How to use customer feedback to your advantage

Customer feedback is exciting and scary at the same time.

Exciting because it’s a thrill to learn what people think about your store and products. Scary because negative feedback is hard to swallow sometimes.

This shouldn’t stop you from gathering it! On the contrary – there are so many ways to use it. Customer feedback is a goldmine of info directly from the people who matter the most, you customers.

In this article, we show different uses of customer feedback and how it can help you make optimizations and get more sales.

Customer feedback as market research

People are much more willing to share bad experiences than positive ones, partly because they expect the good stuff as normal, but feel strong dissatisfaction with any deviation.

So in their feedback you’ll get many suggestions what can be improved in terms of offerings, too. What new products they’d like, what other options they need, what others are doing better than you.

Related: Promoting a new product

This is free market survey! Bigger companies pay agencies to do that for them so don’t miss the insights how you can develop your store to grow.

Our customer Native Cosmetics didn’t stop iterating their deodorant formula until customers were completely satisfied – a continuous process of testing and gathering feedback.

Read Native’s success story from 0 to $100 Million acquisition by Procter & Gamble

Talk in their own words

You’ve heard that so many times and yet, sometimes we insist on calling things with fancier names to present our brand.

Well, customers know better and might even get frustrated if you use other terms, making it hard for them to find what they need. It’s even easier for you to write your site copy and product descriptions they way your customers speak.

I remember that one shop that insisted on calling all wrap skirts “flamenco skirts” although many were the office type and very far from flamenco. I couldn’t filter properly and got quite irritated.

So take it from their feedback and use their words. If they call it “jade”, make it so and let go of “grass green”.

Optimize your inventory thanks to feedback

Some products will get in you in trouble more often than others. With customer feedback, you’ll know which ones so you can get rid of them.

It’s not worth it to keep selling those items if they get returned and bring your rating down all the time.

Other items, though, will be bringing you raving reviews. Those are your keepers.

Put the testimonials on the product pages. Feature them in more ads to push more people to choose them instead of others, more problematic ones.

Eventually, you’ll be able to sift through and keep only the products inspiring loyalty and bringing repeat sales.

Follow up on negative reviews and solve problems

Bad reviews are really bad only if you keep getting them.

It’s absolutely normal that someone didn’t like your service or product. People are different and have various expectations.

Just keep calm and investigate what caused the unpleasant experience for them – if it is true at all. It’s ok to reach out to them and ask more questions in order to make amends.

Take things one step further: email the unhappy customer once you’ve resolved the issue and thank them for helping you fix things.

It’s a sweet gesture and shows you care about each and every customer’s opinion, which boosts positive brand image and can help you keep them despite the unpleasant episode.

All in all, you should try and turn the situation around. Then bad reviews actually turn into an advantage, a key to better customer experience.

Improve the customer experience overall

If the same can happen again to someone else – like get billed twice or receive the wrong size – make the necessary improvements in your operations to prevent it.

This way, you’re using customer feedback to improve the shopping experience for all of your clients.

In result, you won’t be getting more complaints about the same thing and conversions are likely to go up as the customer journey will be smoother.

Plus, you can always ask again old customers what they think about the improvements and clear up your review reputation.

Which leads us to…

Use positive customer feedback as social proof

No matter how you collect customer feedback, you will probably hear awesome things about your brand.

Some you will get repeatedly and they deserve to be highlighted on your site. These are things everybody loves about your shop.

Others might even surprise you because they’ll be comparing you to other shops. You might find out that your support is super fast and that other shops make mistakes too many times.

The things your customers point out are important for others to convert as well so it’s great to use their testimonials on your site – just remember to ask for permission. Asking for the favor to post the same review on Facebook or Instagram is also a great idea.

An Instagram feed with happy customers using your product is an instant green light for every new visitor.

Create a customer ambassador program

Filtering who’s happy with your shop and who’s not is the first step to find out who’s possibly a good referrer for new business.

Take your happy customers – those who gave you a high rating and a good review – and email them personally. Thank them and ask if they’d be interested in working with you as a brand ambassador among their friends.

This doesn’t have to be a serious program as you’d do with a celebrity. Just give them a personal referral code or hashtag and set up some terms like 30% for each new customer brought in.

Customer feedback is very useful because it’s your customers’ direct opinion and can drive you forward.

Without it, you don’t really know what they think or want of you and it becomes hard to satisfy their needs. Customer communication and relationships can only benefit from the two-way exchange – not just you talking.