Engaging customers is all the rage with businesses big or small. Companies are adding communities, comments and reviews to their websites to encourage feedback and conversations. This is all good. However, if you ask for feedback from your customers, be ready to respond when they give it. Not responding is worse than never asking in the first place.
Requesting Feedback
While customers may already be talking about you online (via Twitter, Facebook, etc.), you can also request feedback just by asking or by implementing systems which allow customers to provide their opinions. Systems such as comments, reviews and forums are fairly easy to implement for business websites and can be especially useful for eCommerce sites.
Expect the Negative
Unless you specifically ask people with positive experiences to leave their feedback, you may receive mostly negative comments. People who have a negative experience are more likely to feel compelled to complain or leave their opinions than people who are satisfied (they’re usually hoping for some sort of resolution). If you’re asking for feedback or provide ways for people to leave it, be prepared for the negative and ask for the positive.
Be Ready to Respond
When you ask for feedback or provide ways for people to leave it, you need to be prepared to respond when it happens — for either positive or negative feedback. Nothing is worse than a company that requests feedback and then doesn’t respond when it’s given. This means someone needs to be responsible for monitoring feedback and responding to people.
What’s your experience been when you’ve given feedback? Do you have any examples of good response by a company? How about bad?
(photo by Anna Majkowska)