5 Cool Things You Can Do With Customer Feedback Ever hear of a 'wall of love'? Time to build one for your company.
By Akshaya Venkat Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Time was when getting feedback from a customer was a process so complex, it was akin to getting blood out of a stone. Thankfully, we don't live in those times.
Related: How to Best Utilize Your Positive Customer Feedback
Today, not only is feedback nothing more than an email away, but customers actively come to you with suggestions and ideas. In fact, they love sharing their insights with you because they understand that the more feedback they give, the better your product becomes.
However, most of this feedback just ends up cooling its heels in hard drives, which is, well, tragic, considering all the good it can do. A motivational tool, a wall of love. . . the ideas are limited only by your imagination. Here are our top five cool things that you can spin off with customer feedback, to wow your customers and your own employees.
1. Drive product roadmap with feedback.
Take it from the experts: Your customers are the stars simply because they use your product day in and day out. No matter how hard you try to empathize and put yourself in their shoes, you'll never come up with some of the exciting ideas that occur to your "power users."
So, stop brainstorming and start following customer discussions on forums. Read support tickets, listen to feedback and, most important of all, record all the ideas you hear. Not only will your customers appreciate your willingness to listen and implement their ideas, but you will set yourself apart from your competitors, as a business that genuinely cares.
2. Create a 'wall of love.'
There's a world of difference between knowing that your customers love you and actually seeing proof of it. Create a wall of love containing all the amazing things your customers have said about you, your product and your service. Put it online to show your employees that what they do actually matters; it changes people's lives for the better. You can even create a document with these testimonials and publish it online for potential customers to see just how trustworthy you are, how much you really care about them and their feedback. It also makes for excellent sales collateral.
A physical wall of love at your workplace won't hurt either. In fact, we can't think of a better motivation tool. Being able to walk by a wall and see how what you do matters: There can't be a better motivation tool in existence.
Related: 6 Tips on Getting Customer Feedback and Making It Actionable
3. Use feedback as references or testimonials.
I don't mean to be Captain Obvious here, but one of the most useful things you can do with customer feedback is to make a testimonial out of it. It will not only help bolster your glowing reputation but also offer the added advantage of serving as a reference to other customers in the same space. Plus, your customers can pick up a lot of handy tips and tricks, hacks that can help them better use your product and help you augment your own processes to better serve your customers, as well.
4. Motivate your employees with customer feedback.
If a wall of love seems more trouble than it's worth, go the simple route and funnel all that customer feedback through a tool that your team uses to stay in touch, like Slack. Your customers will probably never know just how much you care about their suggestions and ideas, but a tool like Slack will serve as a much-needed motivational tool and idea generator for your team.
5. Award your customers.
Give some good karma back; go the extra mile for those customers who give you valuable feedback. Give them a sneak-peek of what's cooking in your kitchen. Drown them in swag. Write them love letters. Shower them with awards.
Above all, show them that their feedback matters, that you take it, and them, seriously. That way, the next time a stray idea/suggestion pops up, those feedback stars won't hesitate to write to you.
Of course, this is just our top five. We are the first to admit that we've probably missed out on some very obvious in-your-face pointers that can really help. If something comes to mind, drop us a line below in the comments or shoot us an email to love@freshdesk.com.
