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The Importance of Customer Feedback for Continuous Improvement

The first step in unlocking the secrets of customer feedback is to understand its importance for continuous improvement. When you gather feedback from your customers, you are opening the door to a world of opportunities. You can learn what you are doing well and what needs improvement. You can also identify trends and patterns that can help you make informed decisions about your business.

Real customer feedback is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal to help you make key decisions that can make or break your business. By listening to your customers, you can identify areas for improvement, enhance your product or service offerings, and build stronger relationships with your customers. Furthermore, customer feedback can provide you with insights into your customer’s changing needs and wants, which can help you make better informed decisions, that ultimate help you deliver better customer experiences.

The Benefits of a Continuous Improvement Approach

A continuous improvement approach to customer feedback can help your business in many ways. When you adopt a continuous improvement approach, you are committing to making small, incremental changes that can have a big impact on your business over time.

Continuous improvement is a key principle of Kaizen, a Japanese philosophy. that emphasizes continuous improvement in all aspects of life, including business. The basic principle of Kaizen is that small, incremental changes can lead to significant improvements over time. Kaizen is not a one-time event or a quick fix. It is an ongoing process of improvement that requires commitment, dedication, and persistence.

Kaizen is based on the belief that every employee in an organization has a role to play in improving the business. It is not just the responsibility of management or the quality department. It is everyone’s responsibility. Every employee is encouraged to identify areas for improvement and to make suggestions for how to improve.

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How Businesses Can Implement a Continuous Improvement Approach

Any business, large or small, can implement Kaizen for customer feedback by adopting a continuous improvement approach. This involves regularly collecting customer feedback, analyzing it, and making small, incremental changes to your business based on the insights you gain. By adopting a Kaizen approach to customer feedback, you can continuously improve your business and enhance customer satisfaction, retention and brand loyalty.

One way that any businesses can implement continuous improvement is to create a culture for customer feedback. This involves encouraging all employees to identify areas for improvement and to make suggestions for how to improve. Improvements can be found in all facets of a business. While the focus should be on how customers feel about your products and services, employees and partners contribute to the overall customer experience too. Don’t ignore all stakeholders involved in your business. By involving all employees in the process of continuous improvement, you can create a sense of ownership and accountability, which can lead to better results and better customer experiences.

Former President and COO of Ritz-Carlton, Horst Shulze has been a long-time advocate of providing a world-class customer experience. From his point of view, a business must do 4 things to be successful:

1. Keep the guests you have
2. Find new guests
3. Maximize revenue per guest
4. Improve efficiency

LoyaltyLoop has the tools to help your business check all 4 of Shulze’s keys to success. In this article we’ll show you how.

#1 Keep the guests you have!

LoyaltyLoop’s first goal is to engage your customers for feedback. The Net Promoter Score question allows you to identify whether your customer can be considered a Promoter, Passive or Detractor of your brand. For an in depth look at NPS, click here. When a customer registers as a “passive” on the scale you have an opportunity to build loyalty. Depending on your business there are several strategies that can help build that loyalty.

Personal Touch: Consider reaching out to the customer with a handwritten note or phone call thanking for them choosing your business and offering assistance or instructions on the support your team offers.

Scheduled reminders: Does your customer require recurring service or a purchase? Let’s steal a page from the dentist office and take the burden of remembering and planning off our customers’ shoulders.

Incentivize: Is a personal post-sale contact unrealistic for your business? An email or direct mail “customer appreciation” discount could be a tool to show your commitment to a long business relationship and foster a repeat business behavior. You could even send a campaign in your LoyaltyLoop account to easily engage your passive customers!

#2 Find New Guests

Through LoyaltyLoop you have several tools to help you find new guests or customers. First, and the most direct approach, is to ask your customers for referrals in your survey. With LoyaltyLoop's survey logic, we’ll engage your customers who identify as “Promoters” on the Net Promoter System scale for referrals. These are happy customers referring their friends and colleagues to your business. The next tool is the online review ask. LoyaltyLoop will ask your customers to leave reviews on review sites such as Google. These reviews help improve your local SEO, as well as help you build trust with prospective customers before any interactions begin. 90% of consumers turn to online reviews before making a purchase decision.

Here's a strategy within LoyaltyLoop to find new guests. Consider running a referral ask campaign once a year leading up to or coming out of “peak” season to customers that have identified as “Promoters”.

#3 Get as much money from your guests as you can BECAUSE YOU PROVIDE VALUE

That phrasing may sound a little harsh, but the goal is to increase your share of your customers' wallet. Why should a competitor win their business when they love working with you? One of the most frustrating ways to lose a customer is when they turn to a competitor for a product or service you could have helped them with. LoyaltyLoop is a great resource to make sure your customers are aware of the services you provide and will even help you identify who wants/needs your help in other areas.

With LoyaltyLoop you can ask your customers “What other products/services would you like to learn more about?” Here you can curate a list of products and services your customer may not have been aware you can help them with or they were to focused on their original purchase decision to consider at that time. With LoyaltyLoop you don’t have to guess what products and services each customer might be interested in…they will tell you!

#4 Improve Efficiency

From Horst Shulze’s perspective, businesses often confuse “cutting costs” with improving efficiency. LoyaltyLoop allows you to pinpoint your customers’ pain points. This gives you a great competitive advantage! First, you and your team can identify areas to improve processes concerning the customer experience trends. Customer experience pain points don’t only affect the customer…. they often include wasted time “chasing fires” and emotional stress on your workforce.

You also have the ability to see how your customers react to changes you make in the pursuit of efficiency. Perhaps on the surface using a new supplier to cut costs may appear to be a smart business decision, but if the end product or service experience suffers as a result of this change, you need to know! Consider adding a question to your LoyaltyLoop survey asking specifically about the change. Remember, you can always make updates to your survey by reaching out to our support team: 888-552-5667 (option 3) or support@loyaltyloop.com.