How to listen and hear the opinions of customers?

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In this article, we will discuss how to ask clients for their opinions and get honest answers. But what is much more important is to listen and analyze recommendations.

Many of us read books about Western experience with delight: how the usefulness of self employed database values ​​and needs of the target audience helped develop innovative goods and services. However, in Russian reality, everything is the other way around: first, companies produce a product, then sell it, and only at the end do they think about quality.

Why does this happen? Reorienting production is difficult, and thinking about the needs of each client is even more difficult. As a result, those who understand what product to offer to the target audience before others win. And this is not only about a specific product, but also about the company's trade offer, assortment, quality, delivery, additional services. That is, about everything that can solve the client's problems.

Let's figure out what will help us get at least one step closer to our customers' needs.

Ask your clients about important things
The easiest way to do this is through a survey on the site. But to get the right answer, you need to ask the right question. Accordingly, decide for yourself right away what qualities of your product you want to hear an opinion about.

Most often, a customer survey consists of two stages. First, open-ended questions are asked that require a detailed, free answer. For example, “How would you like to change the purchasing process to make it more convenient?” This way, you can create a list of audience needs.

Once the wish list is ready, conduct a survey with closed questions that can only be answered with "yes" or "no". For example, "Are you satisfied with the work of our store consultant?", "Would you like to receive SMS notifications about the status of your order?"

After collecting all the data, you can decide whether to make specific changes or not. The quality and quantity of responses depend on where and how you conduct the survey. You should not ask more than 10 questions, because now the audience values ​​its time too much and will not answer such a number. Ideally, your questionnaire will have no more than 3 questions that correspond to the topic of the page.

Divide respondents into groups
In order to obtain correct data and skillfully work with it in the future, divide the audience into groups. By linking a web analytics system to the survey, you will be able to obtain various statistical data on the characteristics of the audience attracted from different sources.

To conduct a survey, you can use a standard module built into most management systems, or turn to third-party services, such as SurveyMonkey.com.



If you have a database of customer email addresses, use a mailing list. If your company does not have a built-in CRM system with a mailing module, use a third-party service, such as MailChimp.com or Subscribe.ru. Easy to learn and convenient to use, they will perfectly solve the tasks at hand.

How do surveys work in practice?
An online wallpaper store decided to conduct a customer survey before developing a scheme for working with wholesale buyers. This would show interest in online purchases and help the company distribute resources more rationally.

Over 7 days, 4,500 people took part in the survey. There were only 2 questions:

the respondent's belonging to a certain audience group;
interest in purchasing wallpaper through an online store.
According to the survey results, the company found that more than 65% of dealers are ready for wholesale purchases via the Internet.

Collect reviews and conduct polls
This is another option for how to hear customers' opinions in a timely manner. The modules on the website will help you with this: voting for a specific product, reviews, online consultations. You can also attach the functionality of VKontakte or Facebook to the page to attract subscribers from social networks. In this case, votes, "likes" and comments should be linked to the analytics system and KPI.

Work with your employees
If your specialists are incompetent, you lose profit. In some cases, this terrifying figure can reach up to 20% of monthly turnover. To find out what clients think about the work of managers, it is enough to add a feedback form "Write a letter to the director" to the site.

However, the form itself is not enough to work with a dissatisfied audience. You need to constantly answer questions, complaints and wishes about the work of your staff. And take appropriate measures to improve the quality of customer service. Alternatively, you can evaluate your managers through a "secret shopper".

Analyze your site search history
You don't have to ask users direct questions to find out their needs. Analyze what queries visitors enter in search on your site. You will surely find useful information that will help improve your sales offer.

The search system is configured in such a way that it saves all queries entered by users. It may turn out that you are offering people something completely different from what they are looking for. Based on this data, you will be able to adjust your work: expand the range, remove unnecessary products, thereby increasing online sales .

Take a look at your web analytics system
Want to increase your profits without investing extra money? Find out where your visitors come from. To do this, go to the web analytics system and see what related queries users use to visit you and track their behavior.

A clear example from the practice of our colleagues
Analytics conducted for the construction company's website helped to reveal an interesting fact. More than 700 people visited the resource monthly for queries related to the preparation of construction estimates. The company provided this service only as a package for its clients, and such traffic was created by thematic articles published on the site over 8 years.

One of the managers noted that 10-15 clients were interested in the service every month. Based on this data, the management decided to try to make estimates outside the main set of works. As a result, the flow of clients turned out to be impressive, which required hiring a separate specialist on staff.

Try comprehensive solutions
Basically, online stores recommend related products to the buyer that can be useful in combination with the already ordered ones. But this option is still not used by everyone, and in some cases, the “Buy with this” module only shows those products that the owners of the online store really want to sell. In order to understand what customers really need, it is necessary to analyze user behavior when ordering products.

This is exactly what an online plumbing store did through a telephone survey. It turned out that more than 55% of customers purchased goods through sales managers. Why not on the website? The fact is that people simply did not know what else they might need and what accessories existed in principle. Most of the respondents said that if the website presented ready-made plumbing kits, they would take them without further ado.

Once the site was modified based on visitor responses, sales in certain categories jumped by 120%!

Taking into account all of the above, let's sum it up: listen to your customers. They themselves will tell you how to act correctly in order to increase the conversion of the site. High sales to you!