Asking For Suggestions and Feedback

When you are in amongst the trees, it’s hard to see the overall shape of the forest. A fresh set of eyes can often come up with some innovative and creative ideas for your business.

Make it easy for your staff and customers to give you feedback. If you own a store, an anonymous suggestion box is a great way to gather suggestions because it eliminates confrontation if they need to tell you something about your business you aren’t going to like.

If you don’t have a store but you have a website, a feedback form is a good way to get some feedback. You can also put a note at the bottom of your receipts/work orders saying something like “How was our performance? We would love to hear your feedback at http://www.yoursite.com/feedback.php”. If you are a one-man operation it’s a great way to find out how clients perceive you. If you have multiple technicians working for you, it’s also a good way to find out how your techies are performing on the job when you are not looking. You aren’t always going to like what people say in their feedback, but it’s this type of feedback that you need to listen to the most. Not listening to feedback can be potentially fatal to your business.

A close friend of mine works as a coder for a medium sized business that has contracts with some million dollar companies. About 2 months ago he told his manager that the setup that they are currently using simply won’t handle their workload for much longer and the systems/servers will collapse. The manager didn’t listen and guess what happened? That’s right, it all collapsed which made them miss deadlines and lose some contracts with those million-dollar companies.

Feedback information can be invaluable. Here on Technibble I’ve asked for feedback a few times and found out the following:

• Generally, people really love the site – Good to know I am doing most of it right
• Readers really like the Repair Tool of the Week section – Ill keep that section going.
• Readers want more marketing articles – Since then, I have added a lot more
• People want to see a bit more activity in the site’s comments and forums – Still working on this one

I once released a Computer Business Kit to just forum members before promoting it on the front page. The idea was to gather feedback and gauge how it would be accepted before the “official release”. One member gave me some invaluable feedback, which I acted on by making the relevant changes. And once the product was officially released, it became a huge hit.

32 sales in just its first week!

Learn what you are doing right and stick to it. Find out what you are doing wrong and change it.