In today’s blog, we will highlight the importance of understanding the fundamentals of feedback, especially client feedback. For many kinds of businesses, including those whose primary focus is serving their clients, knowing how to take feedback and improve from it is critical to fostering success.
Think about a time you received feedback from someone. For most people, feedback is given in the context of evaluating performance-based tasks, such as in their professional career. At KSR, the type of feedback we value the most comes directly from our clients.
Although no one likes to be criticized, finding out what you could do better at work is crucial for continuous improvement. But like anything else, understanding how to effectively receive feedback requires trial and error, expertise, and most importantly – an open mind.
The Fundamentals of Client Feedback
We’ve already explained why it’s important for your business to ask for feedback from clients. But the other aspect of receiving client feedback – how you think about it and what you do with it – is even more paramount to using it productively.
The ability to keep a healthy perspective is a great skill to have in any aspect of life. When it comes to feedback, especially when that feedback is critical or even negative, maintaining a good perspective is key.
One way to think about feedback positively is viewing it as a tool for future improvement. (And in most cases, that really is what it is.) Consider the following “equation”:
Quality Feedback = Future Improvement = Happier Clients = Future Business
It’s easy to be apprehensive about asking for feedback, and understandably so. But, if you can remind yourself that the whole purpose of getting feedback is to use it to improve, and that it helps everyone involved, you’ll likely find yourself with a more optimistic outlook.
Asking for Feedback
The key to asking for feedback respectfully, and increasing your chances of getting it, lies in effectively communicating why you are asking for it. Sometimes, asking clients for their thoughts can be a little awkward. Thus, you may feel inclined to be passive when you bring it up.
However, it’s best to be direct – for a few reasons.
Think about the principles behind creating quality calls to action, also known as CTA’s. A CTA won’t inspire action if it’s vague or noncommittal. Asking for client feedback functions in a similar way. Specificity and directness are the keys to quality feedback.
Be clear about what you’re asking for, why you need it, and how it can help everyone involved. And being confident in your request for feedback will likely also increase your client’s confidence in you and your services.
This brings us to arguably the most important part of asking for client feedback: responding to that feedback, and then following through with suggested improvements.
(We’ll get into some examples of how to structure receiving feedback a little later.)
How to Respond
First, we’ll start with how to respond to client feedback. One thing we always keep in mind as a starting point is the following phrase: gratitude is golden. When your clients take the time to provide you with feedback, some thank you’s are surely in order before anything else. This is not a step in the process you ever want to skip. It is important for your clients to feel heard.
After you’ve let your client know that you appreciate their feedback, the next step is to follow through. Clarify any questions you may have about what they’ve told you, develop a game plan for improvements you want to make, and then get to work.
Remember to let your clients know how you will use their feedback to improve. This communicates that you truly do value what they have to say and that their thoughts are important to you.
How to Gather Client Feedback
Now that we’ve gone over how to approach feedback, how to ask for it, and how to respond, it’s time to get into some more specifics on how you can carry out the feedback process.
The most beneficial ways to collect feedback can vary from business to business. Here are some common examples of how many businesses gather feedback from their clients:
- Surveys: this is one of the most common ways that businesses collect feedback. To create a good survey, keep things concise, clear, and varied. This means keeping your survey short, to-the-point, and made up of both quantitative and open-ended questions.
- Interviews: for smaller businesses, interviewing their clients can be a viable option. While larger entities may not have as much time and resources to dedicate to individual feedback, businesses with fewer clients often have more opportunities to ask clients personalized feedback questions in an interview.
- Social media: garnering feedback on social media can take many forms, including aforementioned tools like surveys, polls, and interviews. If you have a decent following and believe that you could get some good responses from people on social media, take time to investigate ways that you can effectively do that, and give it a try! You never know what helpful information you could collect until you test out the waters.
Ultimately, how you decide to collect feedback is up to you and depends on your business’ overall structure and goals. We suggest taking a good look into what you think would be the most achievable and beneficial, and then experimenting with different strategies to find out what works best for your needs.
Resources + Things to Remember
Even though we focused on how to approach client feedback today, many of the principles we outlined can also be applied to other kinds of feedback. For example, being respectful, collaborative, and direct in the feedback process is also crucial when employers give feedback to their employees, or employees providing feedback to their supervisors.
The bottom line for effectively receiving feedback is this: constructive feedback is a means to an end. If you can keep a growth mindset geared towards improvement, you will likely be able to utilize feedback to its full potential.
We’d like to close out with a couple more resources for the feedback process:
- This article from HelpScout provides some more examples for gathering general customer feedback.
- Here’s a quick aside on why reviews matter, regardless of what kind of business you run.
- Tips on approaching feedback from an employer.
At KSR, we have ample experience in successfully gathering and utilizing client feedback. If you have questions on what we went over today, please reach out to us! We’re happy to share what we know.
