In a perfect world, what your clients want would be perfectly aligned with what your products deliver. However, in the real world, the two can often be miles apart. One of the best tools you can use to bring them together is the customer survey.
Customer surveys should be seen as a tool that not only measures customer attitudes but also one that can be proactively used to shape your product and feature roadmap. Tweet Here are six ways customer surveys can help you improve your products, both now and into the future.
- Customer surveys enable you to accurately identify customers’ needs. Capturing client feedback is a great way to quickly uncover areas of dissatisfaction. For instance, a survey can tell you if your product is missing a key feature or capability that customers want. Adding new features, especially ones that your customers are clamoring for, is a great way to increase the value of your upgrades, and obviously generate more revenue in the process.
- Customer surveys indicate areas that need improvement. When a survey indicates common pain points for your client, any measures you to take to address them will pay dividends in terms of increased customer satisfaction and potential revenue.
- Customer surveys indicate areas of strength. Use surveys to identify your most popular and highest ranked SaaS products or services. Tweet Then, make those the focus of your future product development efforts, to turn an already stellar offering into something even better. This not only will increase customer loyalty and enthusiasm but also can help prompt customers to upgrade and purchase additional products and services.
- Customer surveys contain a broad spectrum of customer attitudes. And it is natural to want to respond reactively to every comment or criticism. The old adage is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Without a greater perspective, it would be a mistake to base future product development on a small percentage of highly vocal, unhappy clients. Instead, use the surveys to give you that perspective and greater insight into your customer base’s overall preferences and attitudes. Over time you should be able to detect patterns that can guide your future product development, and provide customers with an enhanced experience.
- Customer surveys encourage client interest in product development. You can develop an amazing SaaS offering and still fall short of your profitability goals if your clients are not interested enough in your service to notice or care about product development. Regularly soliciting client input reinforces the perception that you are interested in your clients’ feedback and that you welcome their opinions. This promotes a feeling of shared ownership in your products and services. Your clients will feel invested in making your product successful. And they will provide valuable opinions to help you do just that.
- Customer surveys can help you spot trends. This gives you a competitive edge, as you can tailor product development to incorporate currently trending models, features or capabilities, as well as anticipate your targets’ future interests and requirements.
Avoid the temptation to view customer surveys merely as tools to tabulate an overall customer-satisfaction percentage rate. Instead, consider the feedback you receive as valuable data, which you can then use to improve your SaaS offering, better align your products with the market, and, ultimately, increase revenues.
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