When running a business, it’s often wise to read between the lines. For example, if a competitor is touting their new product as the latest and greatest new innovation in the industry, does that mean you have to reformat your entire product catalog to match this new norm? Or has their marketing team become a little too optimistic?
These sorts of value judgments are part of building the vision of your brand and doing so within the presence of other competitors and a wider market is a skill you’ll learn with time. It also teaches you that sometimes what is obvious on the surface doesn’t tell the entire truth, or that the first conclusion you draw is not always the correct one.
Strangely enough, this can apply to customer feedback as well. We tend to think that customers always know what they like, what they want, and how they want it. But that’s not necessarily true.
If you were to head to a Michelin-star establishment, would you prefer the chef cook to your own specifications, or would you trust that their particular vision on the plate could surprise and delight you? You can make slight suggestions such as asking for your steak mid-rare instead of pink, and of course your allergy requirements must be adhered to. But ultimately, you go there to trust the visionary focus of the person who made his kitchen notable.
The chef, if they are wise, will use the feedback from their guests to help understand the tastes of those they serve, but such a professional will never let that completely dictate his ambition. After all, customers don’t always know what they want. Sometimes, they want to be shown it.
So, how might you go about understanding such a response, when the feedback you’re getting may not tell the whole story? In this post, we’ll consider some suggestions that could make sense:
Consider Actual Buying Trends & Purchase Patterns
Actions are louder than words, as we all know. As such, one of the most reliable ways to understand customer behavior is by studying ho they actually purchase and register interest in products. Numbers rarely lie. To start with, you can track what people are actually buying versus what they claim to want in surveys or online reviews.
For instance, a product might receive a mixed reception initially, but sales data shows it’s consistently flying off the shelves. Why? Maybe it’s not as easy to articulate its value in words, but it’s serving a need nonetheless. Maybe the closest competitor is much more expensive.
In many cases, customers will vote with their wallets, and tracking these patterns over time helps you see which products are truly working and which ones aren’t – no matter what the comments section says. This doesn’t mean feedback is irrelevant, of course, but it shows that behavior often tells a more honest story than words.
Run Disparate Focus Groups Paid To Be Honest
Sometimes the people leaving you feedback are not your target audience, or maybe they’re simply reacting emotionally in the moment. A focus group might simply tell you what you want to hear to be invited back and paid for next time.
That’s often why running a few targeted focus groups with different objectives can be so useful because here, you’re asking for more considered input, and often from a wider range of voices.
Don’t Dismiss Negative Feedback, It’s Often Laden WIth Insight
When people are frustrated, they tend to be honest, and an honest complaint is often easy to exclude from the exaggerated claims against you. Maybe a customer was irritated by a long wait time or frustrated by a missing feature, and while their tone may be harsh, their critique could pinpoint a real issue you can resolve.
If multiple customers are pointing out the same issues, that can be a great priority to set, because after all a customer’s “want” might be positive, but a customer’s “need” can often counter a bad experience. It’s just human nature and allows you to see through the feedback you do get.
Consider Market Review Tools
It’s easy to navel-gaze about your firm, but there’s another layer to be aware of: your place in the market. Using market intelligence software, especially for practices like competitor analysis, can provide a wider context to the feedback you’re getting. These tools can often allow you to see how your products stack up against others in terms of quality, price, and consumer satisfaction.
That doesn’t mean you need to start copying your competition to get more in line with them, it may be you realize that your SEO practices just aren’t as primed as some others in your space because you’ve been targeting the wrong search terms your audience often goes for. Little adjustments like this can make all the difference.
With this advice, we hope you can more easily use customer feedback as a tool going forward, but not something that dictates your action.
