask your customers what they think about your products or services?  That’s what we are going to talk about today.  Creating a way for you to engage your customers and ask them questions about what they like about your products and services and how they can be improved. 

How can you create new products or enhance the products you have right now if you don’t have input from your customers as to what they like or don’t like?  How do you get this customer feedback?  There’s the informal process and the formal process.  We’re going to be talking more about the informal process which is a lot cheaper for you and we know you are trying to keep those costs down.

The first thing you can do when a customer walks in the door or gives you a call, or wherever you engage that customer, you can just ask them: “What do you think about my company?  What do you think about my product?  What can we do to improve it to make it better for you?”  And believe it or not they will give you feedback.  It might not be what you want to hear but it will be valuable information where you can begin to reshape your product. 

You can also begin by calling up a customer or a few customers and ask them to lunch or out to dinner.  In this casual setting you can ask them about your business.  I think it’s very important to use this approach to obtain this kind of information from them.  It’s a little less structured and perhaps they’ll be a little more open. 

Another thing that you can do is create a survey.  There are lots of ways to do this and there are research companies who do a lot with respect to developing formal questionnaires and research approaches, but you can make an informal survey quite easily.  For instance, there is something called Survey Monkey, it’s online marketing research tool and I use it a lot, and there are many others, but you can actually go in and use these tools to create an effective survey.  You can print the survey and have it sitting on the desk when customers visit your business or you can also email that survey out and capture that information online.  There are many survey approaches you can take.  Regardless of the direction you take it’s important that you start asking the questions.

I think you can tell now that it is very important to get this feedback from your customers.  You can do it informally, you can do it formally.  But the main thing is to be consistent in your quest to always ask your customers what they like about your product and how it can be improved.  And if you do this over time, it will assist you to create a better product, develop new products, and shape up that bottom line.

I’m sure you’re already formulating idea about how to engage your customers and ask them questions about your product and your company.  Good job.  Now you’re thinking.  That’s just what we’re all about here.  So be sure to join us tomorrow for Digital Friday.  We’ll be talking about LinkedIn.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing, where business takes shape, and we will see you next time.

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