Your most dissatisfied customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates
If you create a love affair with your customers, they themselves will advertise your brand.
Philip Kotler
Last year I participated in WebSummit, the largest technology event in Europe and one of the largest in the world, held in November in Lisbon.
The first lecture I attended was by the CEO of Survey Monkey, Zander Lurie. That's when I first heard the term " Feedback Economy." I was amazed by what I heard in those 20 minutes of presentation, where Zander explained why we are in the Age of the Feedback Economy.
Below is a summary:
The digital revolution has opened doors for customers, allowing them to leave their feedback anywhere, anytime. With rising expectations, companies have been encouraged to incorporate customer feedback into daily and long-term decisions.
The combination of these two forces has shaped what we call the Feedback Economy, an economy driven by feedback: opinions, comments, and criticism.
The Feedback Economy presents a vital opportunity for businesses to succeed or fail. With consumers interacting with each other to decide how they feel about a brand, feedback holds immense power when it comes to choosing where a consumer will spend their money.
Using customer feedback is no longer an option. It's an obligation for any company that wants to stay alive and thriving.
This finding fully aligns with our belief and purpose, which is to help companies implement a feedback culture in their daily operations.
In this new era we are living in, the Feedback Economy Era, one of the greatest assets a company can have is the trust it generates with its customers.
People want security and companies they can trust. They want to trust that they will always be well taken care of, with respect and empathy, regardless of the situation. They want to trust that they will have a pleasant experience throughout their journey, with genuine attention and care.
When a company manages to generate positive experiences with its customers, it receives the greatest reward: the customers themselves recommending the companypublicly. Public recommendation is a clear indication of the trust and admiration that the customer feels for the company.
Public reviews have extraordinary power, as consumers place great trust in what customers say about companies. Positive recommendations attract customers, while negative recommendations can drive them away, especially if not properly addressed.
To generate positive recommendations, it's necessary to create positive experiences. The better the experience, the more and better reviews the company will receive from its customers. There's no secret, but there's certainly a technique to make this happen consistently.
To generate positive experiences, it is necessary, first and foremost, to continuously measure customer satisfaction throughout their entire journey with the brand, at all points of contact. Continuous measurement is fundamental for improvement and evolution.
The 5 main points of the consumer's buying journey with the brand:
1. Search
The journey begins when the consumer is searching for a business. At this moment, it is essential to have a high rating on search channels (Google My Business, TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.) and a high number of positive and responded reviews to rank (SEO) better than your competitors. This is the moment that Google calls ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth).
2. Purchase
The purchase is the culmination of the journey, as it's where the experience truly happens and the perception of the brand is created in the consumer's mind. It's the first moment of truth, and it's where you should focus your efforts to ensure the customer leaves at least satisfied, but ideally delighted. If they leave delighted, the company gains a promoter, a brand ambassador. And there's no better advertising than a happy customer recommending your company to everyone.
3. Feedback
Immediately after the purchase experience, it's crucial to conduct post-sale research to measure customer satisfaction with the brand. This is the time to listen to and assess customer satisfaction. If the experience was positive, you should ask them to leave a public review on one of the search channels. Public reviews directly influence your company's online reputation (its rating), which in turn influences local SEO and its ranking on search engines like Google My Business, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, and others. These are the channels consumers use when searching for businesses.
4. Treatment
Did you detect any problems with the experience? Address them as quickly as possible and rebuild trust with your customer. In addition, respond to all reviews received publicly, demonstrating how your company is attentive and listening to customers, gaining consumer confidence and improving brand reputation.
Everyone wants to buy from those who care about their customers and solve their problems. That's why responding to public reviews is crucial, as they are the main showcase for a company to demonstrate how it listens, appreciates, and resolves issues, in addition to reinforcing its brand values. At the moment of search (the zero moment of truth), these responses will make all the difference between the consumer choosing your company or your competitor's.
5. Action
Use customer feedback strategically and intelligently, create action plans, and make decisions focused on improving the entire customer journey experience, generating more positive reviews, impacting the brand's ranking (SEO) on search engines, and enhancing its online reputation. Ensure that customer feedback reaches the operational level.
It's pointless to receive and analyze feedback if it doesn't reach the operational level, which is where the main point of contact with customers occurs. Feedback should be used as a source of intelligence, focusing on improving the experience from the perspective of those who matter most: your customers.
As we can see, everything is interconnected. Customer experience and online reputation are almost one and the same, as one cannot exist without the other. The more united and interconnected they are, the better the results will be.
What's the secret to winning in the feedback economy?
The key to success in the feedback economy lies in listening to customers at every point of contact with the company, transforming data into actions that promote better experiences, strengthening customer trust and satisfaction, and turning them into loyal buyers and brand advocates.
But for all of this to actually work, the company needs to understand that it's not just about implementing a process.
It is essential to gain knowledge about the methodology and, even more importantly, to implement an internal customer-centric culture, promoting, valuing, and receiving feedback with an open heart, feeling a deep and sincere empathy for the company's customers.
It is necessary to "open your ears" and learn to listen. That is Harmo's value proposition.
We have a clear and genuine purpose: to contribute to the spread of a feedback culture in our country.
The platform is the tool that allows us to apply our 360-degree feedback intelligence management methodology, helping our clients implement a culture that puts the customer at the center of decision-making.
Welcome to the feedback economy!
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