What is Customer Feedback?

Often confused with win/loss interviews, customer feedback is the process whereby customers who have completed their journey through the sales funnel are quizzed about their experience with the product, post-purchase. It is the information and opinions your customers leave about your product, service, or brand.

For instance, companies may ask their target market questions to establish how easy a product is to use, and what modifications could be made to enhance its overall quality. Unlike win-loss interviews (which take place approx. four weeks after a deal’s won or lost), this process can take place at any stage throughout the customer journey.

Customer feedback is about interacting with people to get their opinions about a product or service. Listening to their thoughts and feelings is essential for truly understanding their behavior and needs. It is crucial for product managers because you have to embrace your users and know the pain of their problems before you can deliver a helpful solution.

Gathering customer feedback has several benefits when you are building a product. You can discover how people feel about a potential feature or validate assumptions about user behavior and market trends. Speaking to customers also allows you to spot unmet needs and identify use cases you had not previously considered.

Often, it’s in the form of survey responses, but you can also find customer feedback in social media conversations, online reviews, chats, customer support tickets, and more. By gathering and analyzing customer feedback, you can find out which aspects of your business are working well and which may require improvement.

Then, use those insights to make data-driven decisions to align your product, service, or brand with your customers’ needs. Those insights help you identify improvements, add functionality, or create new solutions to address people's challenges.

Giving people a way to voice their opinions can also help you foster a positive relationship with them. When customers know that you care about what they have to say, they are more likely to feel invested in your offering and be willing to help you improve it. This is how you build a community of folks who are loyal to your company over the long term.

So how do you collect actionable feedback that leads to product innovation? It starts with listening. Many teams engage with customers by asking how they use the product and what they would change about their experience. Some companies also use an online idea portal to empower their users to freely share their suggestions for improving the product. This clarifies what people are requesting and how you can deliver it.

But asking questions and listening to answers is just the beginning. You need to dig deeper. Go beyond a customer's initial comment or request to uncover exactly what they need. Doing this requires empathy — the ability to experience another person's pain as your own. When you can empathize, it is easier to create meaningful solutions.

Customer feedback is a fundamental pillar of success. And without a strong customer feedback loop, your customer service strategy is incomplete.

Think of it this way: 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service. But what qualifies as 'excellent' to your customers?

If we don’t know what’s right, we can’t do more of it. If we don’t know what’s wrong, we can’t do less of it. Without customer feedback, we are destined to fail.

Why is Customer Feedback important?

Customer feedback is important because it contains a lot of valuable information that can help drive business growth. We all know how it goes: the happier your customers are, the more likely they'll stay loyal to your brand and help you attract new clients through recommendations.

It all boils down to customer satisfaction, so you’ll need to dig into your customer feedback to know what you’re getting right and where you’re falling short in your customers’ eyes.

Making improvements based on consumer feedback means you can create products and services that meet your customer's needs, and monitoring customer feedback constantly and over time will keep your finger on the pulse of your customers.

Loyal customers grow a business faster than sales or marketing.

If we never ask for customer feedback, we'll never understand what drives customer satisfaction. If we don't know what drives satisfied customers, it will be impossible to create customer loyalty.

Don’t believe it? Here are the facts: