The Age Of The Consumer
Chances are, you’ve heard of customer feedback before.
The age of the consumer is well underway. Your customers have more channels of feedback at their disposal than stars in the sky.
Feedback forms, emails, Facebook, Twitter, face to face, Reddit, forums… well, you get the picture.
And with this abundance of customer feedback channels comes a big, bold idea which has taken root.
Your customers believe their opinion is important.
Now, some companies would disagree. They pat their troubled customers on the head with a half-hearted apology and send them on their way. Sometimes they’ll throw in a freebie, as if giving a treat to a dog.
Just try and ignore that face. We bet you can’t.
But your customers aren’t dogs. Not unless you run a kennel or dog groomers.
You need to treat your customers with the respect they deserve. Whether you agree or disagree, your customers’ opinions are important.
And that, my friend, is why customer feedback management is a vital part of any company’s growth.
How Not To Handle Customer Feedback
Before we explain how to manage customer feedback in your own company, let’s talk about Union Street Guest House.
I should explain that this is not a joke…
Union Street Guest House is a hotel in New York who actually threatened to fine customers $500 for leaving a bad review.
Let that sink in for a moment.
A hotel’s policy stated that bad reviews would be met with a fine. It’s safe to say that policy didn’t go down too well on the old social media.
Eventually, the company apologized and removed the policy, claiming it was a joke. But the damage had been done.
By ignoring customer feedback and even trying to close any feedback channels, Union Street turned an opportunity for growth into awful publicity and terrible customer service.
Let’s hope you don’t find a fly in their soup.
Pin Back Those Ears And Listen
Union Street failed to listen to their customers, instead choosing to put their hands over their ears and sing “la la la” whilst they set their lawyers out, baying for blood.
But you’re reading this, so you’re pretty smart, and you know better.
The first step of customer feedback management is opening up channels to collect any ideas or feature requests in one place.
This could be as simple as a spreadsheet, or through using more complex tools to handle it all for you.
The main takeaway is that you need to be prepared.
Setting up your customer feedback system as early on as possible allows you to immediately begin acting on it.
It also shows your customers that you’re willing to hear them out. Ultimately, your company exists for your customers. Reminding them of that can never be a bad thing.
All Hands On Deck
Whilst customer feedback is often dealt with by specific teams such as customer support or customer success, this limits the efficiency of customer feedback management.
If you imagine your company as an octopus (bear with us here) and customer feedback as an IKEA wardrobe (please bear with us), then each arm of the octopus is one of your internal teams.
Now, sure, you could use two of your arms to construct your wardrobe. *It works for us puny humans. *But wouldn’t it be so much quicker, so much easier, to use all of your arms?
Good work, Mr. Octopus!
We’re pretty certain that if we could train octopuses to build flat-pack furniture that we could take over the world. But that’s quite a way down on our roadmap.
But as a company, you should be involving all of your teams with customer feedback.
Your sales teams will learn your customers’ pain points and can feed that back in. Your product management teams can take that feedback and act upon it. Your developers can browse feature requests and figure out how long they would take, and how much value they would offer.
Each arm of your company can work together to build that wardrobe with ease.
Getting Your Priorities Right
Here’s the thing: We think that a lot of companies don’t act on customer feedback because they’re scared.
It means more work, more time, more effort. And it also sometimes leads to you changing direction.
You may think you know what your customers want, but you know who knows better? Your customers.
By gathering your customer feedback in one channel, accessible by everyone in your company, then you’re in the perfect position to act on it.
There are many methods of feature request prioritization that you can use. We recommend letting your customers set your priorities as this gives a complete overview of what they want.
And then, like a well-worn stage, you can act on it.
You can use these insights you’ve gathered from your customer feedback and you can build new features, change your product, to be more in line with what your customers want. And isn’t the the point of any business?
Closing The Loop
You know what’s really frustrating? When you contact a company with a great idea and then you never hear from them again.
Don’t order the squid!
If you went on a date with an octopus and then never heard back from them, you’d think that they were rude. Your opinion of that octopus would change dramatically. We actually think octopuses (yes, that’s the right plural) would make great dates, if only they’d keep in touch.
You should aim to keep your customers in the loop at all times.
Thank them for getting in touch in the first place, and let them know that you’re reviewing their feedback. Once you’ve acted on it, update them with the progress.
You’d be amazed how happy that’ll make your customers. And a happy customer is someone who will recommend your product to others, and someone inclined to stick around.
And as a SaaS company, reducing churn is obviously a big priority.
Letting your customers know that you’re listening, and maintaining an open communication channel is the best way to do just that.
Key Takeaways
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Customer feedback management is one of the most important things a SaaS company should be doing.
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Start by setting up a system to manage your customer feedback and feature requests.
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Allow all of your internal teams to access the customer feedback and be able to input their own views.
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Actually use your customer feedback to improve your product and build the features that they truly want.
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Keep customers in the loop with the status of their feedback, and make them feel valued.
Related Reading:
Secrets of SaaS: How to make your customers love you even more
