While it's not possible to please all the people all of the time, as our former President Abraham Lincoln was recorded as saying in the 1860's, it is possible to please some of the people some of the time. The secret must be to keep the majority pleased than not pleased if we're ever to stay in business today.
The best way to make your business better is to ask for feedback!
In an earlier post, we spoke about the importance of listening to customers in order to keep them happy with our product or service. Feedback is a form of listening and can be administered in a variety of ways:
- Survey after the sale
- Survey before item is delivered
- Survey after customer has had item/service 6 months or more
- Postcard
- Phone call
- Live chat
The surveys mentioned above are either administered through a survey website or phone app, since so many transactions are web=phone operated. Others can be sent in the mail via a postcard, i.e. direct mail. Although many won't reply, this is usually a great "hard copy" version of feedback where the customer can elaborate on how impressed or disappointed they were with their experience.
Today's technology has lent credence to using Live Chat services for people waiting online for the opportunity to deal with a "live person," instead of a computerized telephone service. The time following the sale or services for soliciting for feedback is critical in order to address issues that might be unconsciously running future customers away.
Equal to feedback, the best way to make your business better is to encourage reviews from visitors and customers.
"How are reviews different from feedback," you ask? Let me explain. Feedback is typically for getting immediate communication from the customer for the purpose of improving our services and/or product offerings. Things like how fast they were acknowledged when they walked into the showroom or if questions raised during the product demonstration were answered quickly and satisfactorily are examples of feedback.
Reviews, on the other hand, are like miniature testimonials of how people were treated and/or regarded when they came to the store or visited by the technician. Although the two factors that make a business better, feedback and reviews, can be confusing, the main difference is that feedback is more for the backend of a company's business training and product development service; whereas, reviews will be seen by the general public when they're shopping for similar products or services.
Reviews that can make or break a business are usually best seen on such sites as:
- Yelp
- Amazon
- etc.
That being said, it's also vitally important to make your business better by answering every review given, whether good or bad, with a genuine response that keeps each reviewer unique and satisfied to the best the business owner can provide. There's nothing worse than seeing the same rote answer for every review given that shows the owner couldn't care less about how to resolve the issue brought up by the customer.
Read how to draw more customers to your business and keep them close!
Following the aforementioned paragraph about sincere answers for reviews, it's equally a concern when the reviewer makes an unfair assessment of a visit they supposedly had that received only one star out of five. Some reviews are bogus and unrealistic and cannot be addressed because the reviewer never visited the business nor received any product or service they mentioned in their review. Still, though, the business owner that offers to "make things right" for each of these "disgruntled" reviewers works to diffuse a volatile situation and, in many cases, put the reviewer on the hot seat to address their concerns in such a way to find resolution or else appear as a cheat and a fraud.
One benefit that comes from a healthy relationship between a reviewer and the business owner, as well as from those who submit feedback, is that their issues and questions become excellent material for the FAQ, frequently asked questions, page of their website. The more they can provide on this vital page can work great to inform the prospective customer beforehand so they can come to the showroom prepared to be impressed.
Furthermore, any and all frequently asked questions and feedback issues become an exhaustless supply of subjects for blogging on your website. These issues become searchable, if optimized correctly for SEO (search engine optimization: the ability for people searching for keywords you used in the respective blog), will attract more people to your Facebook page and/or website and, hopefully, into your place of business. All because you did what many business owners refuse to do to make their business better: ask for feedback and reviews.