Any e-commerce or offline store needs to collect customer feedback for marketing purposes, and when you think about it, special support software like UserVoice or Get Satisfaction comes to your mind. Needless to say, most of the businesses operate offline and want to gather clients’ opinions as soon as possible. Let’s discover 5 smart ways to capture customer’s comments before it goes to Yelp.
5 Smart Ways to Get Customer Feedback Except for Web
- Place a clipboard with pens and paper
Clipboard is a great thing for brainstorms and it’s a fun and creative way to provide feedback. Simply place a clipboard in the hall with 3 pens: green red and blue. Let your customers draw their attitude to the company on the black piece of paper. Don’t forget to write down a note “Please leave your feedback here”, so they know what to do. For example, customers may draw a heart sign if they enjoyed the service. Or they can put a cloud sign with the blue pen if the service was not that high. Clients may take down some notes or words to express their feelings or leave some suggestions.
- Create video about your business
If there is a TV set in the reception, you can make a corporate video and play the video on TV. Also, keep a pile of paper cards next to the TV and the box where the visitors can leave cards. The last video frame should ask visitors to judge customers’ service with red or green cards. Remember to prepare a short video. Usual 30 seconds long (like for TV ads) will do. Do you think it’s too hard or too expensive to shoot a video for your business? No, it may cost $0. Just create a video slideshow with the corporate photos and music. Don’t forget to attach captions and ask for a vote at the end. You can create video slideshows with flexible Freemake Free Video Converter available here or time-tested Windows Movie Maker available here.
- Set CEO (or Manager’s) day
CEO or a top manager is someone who spends time in the back office developing business strategy. Let’s ruin this myth. Spend one day in a month at the store outside of the office talking to your customers face to face. It can be a real challenge for a CEO at first, but you will find more ways to grow your business. You’ll get pure unbiased opinions of average users. And you will check full product cycle and employees service.
For example, one day in a month Arianna Huffington from Huffington Post asks authors to email their writings to her inbox. So, she can read and comment them. Such management transparency and lean approach encourage customers to select your products or services.
- Call your customers on weekends
Not every boss has a chance to spend a full day outside of the office. There’s an easy alternative for that – just call several customers on weekends. It’s another opportunity to highlight the importance of end-user voice for your company. Thus, you can collect information in less than 30 minutes. There are several customers’ categories to call: new purchasers, recurring clients, and unhappy clients. It’s up to you to select a customer for a call. If you want to get a 360-degree review of your business, you should try to speak to all of them. Let them share their thoughts and recommendations.
- Hang a wish box on the wall
E-commerce sites like Amazon or eBay have wish lists where we keep precious things. The same trick can be applied to offline stores and sales points. If you want to know what customers will want to buy or what service they will ask for, just hang a bright wish box on the wall. Make this box vivid and keep blank paper and pens next to the box. Let your customers express anonymous ideas. Don’t ask for excessive personal data like a phone number, name, location or email address. All you need to collect your customers’ vision and creativity.
There are even more ways to listen to your customers’ voice directly or indirectly. Please add your suggestions in the comments.
About the author:
Terry Smith, freelance web developer. He’s into technology, education & web apps.
Follow Terry on Twitter https://twitter.com/TerrySmith226
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