How Much is Customer Feedback Worth to You?

When you’re running a business, it’s common to be cost-conscious about many things like marketing, supplies, or everyday expenses. Unfortunately, some companies don’t realize how much money they’re wasting by not having a real strategy in place for customer service, feedback, and engagement. These areas go hand-in-hand and can make or break a business. As you continue to grow your business, how much is customer feedback worth to you?

The cost of being bad

According to a 2018 report, negative customer experiences carry a hefty price tag – $75 billion a year to be exact. In addition to significant revenue losses related to poor customer service, the report also showed that consumers are becoming more inclined to quickly abandon a company for another due to bad experiences. In this digital age, simple social media posts about a bad customer experience can spread like wildfire, leading businesses to lose current customers and scaring away prospective ones. For that reason, it’s never a good idea to sweep customer concerns under the rug.

Ignoring customer feedback or constantly shelling out money to make up for a bad experience can result in more costly problems in the long run like declining customer traffic, lost revenue, and eventually business closures. To avoid further problems, it’s critical to incorporate customer feedback into your strategy and take actionable steps to create a better experience. Customers desire accessibility, meaning that providing them with a convenient and direct channel to engage and leave feedback is the way to go.

Across the country, senior living facilities have reached record low occupancy rates as they’ve dropped to 78.7 percent in Q1 2021, an 8.7 point decline from a year ago. According to the NIC MAP Vision, this is the fourth consecutive quarterly decline since the pandemic. As more people get vaccinated against COVID-19 and cases and deaths decline, the senior living industry is getting closer to making a comeback.

The upside to addressing the good, the bad, and the ugly

Now is the time to recognize the importance of delivering a good customer experience and the value you should place on allowing your customers the opportunity to provide feedback. Today’s consumers don’t want to jump through hoops to leave feedback, whether it’s good or bad. Businesses should consider implementing feedback channels to:

Increase customer engagement
See how well they’re meeting customer expectations
Improve customer loyalty
Stay up-to-date on changing customer behaviors and needs
Pinpoint inefficiencies in products, services, or operations
Prioritize customers and their opinions

For customers, leaving reviews is serious business. Whether someone wants to rave about fantastic service, make a suggestion, or voice a concern, providing them with an easy way to do it is essential. Consumers value simplicity; no one wants to spend time calling a business and being placed on hold or being passed around from employee to employee. In many instances, customers aren’t looking for a handout, they simply want to be heard, empathized with, and receive a positive and proactive response from the business. At the end of the day, knowing that their feedback and business are appreciated goes a long way.

Our Trusted Partner Program gives customers a private, quick and easy way to tell a business what’s working and what isn’t via SMS. Customers can send a simple text to submit feedback about their experience, eliminating the need to call a business, submit a form on a website, or reach out via social media. This straightforward process doesn’t require a download or link to complete the survey, it’s as easy as sending a text message. As for the business, this provides them with real-time reporting and metrics of customer feedback and supports better visibility into the business, while also supplying data for more informed decision-making.

Customer feedback; worth its weight in gold

Don’t let the cost of bad customer experiences and faulty lines of communication add up. Upgrade your customer engagement strategy today with up-to-date solutions that make leaving feedback a breeze. Don’t let another dollar go to waste because of a bad customer experience.