Feedback from customers is crucial to business success

Failure to listen to your customers risks failure of a different kind for todayÂ’s businesses. In this unpredictable economy, business success relies heavily on customer retention and loyalty. In order to build strong customer relationships and build trust, business leaders must provide a high level of support and dedicate themselves to improving products and services. A critical step in this process is being open to feedback from customers. The following are important steps to solicit critical feedback, build strong customer relationships, and enhance the overall customer experience.

Research

While it may seem like a simple notion, some businesses arenÂ’t up-to-speed on how to capture feedback from their customers, especially in the customer-led space enabled by social networking on the Web. There are many ways businesses can find out what people are saying about their company and its products. By conducting searches on the Internet, using tools like MicrosoftÂ’s Live Search, you will likely find plenty of unsolicited feedback from customers or reviews about your products. Because the Internet is a powerful, dynamic medium of real-time communication, your customers have an open forum to discuss anything and everything about your company and its products. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can learn a great deal about customer perception of product quality and service. 

Along with Internet searches, your company can use proactive communication methods such as online forms, surveys, and comment cards to gain customer feedback. As a best practice, surveys and online forms should include multiple choice and open-ended questions to allow respondents to have options and express themselves freely. With qualitative and quantitative answers, your business will have an easier time sorting through the answers and gain a more accurate picture of perception.

Interact

When starting the process of collecting and organizing information, start with the basics. Once you figure out the fundamentals and which methods work best for your business, you can expand the process to gain more insightful and detailed information.  Social media, for example, make it easy to be an active participant in the feedback process. Consider starting a company blog or establishing a Twitter account to keep customers updated on happenings within the company and products. These forums also serve as places for people to directly interact with you.

After capturing feedback, engage and interact with your customers and take next steps. It is imperative to take action and adjust your products or services to better serve them.  After the actions or changes have been implemented, itÂ’s equally important to respond to the customers and let them know that a change has been made on their behalf.  This way, conversations with customers are ongoing and the customers feel valued.

Support

When your customers feel valued through consistent interactions, they may become advocates for your company. Whether through online blogs and forums or product reviews, customers can make their positive experiences known to thousands of others who seek advice. In fact, if your customer provides positive feedback, your company receives a positive endorsement.  On that same note, if customers have a negative occurrence or interaction with your company, you can bet that they will communicate that as well. 

Encouraging programs within your company that seek feedback from valued customers is a great way to show appreciation to them and reinforce that you actively look for comments and suggestions. For example, MicrosoftÂ’s Most Valuable Professional Award Program honors thousands of technology experts in a variety of areas. These MVPs provide critical feedback to Microsoft on various products, from Windows Home Servers and SharePoint to the Xbox and Zune. This third-party perspective helps positively impact customer interactions, and has ultimately made Microsoft products better for customers. Locally, Dallas-Fort Worth resident and MVP Ed Blankenship frequently speaks about and reviews Microsoft products using Facebook and Twitter, along with providing feedback to the Microsoft product groups. As an MVP, Blankenship plays a critical role in the improvement of products through his interaction with the local community and relaying perceived customer opinions back to Microsoft. Visit BlankenshipÂ’s blog at: www.edsquared.com

Customer loyalty is at the top of every business wish list. Companies who strive to retain and build strong relationships with customers must proactively solicit and respond to feedback to show that they are listening and work to improve the overall customer experience.

Toby Richards is general manager of community support services within Microsoft Customer Service and Support.