Business owners typically appreciate the influence that customers have on the success of their companies. In fact, many company owners invite customers to give feedback about their experiences with a business by filling out cards, participating in surveys or commenting on social media. Owners who want to continue to grow and succeed understand the importance of taking this feedback seriously and utilizing it to their advantage. Customer feedback can influence a company's growth and profitability in these important ways.
Focus on Quality over Speed
When a company reaches a certain point of popularity and success, it also typically experiences an increase in orders and sales. At first, the owner may be overwhelmed by the increased volume and find it difficult to keep up with the demand. As he or she rushes to fill orders, the owner's focus may be more on speed than quality.
However, veteran business owners know that focusing on speed rather than quality can be particularly detrimental to a business's success. Even if all of the orders are filled in good time, customers may still be unhappy with the quality of their product or services. They also may express their dissatisfaction by calling or writing to the company, or increasingly posting harmful comments on the company's social media pages. This feedback should indicate to a company owner that his or her attention should be divided equally, if not more in favor of quality over speed when it comes to filling orders. This shift in focus will increase customers' satisfaction in their products or services and lead to company growth.
Reinforces Favorable Customer Impression
The initial customer favor that propelled a business to newfound success could be lost if its owner shifts focus in the wrong direction. Customer feedback can serve to reinforce favorable customer impressions and help the owner continue with business practices that ultimately should lead to his or her business's growth. Customers who are happy and feel that their feedback is being taken seriously have little cause to file a lawsuit against a company, complain to friends and relatives, or take to social networking sites to bash the business. Feedback from customers should be used as a motivational tool to keep the good impressions that influenced the business's current success and use that influence to grow the business into tomorrow.
Improves Communication
Garnering more customers means that a business owner will face more opportunities to communicate with his or her clients. When a customer is unhappy and expects some sort of response, it can be vital that the owner avoids falling back on impersonal methods of quelling frustrations and answering questions. Rather than using an automated queuing system to answer phones, that person could hire enough staff to answer the phone calls that come in each day. The same approach could be used when it comes to answering social media posts. Customer feedback ideally should be met with a personal touch rather than an email blast, a form letter, or an automated voice on the other end of the phone.
Cultivates Customer Loyalty and Grows Client Base
Business owners who utilize customer feedback to the benefit of their business contribute to the growth of their business and expand their customer base. Ultimately, when customers are happy with a product or service that they purchase from a business, they are more apt to recommend the same company to their friends and relatives. This word of mouth referral helps the business grow and enjoy new levels of success and profitability. With that, business owners should heed their customers' feedback with utmost respect and make every attempt to act on it if necessary.
Customers have great influence over whether or not a business makes it into the future. People who want to own and run a company that will grow and stand the test of time would do well to understand the key ways that customer feedback can impact their success.
