Using online tools for customer feedback and research
By using the power of computers and the Internet, you can gain virtually instant access to information about your target customers, or record and largely automate responses and feedback from your customers. You'll likely want to use these online tools either to conduct research on the typical traits, habits, and preferences of your target customers or to gather feedback online - either indirectly by monitoring what is being said or directly by contacting the customers, or potential customers, on your database.
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Researching your target customers
The Internet is one of the best tools at your disposal for researching your target market. You'll find that there's a lot of information out there - the hard part will be deciding how to narrow your search to yield results that are useful and meaningful to your business.
Define what you want to know
Before you start your search, you'll need to have a clear idea of your target customer; the people you hope to appeal to and sell to. If you sell trendy fashion items for teenagers, you'll have a different target market from a business selling clothes and accessories for babies. If both businesses are in the same town, they will both probably be interested in the general economic and customer trends for the same region, but one will want to find out what appeals to 13 to 18-year-olds and the other will want to know the latest concerns and desires of expectant mothers, anxious fathers-to-be or doting grandparents.
Get into the habit of recording the search phrases you enter into search engines like Google. It's usually a matter of trial and error until you're able to settle on phrases and words that find the sort of information you're looking for. Save these search terms or the searches themselves for future reference.
It's a good idea to monitor these search results for your target customers about once a month so that you can pick up any new trends or changes in preferences - anything from preference in social media networks to buying habits and product choices.
Monitor your competitors too
It's important to monitor what your competitors are doing online too. Visit their website, follow their blogs, subscribe to newsletters and read any comments they make on forums. You're probably wondering what this has got to do with customer research - the answer is: everything. Your competitors are selling to the same or similar target market. If they change tack, introduce new advertising or bring out a new range of products, you should try to figure out why. They might have picked up on a change in demand or customer preference that you're not aware of yet.
Getting direct and indirect feedback online?
Online communication has changed the way businesses can get feedback from customers. Apart from asking your customer directly when they visit your business, you can also email questionnaires to your database, or pose questions on forums or social media networks to find out your customer's preferences.
Online communication has also changed the way businesses gather indirect feedback. You need to monitor the conversations that take place online to find out what is being said about your business.
Monitoring the communication channels
In much the same way as you establish a set of key words that you'll use to optimise your website for search engine optimisation, you should establish a set of key words or phrases to monitor online, picking words most relevant to your business. The good news is that this does not have to be as time consuming as it sounds - it's possible to automate the searches.
Google alerts: Once you've identified the key words, you should set up a Google alert online. You'll then be sent an email (you can choose how often you're emailed) with the latest websites or news relevant to the search terms or key words you entered. If, for example, you have an alert set for your company name, you'll know every time your business name appears online or in the news. Depending on the type of business you run, you might want to set up a number of alerts to monitor different things.
Monitor the social media networks: You'll also want to monitor the social media networks favoured by your customers. With Facebook and LinkedIn, you can search for people or companies, but not for comments. Twitter and YouTube are much easier to search using key words. Twitter also allows you to set up searches for key words or hash tags to find out whether your business is mentioned.
By monitoring the conversations that take place online, you'll have a better idea of what customers are saying about your products or service. This will give you some insight into the sort of word-of-mouth referrals your business is getting. Being aware of areas where your business is performing well and where you can improve allows you to improve on what is working well and fix the areas that aren't working.
Social Mention helps you to monitor what is being said on social media networks.
Using email
You can use emails to request feedback from your customers. This could be in the form of:
- A personalised courtesy email after a sales or service experience to find out if they are satisfied with their dealings with you.
- A more generic request for information, including a link to an online survey or questionnaire using options like SurveyMonkey. This method is of getting feedback is usually most effective if you offer an incentive for people to fill in the survey, such as entry into a competition or 5% off their next purchase with you.
- You can also ask for feedback or direct people to online surveys in your electronic newsletters sent out by email.
The amount of relevant customer details you store in your customer database will affect the usefulness of your electronic communications. If you include details like gender, age, location and interests related to your business, you can canvass opinion on products or needs from a particular segment of your market.
An outdoor shop might, for example, want to find out what other climbing products customers would buy. If they have a list of people who are interested in camping, tramping and climbing, they can target their email questionnaire to the climbers on their database, enabling them to get more relevant feedback. Alternatively, if they've brought in a new line, or published a new article, the outdoor shop can send an email targeted to that particular market segment.
Using your website
You can also use your website to get feedback and input from customers. The most obvious way is to use feedback forms and ensure that your contact details are prominently displayed so that people can contact you.
You can also include a blog. Your customers will be able to add comments and feedback to blog posts and questions your business might pose on the blog.
Depending on whether there is a specialist aspect to your business, like trout fishing for example, you could host a forum or special interest group via your website and get feedback and input from people who take part in these online discussions.
Using social media?
Social media is a new, growing, and constantly changing form of communication that offers a growing number of ways to communicate with your customers and get feedback from them.
Simple short questions can be posted on networks like LinkedIn, put as status updates on Facebook or sent out to the twitterverse in a tweet, with people invited to comment and give feedback. Links to longer or more complex questions can be sent out in the same manner - a virtually instant way to gauge your customers' mood and get valuable feedback.
The fast pace of change in social media and online communication does, however, mean that you need to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and options to make the most of the communication channels available.
Next steps
- Read up on Researching your markets.
- Find out more about Creating a customer database and Getting started with direct marketing.
- Read up on Marketing with your database and Marketing over the Internet.
- Research other ways to Make the most of the Internet.
- This information is provided by BNZ
Using online tools for customer feedback and research - BNZ
