We’d all love to have a crystal ball to help us see inside our clients’ minds. We can’t provide one of these (for health & safety reasons), but here are five alternatives…
Website
Your website is a sales and customer support tool rolled into one. How can you be confident that it’s meeting your users’ needs? Hotjar tracks how visitors interact with your site and presents the results as heatspot maps or videos so you can see where your visitors click. Now you can share your clients’ frustrations as they attempt to navigate your site and fix any issues that could be hampering your sales.
Encourage your clients to leave Google Reviews
According to research published on G2.com, 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review. Google Reviews are:
- Free
- Easy to respond to
- Part of the World’s most popular search engine
With further research from Invesp showing that customers are willing to spend 31% more on a business with excellent reviews, it’s certainly worth asking your clients to complete a Google Review. In fact, if you’re a client, we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d spare a minute to write one for us.
Calling customers
One of the best ways of collecting feedback is to call your clients. Once you’ve made sure they have the time to talk to you, many will be happy to give you their thoughts. It’s worth having an online survey as back up so you can offer to send this if they prefer (find out why we don’t recommend relying on online surveys).
If feedback is negative, be willing to learn from it. You can:
- Share it (use it as a learning opportunity but avoid shaming a particular employee)
- Use it to identify training needs
- Look for opportunities – would a new product/service meet clients’ needs more effectively?
If feedback is positive, don’t keep it to yourself. With your client’s permission, you can:
- Use it for social proof (share it on social media, on your website, in your brochure, in PowerPoints, in tenders and in award entries)
- Use it to identify unique selling points
- Share it with the team and say thank you
Don’t forget, you can also spot opportunities in positive feedback. Our phishing protection and GDPR critical friend services were developed as a result of positive customer feedback!
You can also compare the feedback to your values. The two should match up nicely. If the two are out of kilter, you’re sending mixed messages to your clients.
Don’t forget, your feedback can also help you write person specs when recruiting. For example, our feedback includes ‘responsive’, ‘friendly’, ‘collaborative’, ‘personable’, ‘open’, ‘natural’ and ‘jargon free’. These are all traits we now look for in a new member of the team.
Ask someone to do it for you
Positive feedback is always nice to have, but you’re really looking for honest feedback in whatever form that takes. Sometimes clients find it easier to give this to a third party rather to their account manager or another company representative. That’s why we ask the brilliant team at Glued to help us conduct our annual customer survey. Find out more about why we use a third party for our surveying.
Ask for recommendations
Recommendations cost nothing but time. Don’t forget to ask satisfied clients if they can recommend you to another business. Many businesses, us included, refuse to accept a financial incentive for making a referral but welcome charitable donations instead. Why not find out if your customer has a chosen charity and offer to make a donation for each successful referral made?
What our clients say about us
Thanks to all our clients who shared their thoughts with Glued this year. Here are some of our favourite quotes:
“We are in a safer place now than we were 12 months ago. Starting with two factor authentication. The culture of the organisation is in a better place and we were in a better place for lockdown too.”
“Although we have not renewed their contract it is because they have enabled us plus we now recruited two members of the team with experience in the field.”
“Contributed to our retaining a contract with a major corporate client business.”
“I felt informed enough to advise contacts of mine.”
“Assisted our credibility and professionalism – referred to in a recent tender. Able to go for bigger projects.”
If you’re new to Risk Evolves, please contact us. We’d love to help you manage your risks and grow your business.
