Whether it’s a dissatisfied complaint or a five-star review, customer feedback can be invaluable to business leaders looking to improve their products, services or operations. This feedback can lead to minor or major changes, but both can have a major impact on customer satisfaction and overall sales if implemented correctly.
To share some of the most informative feedback they’ve ever received from a customer, eight members of Council for Young Entrepreneurs tell their stories below. Here’s what customers had to say about their products or services and the lessons these business leaders learned from it.
Members pictured from left to right.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. “Your product is too expensive”
The most informative feedback I’ve ever received was when a customer thought our product was too expensive. It wasn’t negative; instead it was constructive criticism from that customer. They said they would be willing to pay a higher price if the quality was better, but they felt it was not worth the price we charged. This feedback was very helpful in informing our future pricing strategy. After that honest feedback, we held several product meetings. We have decided which features can be added to our product to solve related problems that our customers may face on a daily basis. We have also added those features and refined our pricing plans. The improvement was positive and since then we have received a lot of good feedback from customers. – Kelly Richardson, Infobrandz
2. ‘The return process is cumbersome and ineffective’
The best-informed feedback we’ve ever received from a customer was for “delivery timing and product returns” for one of our e-commerce brands. This customer was dissatisfied with the product return process as it took up a lot of their time, and they were dissatisfied with some previous transactions. They had contacted customer support several times but got no resolution and they had contacted us through the contact form on the website. Our ground investigation found many issues with the delivery services, such as slowness at work and lack of training. In the end, we canceled the contract with that specific delivery service and identified a new supplier. This experience has helped us become stricter with quality controls, especially customer support and delivery services. – Brian David Crane, Spread great ideas
3. ‘There is no evidence that you are selling a quality product’
I’ll never forget when a client showed me why we need social proof, such as reviews on our site. Their feedback to our support channel was “How do we know you’re selling a quality product?” I knew that if one person felt this way, others should too. I quickly realized the importance of asking customers to leave reviews. Reviews show that your business is trusted by real customers and will result in more engagement on the site. I have also learned from this feedback in other ways. For example, I also use live sales notifications and trust seals to show social proof on my site. – Chris Christopher, Monster Insights
4. “You don’t value your services highly enough”
The best feedback I’ve ever received from a customer was that I should ask for more. This feedback has completely changed the way I do business and taught me an important lesson about the value of my work. I used to charge too little for my services and didn’t value my own time and expertise enough. This feedback has helped me realize that I am worth more than I used to give myself credit for and that I need to be confident in my awards to be successful. This was a valuable lesson that helped me grow my business and better serve my customers. – Sujay Pawar, CartFlows
5. ‘You can’t speak negatively about your competition’
The best feedback I’ve ever received from a customer, and the most painful one to hear, was “Never talk negatively about your competition.” The reason they told me this was because I had done just that. I knew from the experiences of other customers that a purchase this customer was about to make from a competitor was substandard for my product and any other company with a comparable offering. I felt like they would make a big mistake by buying that product. But instead of tactfully touting the virtues of my product over the company in question, I bluntly told them that the company they wanted to do business with misled potential customers with false statements and failed to keep promises they made when they tried to sell the product. to bring in sales. They called me to that, and it was a lesson I’ve never forgotten. – Brian Greenberg, insurance
6. “Your website load time is too slow”
I once received very informative feedback from one of my clients that led to major improvements for the site. The customer contacted us via chat complaining that our website was taking forever to load. We responded quickly to the feedback and found that the complaint was genuine. The website did indeed have loading time issues. The feedback we received from that one customer paved the way for us to improve our website loading time for a better user experience. Over time, we saw a significant increase in our organic traffic along with user engagement. From this I learned the value of customer feedback and discovered that it certainly pays to pay attention to suggestions from your customers. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable shapes
7. “One of your employees is disrespectful”
We had a customer service representative on our team who was rude and generally unhelpful. One of our clients contacted me on social media and reported feeling frustrated and disrespected by this executive. This feedback was an eye-opener for us. To avoid such issues, we conducted a customer satisfaction survey to get feedback from customers about their experience with our team. Through this research, we learned that the majority of our customers were satisfied with our service, but a significant minority were not. This feedback has helped us make changes to our team to improve the customer experience. – Abhieet Kaldate, Astra WordPress theme
8. “Your product is missing an important feature”
One of the best feedback I’ve ever received from a customer was when a customer told me that our product was missing an important feature that would make it even better. In response to this feedback, I worked closely with my team to design and implement this new feature, resulting in greater satisfaction and engagement from our customers. All in all, this feedback has taught me some important lessons about listening to customers and incorporating their ideas into our product. I’ve learned that it’s crucial to remain open-minded when receiving customer feedback, and that incorporating their suggestions can help us create a more valuable and successful product. – Adam Preiser, WPCrafter
