Are you part of a SaaS company? You know better than anyone how challenging this can be. Especially because in critical moments, you rely on the importance of customer feedback to grow your profits.
There are a multitude of SaaS businesses springing up, as businesses continue to become more digital.
The customer problems solved by these SaaS businesses are diverse, but for sure there is competition among them. Sometimes target audiences can overlap, thus making some brands address the same persona or team.
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So, how could you answer your target audience’s needs and desires with your brand, products, and services? How do you know what the customer wants and expects from you? By asking your customers for feedback.
Even though it may not feel comfortable, this step is crucial for the development of your brand and business.
Still unclear how customer opinions and feedback can help you grow? We got you covered here. We have detailed a list of 9 reasons outlining the importance of customer feedback to your SaaS business. From there, we go into collecting customer feedback in SaaS, as well as five proven ways to get even more feedback.
9 Huge Reasons for the Importance of Customer Feedback
1. Improvement of Services and Products
If you think about how the development of a product or service is done, you surely need customer inputs. Did you know that 48% of consumers claimed to have left a website without making a purchase because they felt it was poorly curated for them?
When it comes to products, undoubtedly you work on delivering the best customer experience and customer service to bring customer value. However, as it is the first iteration of the product launch, flaws can easily appear.
Moreover, you do not necessarily know if it met the needs of your target audience. Between the bugs, glitches, requests, and usability feedback, it’s easy to swim in a haze of ideas that can help make your SaaS product better.
Getting feedback from customers is essential as it helps you improve your services and products. Even though you do thorough market research before the launch and development of the product, the needs and desires of your target audience change.
In addition, you may not consider some needed functionality. Their feedback should give you insight into how well your product was received by the audience. You can use that feedback to improve your product and service.
2. Increase Brand Advocacy
It is up to you how you decide to collect feedback from your clients. However, asking customers for feedback comes with many benefits for your brand. Some brands take the feedback they get from customers so that their opinions on the brand can attract new leads.
Specifically, if a customer says they’d be willing to promote your product via an NPS widget, you’d get a clear sense of who can actually help you do that through word-of-mouth promotion.
At the same time, this improves your brand advocacy and engages your customers in this too. It’s been reported that 92% of people trust word-of-mouth recommendations, a reliable source of marketing for any SaaS company.
This is essential for your brand and one of the main benefits of customer feedback.
Nowadays, there are many channels where brands choose to advertise themselves, so when prospective customers choose to purchase from you, they check many details.
Besides the technical specifications of the products, checking what other clients who have ordered the same product say is an essential step everyone goes through. Plus, to get more loyalty from your customers, it never hurts to send branded promo items to them.
3. Evaluate Your Customer Service
Customer feedback is invaluable, and it comes with many benefits for brands that choose to use it. Asking for feedback from clients is essential, and it can help you evaluate how well some of your employees perform.
If you have a customer service team, you already know that they are the ones interacting with customers and answering their questions and inquiries. But how do your customers evaluate the customer service representatives?
Maybe some of your customers find these employees rude or that they don’t meet their needs. Or on the contrary, maybe they love how they handle conflict situations and offer their support.
Either way, customer service is essential to every brand, and knowing how your clients evaluate this service is crucial.
4. Show the importance of customer feedback to your customers
Because there are so many SaaS businesses out there, customers have plenty of options to choose from. Choosing one brand over another is a decision that has many reasons at its base. And even though it may seem odd, some of them choose the brand they feel closest to. We’re more and more glued to our screens, without question. However, the SaaS products capable of giving the most human touch to their customer experience win.
The importance of customer feedback cannot be underestimated here, especially when you want to make your clients loyal to you. Showing that you value and care about their opinion brings them closer to you.
Making your customers loyal brings other positive benefits as well. They will recommend your brand to their friends and you will get new customers.
5. Understanding the Customers Better
If you ponder on the importance of customer feedback, then you should know that there are a lot of reasons why you should do this. And one of them is because it will help you understand your customers better.
Even though you conduct market research, build your buyer persona and try to define your target audience, its characteristics change over time. Needs and desires change as well and these could have an impact on your business as well. This is why having an updated buyer persona is a part of any SaaS marketing strategy.
By asking customers for feedback through detailed questions or research interviews, you can gain a glimpse and insight into their actual needs. You can then use this data to improve your products and services or design new ones.
6. Learn from Past Mistakes
Another benefit of asking customers for feedback is that you now have the chance to learn from past mistakes. This is important especially in the case of customers that no longer buy from you.
At the base of this decision is probably a good enough reason, so if you manage to find that out, you could learn from past mistakes. You will know what you did wrong and what you need to avoid to have good customer retention.
7. Increase Customer Retention
Knowing how satisfied your customers are with your products and services is essential. Customer feedback has one of the greatest benefits, especially in this competitive industry.
If customers avoid buying from you anymore, they are probably buying from another brand with similar products. Understanding why they have done this helps you improve your customer retention.
It helps you understand how to make your customers satisfied by improving the products and services you offer.
8. Identify Market Trends
Market trends evolve and change over time. Writers who offer essay help on marketing topics have already acknowledged that these changes sometimes happen faster than they have predicted.
As brands and businesses compete for customers, they might introduce new products that could revolutionize the industry.
Detecting these trends that your customers have already picked up is crucial and it helps you keep up the pace with the evolution of the industry. Especially when you know that the trends aren’t just fun, but effective in helping your customers get to their needs faster.
9. Better Business Decisions
If you run a SaaS business, you have probably faced some moments when a decision had to be made. Sometimes, doing this is easy, but other times you may need more information on the topic.
Most business decisions should be taken so that your customers are satisfied, but if you know nothing about them, how could you do this? This is when a customer feedback solution steps in to give you the comprehensive overview..
The importance of customer feedback is huge, especially because it provides some data that could help you make better business decisions.
Some general ways to collect customer feedback in SaaS
With so many possibilities for getting consumer feedback, you can experiment to see which combination works best for your firm, providing you with the optimum mix of data to prioritize your product development.
1. Data from customer analytics
Data is only relevant if it can be interpreted; once collected and charted, it provides a detailed, visual confirmation of assumptions along with a revelation of real user behavior.
Why customer analytics are important for SaaS feedback: When you compare changes in this data to changes in the program, you can see exactly how upgrades are affecting usage, allowing you to conduct experiments and respond quickly to changing metrics.
2. Interviews with customers
Spend some one-on-one time with a customer, asking them questions about their business, how they use the product, their pain spots, their ambitions and dreams, and then returning to the office to sift through your notes for nuggets of inspiration.
Spend some one-on-one time with a customer, asking them questions about their business, how they use the product, their pain spots, their ambitions and dreams, and then returning to the office to sift through your notes for nuggets of inspiration.
Why customer interviews are important for SaaS feedback: Customers can unsubscribe from SaaS products at any time, so the more information you have on what they care about, the better experience you can deliver, and you can often delight them with a quick turnaround of adjustments and tweaks.
3. Usability testing
Users are assigned a set of tasks to perform while their behavior is monitored or recorded as they walk through the steps, offering a running commentary on their observations and decision-making.
Why user testing is useful for SaaS feedback: Nothing is more humbling and eye-opening than watching people struggle and stumble through the UX you thought was perfect. Testing reveals loads of opportunities for rapid changes and longer-term areas of need.
4. Feedback collection within the app
Users can submit feedback directly from within the application in the heat of the moment, with the process frequently recording the details of the user’s current position for further context.
Why are in-app feedback widgets useful for SaaS feedback? Counting on a user to go through numerous stages to provide feedback—and accurately remember what they saw—will definitely produce errors; in-app feedback solicits input while everything is still fresh and relevant.
5. Customer polls
It offers one or more questions for various customers to answer, which may contain multiple-choice, ranking, or open-ended questions.
Why are customer surveys useful for SaaS feedback? Surveys provide a wide range of replies to a consistent set of questions, resulting in quantifiable data that may be used to support decision-making and explain priority choices.
6. Proxy feedback
Feedback from your customer-facing colleagues, or “feedback by proxy,” can assist you in identifying problems, developing better solutions, and better understanding where your consumers suffer.
Why is feedback by proxy useful for SaaS feedback? SaaS businesses, in particular, have many touchpoints with customers, with sales, account management, support, and success teams all having frequent conversations with customers. These are excellent opportunities for customers to provide input that will ultimately help you enhance your product.
7. Advisory boards for customers
Leverage a pre-existing client base for interviews, testimonials, alpha/beta testing, and more.
Why are customer advisory boards useful for SaaS feedback? Having an “on-hand” pool of genuine consumers eager to help the product succeed gives an excellent conduit for requesting input on both new features and future ideas.
Five proven ways to get more customer feedback
1. Pop-up windows
There are now a variety of “pop-up” styles for websites, including slide-ins, floating bars, countdown timer offers, and so on. If your website visitors aren’t actively seeking to provide feedback, you can use a pop-up to remind them.
A short and simple message asking users to review their experience while navigating will certainly promote feedback and increase your survey response rates.
You can politely ask them to provide more thorough comments if they so desire after receiving their response. It’s all about making it convenient for them rather than forcing them to do something they don’t want to do.
Pros of pop-ups
- Customers can easily provide feedback.
- Visitors who did not plan to offer feedback may be prompted to do so.
Cons of pop-ups
- If done incorrectly, it can be aggravating.
- Interfere with the customer’s experience.
2. Use of Emails for Feedback
You may take advantage of this if your website is an e-commerce platform by asking your customers for feedback after they’ve completed a transaction. If they are interested enough in your goods to purchase them, they are likely to be willing to provide feedback in return.
You can learn a lot about your clients’ experiences by doing something as simple as adding an extra link at the bottom of the email.
You can also combine this method of soliciting feedbacks with the pop-up options as outlined above.
Pros of email feedback
- A large number will see the feedback option of customers.
- Customers will be able to refer to a concrete experience.
Cons of email feedback
- Because clients have completed their tasks, the feedback request may be ignored.
Discreet, all-pervasive, and completely adaptable. This button can be configured to start a new page, display a pop-up widget, or be expanded into a feedback form.
All of these capabilities may be accessed by a single little button on the side of your website. Customers can access a feedback form at all touchpoints of the website and app.
The side button for feedback would enable the customers to report an incident as soon as they become aware of it. For example, if a feature isn’t operating properly, customers may easily click and provide feedback rather than abandon your app right away.
- Integrates seamlessly with the website.
- When customers need feedback, it’s simple to find and use.
- You are merely waiting for input from clients in a passive manner.
4. Blog with embedded feedback
Visitors that engage with your content/material or spend time interacting with the website will not only have more to talk about, but they will also put their previous interests into writing.
You can surely use the visitors’ interest to gather feedback, whether you have a subscription list or your website requires account setup. People interested in signing up for your services are far more likely to react to your feedback request since they have a strong desire to have a positive experience.
Pros of a blog with embedded feedback
- Customers are enthusiastic about your products or services.
- After you have the clients’ contact information, you can seek feedback at any moment.
- You can ask for feedback on your website or by sending an email with a form.
Cons of a blog with embedded feedback
- Customers must select whether or not to participate in the feedback program.
- If they unintentionally opt-in, they may be dissatisfied with the feedback requests.
5. A live chat service
The presence of live chat will never be considered annoying or distracting. Live chat appears to be a promising solution that improves client satisfaction. This is a fantastic option because it puts the customer and the specialist in direct contact. The specialists can ask for more information and receive immediate feedback, rather than waiting a few hours or days for an email response.
It’s simple and quick to use a live chat service because most individuals are familiar with chat boxes, there is no risk of clients becoming intimidated. The customer and the support team benefit from this approach because it is casual and produces quick results. It has the highest success rate, and one element that may contribute to this is the speed with which questions can be answered.
Unlike other forms of feedback collection where clients are urged by the website they are visiting, live chat relies entirely on the visitor’s initiative.
Pros of a live chat service
- Connect a customer to a developer or technician right away.
- Discuss client feedback in detail and provide assistance.
- Customers are used to using chat boxes.
Cons of a live chat service
- Time-consuming.
- Only the text is included.
Conclusion on the Importance of Customer Feedback
If you are asking yourself why customer feedback is important to your SaaS business, we hope this article has answered your question. Also, when you’re searching for the best customer feedback tool to take action on behalf of your customers, Usersnap is a great choice.
Asking your customers for feedback is essential and it can help you improve your products and services, but also make better business decisions, learn more about your customers and keep them close to your brand.
Author Bio: Aziz Nicleson is a journalist and essay writer with 4 years of experience working in a professional writer service. This is the best essay writing service for students from all over the world. He is a professional mini-tennis player and he has written a novel “His heart”.
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