In order to function properly, any business needs feedback from their customers in order to make calculated moves. Basically, the market follows the needs of the consumers, not the other way around. That’s why it is important to track the general mood of the consumers and follow the trends they are currently interested in. The whole process of market research actually serves the purpose of acquiring new and valid information which can be used to raise conversion rates, creating new products and modifying business policies so they protect you and help your customers.
If you have fallen into a slump and you are losing customers, you need to understand why things are going bad for you. There is usually a break in communication between businesses and their customers and this can create complicated situations which cannot be taken lightly. The worst thing you can do is try and copy what your competition is doing. They have found tactics that suit their model of business and that doesn’t necessarily mean that they can be transferred to your model without any modification.
There are a lot of ways in which we can get natural and trustworthy information from customers. I’m going to present you with six that have the highest effectiveness.
Surveys
This is the easiest way to gather feedback from your customers or from the general public, especially when you do it online. You can easily set it up and modify it in such a way that you get information about the most important issues. Try not to overdo it though, since a survey that takes too long to finish has a high risk of abandonment, and this kind of data is practically useless and can mess with the bigger picture.
Social Media
If you want to look for peoples’ opinions these days, you should just log on to one of the social networks and start reading. Basically people feel more comfortable sharing their opinions in a safe environment and amongst their friends. Also, a lot of social networks have rating systems for products and companies which further increases the quality of the data acquired.
Feedback Box
Sometimes people tend to avoid confrontation and direct “bad mouthing”. A feedback box lets them keep their anonymity while making sure their opinion is heard. It is easy to set up and it requires no further effort from you, but you should not just just let it sit there pointlessly. Make sure you read through the information gathered and act on it.
Analytics
Sometimes it is enough to just check the statistical data and draw conclusions from that. You can do this by analyzing the data from your website. By following the way people are using your website, you can identify the things that are causing problems and that have a negative influence on whatever you want your visitors to be doing. For instance, if you work in retail, with quality POS software you can reach many interesting data about products and customers.
Usability Tests
Imagine looking through the eyes of a customer – using your product for the first time and actually witnessing his or her first encounter with it. This would give you valuable insight into what things this person likes about your product, what flaws he or she sees and why they would it use or not. Why not make this reality? And not just with one person, but with a number of test subjects. This will help you adapt the service or the product in question to your customers’ needs and you will have firsthand knowledge about the things that have been done well and which ones don’t work.
The direct approach
By approaching customers personally you will get a much better picture of the whole situation. You can just approach a random customer and start up a casual conversation. This kind of information gathering is much more personal and therefore may provide better insight into things that you can really hope to find.
If you want to build up your business, raise your profit, increase the quality of your products and so on, you need to know where things are going wrong and then act upon that information. Shots in the dark rarely hit the mark – don’t shoot in the dark, use market research.
