Social media and customer feedback

Social media has long become an integral part of running a business. For companies, being on social media is a must - to promote, connect, support, and get feedback.

Thanks to social media, customer feedback has become more accessible than ever before. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others give revolutionary tools to connect with customers and transform the ways of interaction.

In this article, we will explore the power of social media when it comes to collecting and leveraging customer feedback, and the ways businesses can benefit from it.

Before we dive into specifics, let's take a moment to understand the importance of customer feedback. Customer feedback is essential for business success - it helps to discover customers' needs, wants, and pain points. It can help you to determine winning features and techniques that will set you aside from the competition.

Listening to your customers can help businesses improve their products and services, enhance customer satisfaction, and build loyalty. Customer feedback allows businesses to make data-driven decisions and reduce waste.

Now, let's explore what social media can do for your business when it comes to discovering, retrieving, and aggregating customer feedback.

Social media monitoring

Social media is open to everyone - all you have to do is listen carefully. People are constantly voicing their opinions, sharing their experiences, and providing feedback.

Monitoring social media conversations related to your business and industry can give you valuable insights. It is a direct way to learn what and how your customers feel about your products and services.

Which social media networks to monitor depends on your customers and your business capacity. It is a balance between covering as much as you can and being present enough. Research your customer preferences and stick to those social networks. For some businesses, it can be enough to be present on one social media while others need to cover several networks.

How do you handle monitoring? There are tools for that.

There are plenty of social media monitoring tools that allow you to track mentions, products, and industry keywords. You will receive notifications and alerts whenever someone mentions the topic of your interest. Your next move is to be proactive by engaging with customers, addressing concerns, and showing that you care about their feedback.

More than that, social media can help you to identify emerging trends and spot potential issues. Analyzing conversations to discover patterns can help you address those issues in the first place and improve your brand reputation (and customer satisfaction).

Engaging with customers

Social media provides a unique opportunity to engage with your customers directly while still staying public. It allows you to start conversations and address concerns on a personal level while providing the same information to others.

When customers reach out on social media, whether it's a comment, direct message, or mention - you need to respond. Your response should be prompt and professional. Make sure to always thank the customer for their feedback whether you like it or not.

Be honest and transparent. Customers feel when businesses are shady and appreciate those who admit their mistakes. Many businesses managed to build their reputation while acting on negative feedback in a manner that turned it from defect to effect.

Since social media is open to everyone, people will judge your business by the way it communicates. Being on top of the game can quickly build you a solid reputation which leads to new and loyal customers.

Getting feedback

On social media, you don't have to wait for someone to talk to you. You need to be proactive and start the dialogue.

Share the news and updates promptly to analyze customer response. Ask questions about your products, services, or specific features. You can also lead customers to complete polls and surveys inside or outside of social media to get more insights.

Engage with your most loyal customers directly by sending them private messages. This is a great way to receive more information and discover advocates.

Go further and start running live streams with Q&A or demo sessions. This is your chance to get attention and communicate with your customers live.

Conclusions

Social media is a powerful tool that brings businesses and customers together. It allows customers to be heard and gives businesses so needed tools to listen.

With the help of social media, businesses can gather more feedback resulting in data-driven decisions when it comes to building product backlog and roadmap.

It is also important to acknowledge that social media brings so-needed transparency which is much appreciated by customers and can be used to build a positive brand reputation.