When starting a small-scale business, there comes a time when you want to test a prototype. Your primary intention would be to seek feedback on how the product is performing. You would most likely welcome the customer satisfaction survey at this point to try and fix the prototype so it is perfect. Is that right? Well, that is exactly what you are doing wrong! There is no perfect product, but rather, an almost-perfect product would be quite well received by your users.
When is it good to ignore a customer satisfaction survey filled with unwanted feedback?
Customer satisfaction survey is like a report card, which tells you whether it is a product prototype or the final product itself, is good or not. But what it fails to tell you where should you be focussing more and how to reach a satisfactory level with your target audience. Unfortunately, the Internet is filled with users who would only give a single line feedback. For instance, “this product does not give me what I want.” or “it’s okay but could be better.” To an entrepreneur, these do not constitute as a customer satisfaction survey, because they do not offer any purposeful insights that might possibly help toward product development.
When is a feedback acceptable for a small-scale business like yours?
A genuine customer satisfaction survey comprises of everything you did right with the product, and also, what can be improved or the problems they encountered while using your service, and maybe even a suggestion to fix the problem. Of course, it is only a dream that most users will even consider analyzing a product that took you months or even years to develop. Most people are quick to judge and with the IoT becoming dominating the work culture, it is nearly impossible to ever come across face-to-face with a meaningless customer satisfaction survey taker.
If your product or service has anything to do with helping another small-scale business, then it is best if you mention it head first, so that amateurs would know it is not their cup of tea or it is not built for fun! Also, it is not a completely bad idea to ship the product only upon receiving an order instead of delivering it as an application for mobiles. Any serious business would really not care whether you have an app on Android or iOS, or you still believe in shipping the product in manual disc format. All they would want to know is if it works and if there is a good support for it, simple!
Ensure that you are getting the feedback from your target audience and not random strangers.
Consider a situation wherein a user of your product or service was not exactly from your target audience but rather a high-scale or a low-scale user. Of course, you cannot redesign your product overnight to fit such an audience. But, at the same time, you cannot tell them “Sorry, it was not designed for you. I’ll refund your money.” In such cases, it is better to inform the user what part of your product or service can they use in their business or what they must do to utilize the purchased service in full-scale. It boils down to the premium customer support because when a user upgrades to your service, you do not want to lose their faith and loyalty.
In a small-scale business, such as yours, problems will arise frequently, either with billing, or delivery or staff tensions. Keeping everything in check is also your responsibility as a business owner. An effective way to cut down these inconveniences is to seek feedback from everyone you do business with. The customer satisfaction survey and employee satisfaction survey should go hand-in-hand. You need to find out what your team and all those associated with it, think about the product or service as a user. One of these could be using your product, or perhaps their families or best friends are, it is utmost important that you seek appropriate and lengthy feedbacks from them and share the thought with your entire team to try and act on the suggestions that align with your product goals and the direction you are heading.
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