The customer is always right, right? No matter what your customers demand from you, you should always strive to meet those demands. That’s all well and good, but what if you don’t actually know what exactly your customers want?

Addressing demands can be difficult if you haven’t got a clue what they are. Remember, your customers could want to contact you for any number of things, including:

• Information about your product or service
• How to correctly use your product
• Improvements on your product or service
• Praise and gratitude

Getting these sorts of feedback from your customers will help you become a better business or service provider. But, that is only if you take them seriously, reply to them quickly and constantly, and then act on them.

8 Ways you can get testimonials and feedback

How can you go about collecting your clients’ testimonials and feedback? The following eight tips are a great start – once you’ve got these touch points set up, you’ll start seeing more and more feedback roll in.

1. Contact Us page

This is probably the best-known way of collecting feedback from customers. Contact Us pages have, in fact, been around for so long that any website without one is basically unfinished. Add an input form to your page so your clients can leave comments freely.

2. Blog post comments

Apart from serving as a good SEO tool to drive traffic to your website, your blog posts could also serve as a tool for feedback. Allow customers to make comments on each post. This will work well if the posts’ topics are related to your business. You can also use it to build your mailing list by making them sign up or login before they can leave comments.

3. Forum site

Create a forum on your site where your customers can talk freely about their experiences doing business with you. Monitor the conversations to have a finger on the pulse of how satisfied they are with your services.

4. Social media platforms

Social media platforms are the most indispensable way of gathering client feedback. You should have an active account on as many social media platforms as possible. That way you can, for example:

• Keep track of hashtags and mentions about you on Twitter
• Get real-time feedback on your Facebook page
• See how people react to your advertisement and informational videos on YouTube
• Meet professionals who can shed light on your shortcomings by connecting with you on LinkedIn
• Compare designs and customer appeal by posting pictures on Instagram

Keeping track of all your social accounts may take an extra set of hands – look for a qualified professional with experience dealing with customer service and digital marketing.

5. Your tech support

Your tech support department can play a huge role in measuring how well your products or services are doing with your clients. Keep a close eye on complaints to see what they struggle with. Try to remedy the most common problems to create happier customers and better user experience.

6. Surveys

Every once in a while, send your customers surveys, which works especially well if you have a mailing list. You can include the surveys in your newsletters, marketing emails, a dedicated page on your site, or via your social media accounts. Make sure you know how to create engaging surveys that won’t bore or discourage your clients.

7. Polls

Polls help you get feedback in a quick and precise manner. All your clients will need to do is click on a few radio buttons and that will be all. For best results, use polls by including them on social media platforms like Twitter.

8. Local search directories

If you have a brick-and-mortar location, use local search directories like Yelp and Google Places to attract customer reviews. The beauty of using this method is that everyone can see how happy and satisfied your other clients are with you. Make sure to answer negative feedback, as well – if clients see you have a quick response time and are genuine in your support, negative feedback can actually turn into a positive. Use this method with care as statistics show that bad reviews travel faster than good ones.

Use the feedback and testimonials you get

So, now you know how to actually collect feedback from your users. All that remains is for you to make good use of the data! If possible, hire customer relations officers who know how to deal with both positive and negative feedback and address all complaints in the shortest possible amount of time. If you can afford it, get a good CRM system for your business website to make things go even smoother.