Collecting and analyzing customer feedback provides powerful insight into what your customers want and need and what your customer experience is really like. The knowledge gained can help you improve and craft your service or product around your customer needs.

Seth Godin, a leader in the marketing industry, teaches that your product or service shouldn’t be for “everyone” but for the right customer. However, the feedback needed to know who that customer is can be hard to come by.

Customers are in a rush. Filling out lengthy surveys or jumping through several online hoops to give feedback is an inconvenience. They may be reluctant to give feedback without being given a reason to do so.

Consumers expect retailers and brands to be aware of their flaws. Waiting for a bad review from an unhappy customer is not the way to get valuable customer feedback. In the next section, we’ve listed 3 ways to help you collect valuable customer feedback:

Customer Feedback Collection Methods

1. Offer incentives for feedback

Giving extensive and valuable feedback takes time. Reward your customers for their time investment by sending them an exclusive offer when they’ve successfully completed your feedback process. Incentives for retailers could be many things such as a coupon toward their next purchase or a preloaded gift card.

Money and discounts are great, but rewards don’t need to be monetary. You can offer an entry ticket to a free give-away with every completed survey. You can even drive additional engagement by offering multiple entries if the customer agrees to become part of a focus or testing group for your new products.

2. Engage customers after they visit with mobile beacons

I don’t remember the last time I was handed a paper receipt after a purchase that did not have an offer to complete a survey on the back. This is an outdated way to collect feedback. Customers lose the receipt or simply request not to be given one.

Retailers can connect with every customer by making use of mobile technologies like beacons. Beacons are small devices that use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals to track when visitors with smart devices enter & leave your store. After the customer has made their purchase, returned to their car or stopped to grab a coffee the beacon pushes a notification to their device requesting they give a quick response about their visit. It’s an easy and efficient way to get up-to-date information on your customer experience.

Google offers a free beacon for retailers who have created and verified their businesses on Google My Business and are running Google Ads.

3. Monitor social media channels

Social media allows your customers to create a conversation around your products and brand. Before the internet and lighting speed smart devices, consumers passed along their favorite products and brands mainly by word-of-mouth, reaching only one or a few people in their communities.

Social media has increased the number of other people that users can interact with. Online users also have a larger influence on your brand and image of your products through social media. It’s not just the people we know that influence us. Strangers have become part of our daily conversations.

What is said about your company online is important. You need a plan to respond to comments, good and bad. Monitoring your social media channels will help you understand how your customers are speaking about your products, and let you engage with potential customers outside of your store front.

Customer satisfaction and experience has become part of every retail business department. Collecting direct feedback from customers is essential to understanding how your retail store can grow its customer base and loyalty as well as create lifetime value that brings customers back again and again.

We’ve listed a few cost effective ways for retailers to collect more customer feedback but don’t stop with these; the more channels and methods you use to speak with customers will help you truly know what your customers expect and want from your business.

Action Card is a brand standards software built for mobile devices to help bring efficiency and accountability to your business processes. When your business is running smoothly you can expect customer experiences to be enjoyable and easy. Want to learn more about how the Action Card app can help your retail business? Join us for a free demo!