As an affiliate marketer, meeting the needs and expectations of your customers is undoubtedly a number one priority. After all, if you are not appealing to your target demographic, why should you expect them to buy your products and services? Gauging the thoughts and feelings of your customers is never easy, so we’ve written up a guide on how to use customer feedback to improve service. Check it out below.
Establish your objectives
Having a plan in place is crucial when implementing any new business strategy. Before we can discuss how to use customer feedback to improve service, first you need to establish clearly defined goals and objectives. Outline what it is you hope to achieve and what kind of information you hope to gather from your customers.
Are you looking for feedback on existing goods and services? Advice to help you develop your latest product offering? Or opinions to help you assess the customer experience? The goals you hope to achieve will define the methods you use when planning how to use customer feedback to improve service, and having objectives in place will give you something to work towards and see you generate better results.
Encourage reviews
Reviews have become an integral part of the digital marketing and ecommerce landscape. They are extremely powerful and can be a determining factor that influences the decisions of customers, with studies suggesting that reviews can increase conversions by as much as 270%.
However, reviews aren’t just there to influence consumers, affiliate marketers and digital business owners should use them as an opportunity to learn more about their audiences and glean information about the thoughts and feelings of their customers.
While some customers will leave reviews of their own accord, most will need some kind of encouragement. You can set up automated prompts that ask customers to leave reviews after buying your products, and you can even offer rewards such as vouchers or discounts to motivate consumers to leave reviews.
Reviews are one of the most crucial elements to keep in mind when discussing how to use customer feedback to improve service. However, while good reviews can boost sales and your brand image, negative reviews can damage your business.
Getting a negative review is never pleasant, but you should look at it as an opportunity rather than a failure. Reach out to the customer to get to the bottom of what has happened and take steps to prevent the same issue from reoccurring in the future.
Use customer surveys
Reviews can provide an instant snapshot of the sentiment shared among your audiences, but if you’re looking for detailed insights, surveys can be a more effective option.
Surveys can be used to gather information about a range of different business touchpoints, including the products you offer, the customer experience, and the digital content you produce. Some key questions to ask include: “Did you find what you were looking for?” and “How would you rate your experience?”.
The answers you get can give you a clear indication of the efficacy of your business strategy, it can also give you a sense of how customers perceive your platform and how it impacts their behaviour.
Surveys can be disseminated through email or via direct links on your platform. Remember to ask follow-up questions. If a customer rates their experience poorly, you must follow this up to identify what has gone wrong and prevent it from happening again.
Much like reviews, customers often need prompted and encouraged to complete surveys. This can be done through the offering of discounts and rewards. However, remember that completing a survey is a longer process than leaving a review, so you’ll need to offer more generous awards to compensate for this fact.
When collecting and studying survey answers, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data. Following proper data management and analysis strategies can help you avoid analysis paralysis.
Promote social media engagement
It’s impossible to overlook social media when discussing how to use customer feedback to improve service. Today’s social media platforms offer digital businesses a range of opportunities to connect and communicate with customers.
You should foster an open atmosphere on your social platforms where your customers feel free to speak their minds. Comments on your posts, shares, and direct messages to your business profile are all fantastic ways of gathering information and feedback.
You should also look into industry-specific groups on social platforms to find out what is being said about your brand. This can offer invaluable insights and is key when looking to use customer feedback to improve the service you provide.
Conclusion
Delivering goods and products to customers is one thing, but ensuring you are meeting their unique needs and expectations is another. Use the above guide on how to use customer feedback to improve service as a framework to optimise your strategy and generate better results as you move forward.
For more essential marketing insights, read through the rest of our blog or, better yet, book a free call with one of our expert team members.
If you’re looking to take your affiliate business to the next level, register to join our ELEVATE Summit in July, where we’ll be hosting a series of talks, panels, and workshops featuring key industry figures, with all content available to stream from our website.
