How to use Customer Feedback to Improve your Product Strategy

Developing and launching a product is just the beginning of the product strategy cycle. The truth is, you can’t be certain whether the product is good, great, or mediocre until you have people using it.

Once your customers get their hands on it, you’ll have the chance to hear the impressions first hand. This is why you need customer feedback. Gathering customer feedback data and information is essential. It can help you learn about your product and improve your product strategy. If you’re not sure why you need to collect and analyze customer feedback, we’ll break it down for you. Here’s how to use customer feedback to make improvements and develop your product.

1.      Removing The Issues

Your customers are the ones using your product and they’ll be making observations about its performance.

In case there are some issues with the product, they’ll report it in their feedback. They might report problems regarding:

• product functionality
• product quality
• product esthetics

You have to read the feedback and take notes. Then, use those notes to remove the problems and fix the product.

By listening to what they have to say, you’ll learn about the flaws of your product you may haven’t realized before.

2.      Proper Advertising

Sometimes it happens that we overpraise a product or represent it in a slightly different light than we’re supposed to.

Improper advertising can lead to problems such as:

• customers not satisfied with the product
• product not meeting their expectations
• customers had the wrong idea about the purpose of the product

If you read customer feedback, you might learn about their initial expectations and whether you’ve met them or not.

If you failed to do it, rethink your product advertising. Make adjustments to clear things up.

3.      Improving the Product

Your customers aren’t only going to say negative things. They might also help you further develop your product.

For instance, you might read a comment such as:

• The product is great. It would be even better if you’ve added the feature to…

Once you read through customer ideas and suggestions, you might have a vision of the further development of your product.

They might give suggestions about:

• product features
• product setbacks
• product interface
• product appearance
• product usability

Read and listen. Make smart moves based on your customers’ actual desires.

This way, you’re making a step forward, and your customers are getting what they asked for. Everybody wins.

4.      Improve Customer Retention

Not only is customer feedback important for improving the product, but it’s also helpful for improving customer retention.

When customers leave feedback, they expect some kind of reaction from you. The best way to handle it is the following:

• read the feedback
• respond via comment or invite the person for a personal correspondence
• make a move to make things better
• apologize for the inconvenience
• use this customer’s experience to improve the product on a global level

This way, your customers will feel appreciated and special. they’ll see how much you care about their opinion and that will mean a lot.

This will improve your customer retention and more people will stay loyal to you, your brand, and your product.

5.      Make Business Decisions

Finally, there’s one last point we mustn’t forget. Making important business decisions has to be based on facts and data.

You can’t allow yourself to make a wild guess and make changes without firm evidence they’re needed.

That’s why you have customer feedback to help you back up your decisions and ideas.

Customer feedback will tell you:

• customer satisfaction levels
• consumers’ experience
• customers’ opinions
• products’ strong and weak points
• valuable data

Once you have the whole picture, supported by data collected from actual users, you’ll have no reason to doubt your decisions.

You’ll be ready to take things to a new level, making decisions you strongly believe will be effective and will bring positive changes.

Final Thoughts

Customer feedback is one of the strongest and most powerful product improvement tools you have. Learning from customer feedback is essential and will give you guidance in developing a strong and powerful product strategy.

The advice above will help you use customer feedback in the right way. Use your customers’ comments to start making impactful changes today.

Author’s bio.

Daniela McVicker is a blogger and a freelance writer who works closely with B2B and B2C businesses providing blog writing, copywriting, and ghostwriting services. Currently she contributes to TopWritersReview. When Daniela isn’t writing, she loves to travel, read romance and science fiction, and try new wines.