Amanda Stillwagon As Chief Marketer for Small Business Trends, Amanda oversees online marketing, email marketing and social media marketing for the Small Business Trends group of sites.

10 Reactions
  1. I would add that it’s important to record that feedback and analyze it so that it goes beyond the anecdotal or intuition level.

  2. Thanks for the extensive list of feedback channels, there are also feedback systems that are 2 way feedback. Meaning customer or user sends feedback and owner can reply back, its a perfect solution if feedback isnt clear and more clarification is needed.

  3. Kelly McLachlan (14001722)

    Encouraging actionable feedback, mitigates gossip and disgruntled customers, and provides a platform where improvements can be made between “company-customer” expectations and reality. Your substantial list of feedback channel examples provides companies with a vast amount of ideas that can be implemented for successful feedback.

    Companies that solicit “anonymous” feedback often tend to get a greater response as customers feel a sense of “safety” being able to comment anonymously. I would therefore suggest that for this purpose, companies should implement online reviews, blog and website commenting platforms, website analytics and “within a product” techniques as recommended by your article. These systems will elicit action and provide companies with valuable feedback and suggestions. Although these techniques are “easy”, they are all impersonal. I therefore agree that “in person conversation” is a sensible channel to practice as constructive criticism and immediate guidance can be offered.

    Collaborative feedback is vital for a good “company-customer” bond and your blog article provides many interesting and informing channels for companies to use that suit the time, place and convenience of customers and businesses. These channels will help give customers a voice to express suggestions that will better the company.

    Thank you for an interesting and informing read.

  4. Thank you Amanda for providing such an informative post.
    On that list i feel that you should have included tips as how to market in the rural areas as i believe it would be highly appreciated. i have an uncle who owns small potential business in a place that has inadequate infrastructure and people have no access to above mentioned resources to link them to the business.
    Even thou the in-person conversation might be viable, i feel one would end up mixing the information gathered since its too informal.
    I would highly appreciate your insight on that.

  5. I love that you included “in-person conversations” – People seem to forget that person-to-person is the original social, and it’s important to utilize this for your business!

    Great read, thanks!

  6. Amanda, am becoming your fan, great piece, though instead of “Focus Group” I believe “Friendship Pair” would provide much more in-depth insight, not to mention that it has been proven via studies and research (Geoff Bayley, Clive Nancarrow 1998 Impulse purchasing a qualitative exploration of the phenomenon).

    Lastly have you ever thought about it, I mean when you have positive feedback from all your customers and yet your sales are on decline or stagnant, How would you explain that ? well here is an interesting article that explains feedback from a different angle http://www.easymarketinga2z.com/2013/07/product-service-feedback-what-you-should-really-know.html