All businesses, whether they operate in the digital arena, ecommerce or B2B services, have customer experience pain points. As such, it would be natural for them to want to quickly get to fixing whatever the perceived ‘problems’ may be.
While you and I can see all the potential gains of customer feedback, you would think it is common practice for product launches and continuous product development to integrate consumer feedback. However, this is hardly the case as many companies don't have a process in place for tackling customer feedback. They either ignore them, struggle to make them actionable or are stuck trying to build a scalable process.
Analyzing feedback can have its advantages. Digging into the data to look at the big picture and figuring out what adjustments are needed to improve the quality of your offering is indispensable. After thoughtfully thinking through any new customer data raised, analyze it against the company’s product roadmap to see how changes should be implemented next.
These are three keys to success in offering a more customer-centric experience:
The best way to deliver on a customer-centric approach is for businesses to figure out what the common threads are between the team and your customers. Your customer feedback can be invaluable for informing the development team’s product roadmap. 95% of businesses fail because they can’t agree on what the customer needs are and how to meet them. Lacking clarity leads to the demise of the company.
Spend some time mining your own data to identify the top trends and customer needs.
Read in-depth feedback. Understand the general sentiment of what you read. Research metrics, like whether someone opened your emails, clicked through, or returned to a page. See their interactions on your digital assets and examine your messaging. Find out what your customers are saying about you and your product in forums or message boards. Learn from your social media platforms and stay informed with the chat logs to understand how customers are asking questions and how you can help.
What motivates technological innovation? In most cases, it is feedback on processes. Customers may ask for aesthetic changes to products, but what they need tends to go beyond superficial request and may include better systems, services or functionality. When innovation is on your mind and you have the data to back it up, you'll understand what they want before they demand it, setting up a chain of actions that will gradually move towards the finalized version of what they want.
Businesses that do a good job of balancing customer feedback and analytics while still incorporating their product roadmap have a sound understanding of who they are, and who they want to be as a company. The benefit of balancing would be that they learn of whom they must attract and retain in different times and seasons of the business cycle
The adage, “If you have to explain it, it’s no good” can be applied to design innovation too. Designers must think about communicative features and benefits in order to successfully engage with users. Ease of use should be at the core of your offering.
Adopt buyer empathy as your approach to design innovation. It allows design leaders to immerse themselves in the reality of today's buyers, and to see into their minds to better understand the emotions, thoughts, and motivations of their customers. From this practice, they can understand more effectively the customers' changed circumstances and clearly understand how their solutions fit into these new realities.
Ultimately, we have to acknowledge the symbiotic relationship between designer and customer, since neither can do their jobs without the other. This symbiotic relationship ensures that one will not start a conversation without the other, both live in the realm where the problem and solution can work together in unison.
Always aim to make your design better. Don’t be afraid to push for better design, and look for new ways to improve it. However, remember that, to best fit the demand of the society, you need to find the right balance between what you want and what the market want.
If you're looking for the right balance, you can find it in Mad Creative Beanstalk. We have just the right amount of industry knowledge and keen eye for design to help you turn your customer feedback in design innovations. Get in touch to get started today.
