It’s vital to listen to what your customers are saying. In 2015, US companies lost $62 billion a year because of poor customer service. That’s a ton of money left on the table because businesses didn’t make an effort to give customers what they want. Don’t let yourself fall into this hole. Here’s how you can use customer feedback to tailor your customer service strategy.

How to Organize Your Data

Your primary goal in obtaining customer feedback is to garner an understanding of the customer experience. Once you’ve collected enough customer feedback, you’ll need to find a way to parse through it. Start by separating it into feedback based on your products, your customer service, and your marketing techniques.

  • Product feedback might include things like problems with a new release or requests for a new feature.
  • Customer service feedback lets you piece together commonly asked questions so you can see widespread issues and address them head-on.
  • Marketing feedback lets you see where your advertising campaigns might be misleading, which you can use in the iterative process.

Once you’ve organized everything into three simple categories, go a step further by giving each item a code. For example, you might want a tag for email issues, incorrect product data, or compatibility problems. This helps you quickly see what your customers’ most common issues are so you can start addressing them.

Focusing on the most common issues allows you to make as many people happy as possible, but don’t completely neglect smaller items. Even the smallest group of customers have a voice, which can damage your reputation if you don’t listen.

Putting Feedback Into Action

The most crucial step of customer feedback is actually putting it into action. This can be a little tricky, but consider taking the following steps to keep the customer happy.

  • Train your employees on how to respond. If you discover an issue with your software, make sure all your employees are aware of it. Nothing is more frustrating than a customer chatting with a knowledgeable rep and then following up later with a rep who has no idea what is going on.
  • Identify which channels are the most popular. Chances are, after organizing your data, you’ll quickly begin to see which of your customer service channels are most popular. While chats and emails are becoming more common, research shows that 70% of customers still appreciate being able to call for a quick response. If you’re throwing more and more of your budget into developing the perfect chat response bot but a majority of your customers are still calling in, think about reallocating funds.
  • Test new follow-up strategies. Perhaps your customers have indicated unhappiness with your service. Rather than taking that at its word, try following up with customers after a few weeks after their purchase to see how things are going. Consider email surveys or even a personalized phone call to ask if their level of satisfaction has gone up or down.
  • Revise FAQs and other informational content. If your customers are asking a lot of basic questions about your service, perhaps your FAQs are lacking. Beef up this content so customers can find their answers on their own. This gives them more autonomy and also frees up your customer service team to handle more pressing issues.

Always Review and Revise

As with any new changes you implement, it’s crucial to follow up and see if they’re making a positive difference. See if you can ask the same customers who provided your original data to rate the improvements you’ve made. If they still aren’t happy, keep at it. Customer service is an iterative process that constantly requires your attention.Need more help taking your customer service to the next level? Consider Mentor, a fully-fledged service that can help transform your business.