Business
How Customer Feedback Can Influence Change in the Business Strategy
How Customer Feedback Can Influence Change in the Business Strategy
Discover how customer feedback has driven significant changes in various businesses, as shared by 13 industry leaders. From improving navigation with a website design to hiring industry consultants for expertise, these professionals reveal the power of listening to customers and adapting their strategies accordingly.
- Website Redesign for Better Navigation
- Grew Linked Helper With Feedback
- Shifted Focus to Business Names
- Optimized Our App Based on Feedback
- Enhanced Products Through Feedback
- Expanded Threat Intelligence Services
- Generous Return Policy Boosts Sales
- Shifted to Outsourced Team Management
- Holistic Approach to Executive Placements
- Customer Feedback Drives Product Evolution
- Added Review Feature for E-commerce Brands
- Pivoted to a Customer-Focused Strategy
- Hired Industry Consultants for Expertise
Website Redesign for Better Navigation
Our data team was noticing a consistent drop in our website’s conversion rate, which was affecting our overall sales. We discovered an email from a customer who found our website’s layout and navigation confusing and cluttered, and similar products not being listed in the same area as the website.
Acknowledging the importance of a seamless online experience for our customers, we took this feedback to heart and re-evaluated our website’s design. We focused on creating a clean, user-friendly layout by binding similar products together, making it easy for customers to find and explore our products. For instance, now customers could find health insurance quotes from different companies in the sidebar while browsing for life insurance quotes.
We also introduced a more robust search function, allowing customers to locate items quickly based on their preferences or even jump over to a product’s detailed guide and make a sound decision.
Johannes Larsson, Founder and CEO, Financer.com
Grew Linked Helper With Feedback
Going back to the past, a very limited circle of recruiters and lead generators knew about our tool Linked Helper. At that moment, it used to be a Chrome Extension, and we had to ask our first clients to leave their feedback in the Chrome store. Thanks to them, the tool had a 5-star rating, and this enhanced the number of new downloads. In six months, Linked Helper grew to 70,000 installations.
Six years have passed since then. Linked Helper has grown significantly, and now it’s a separate tool that is used by over 300,000 satisfied customers. Recently, we’ve tried another platform for reviews—G2; however, the results are no longer so tangible. The install growth is only 5%.
With great confidence, we can claim that social proof helped a lot in our case, but of course, it all depends on different factors. Based on our experience, it’s advisable to test different platforms: if one did not bring results, then try another.
Daria Erina, Managing Director, Linked Helper
Shifted Focus to Business Names
I run a SaaS domain naming tool and have made massive shifts in my business because of customer feedback.
One of the biggest changes occurred when I noticed that a significant portion of my user base wasn’t as interested in exact.COM domains as I initially thought. The evidence was clear from evaluating analytical data and direct user feedback.
In response, I changed my business strategy. I developed a feature that allowed users to search purely for business names, de-emphasizing the domain availability if the user wasn’t looking for one.
The change represented a substantial investment of time and resources but led to excellent results. Not only did it satisfy user intent, but it also led to a considerable increase in our search engine rankings.
Axel DeAngelis, Founder, NameBounce
Optimized Our App Based on Feedback
We have a system in place where we routinely collect client feedback via surveys and focus groups. This aids in our understanding of what our clients need and require from our products and services.
When we heard from customers that our mobile app was challenging to use, that feedback had a big impact on how we changed our business approach. We took this criticism seriously and made several design and functional modifications to the app to make it more user-friendly.
The results of our app adjustments were then evaluated by re-surveying clients and tracking usage data. We discovered that customer engagement and satisfaction with the app had increased, which had a positive impact on customer loyalty and retention.
Percy Grunwald, Co-founder, Compare Banks
Enhanced Products Through Feedback
Customer feedback has been crucial in helping us discover areas where our business plan needs to improve. In most areas, including ingredients, packaging, taste, and effects, we have always placed a high value on client feedback.
We start this process through various channels, such as surveys, feedback forms, social media, and customer service interactions. We then examine this feedback to identify the underlying causes of these problems and create a plan of action to address them.
We’ve been able to enhance the customer experience, improve our products, increase loyalty, and ultimately contribute to business success by using consumer feedback to pinpoint areas for improvement. This is because satisfied customers are more likely to return and recommend the company to others, and this can lead to new customers and increased revenue.
Adam Wright, CEO, Human Tonik
Expanded Threat Intelligence Services
As the founder of Breachsense, we originally focused on providing breached credentials to offensive security teams (pen testers and red teams) to enable them to escalate privileges during engagements.
However, after receiving feedback from several customers that they needed visibility into ransomware leaks, stealer logs, and upcoming attacks, we realized that there is a significant market opportunity for a wider range of threat intelligence products.
Based on this feedback, we shifted our business strategy to focus on providing both offensive and defensive threat intel services specifically designed for enterprise and offensive security teams alike. Overall, this shift in strategy created a significant change for the business and allowed us to provide significantly more value to our clients.
Josh Amishav, Founder and CEO, Breachsense
Generous Return Policy Boosts Sales
A return policy is one of the most important factors in online shopping. Because customers can’t see or touch the product before they buy it, the return policy should be clear and generous. That’s why we have a 100-day hassle-free policy compared to the industry’s standard 30-day policy. We changed our response to our customers’ feedback—particularly that they need more time to get comfortable with a new product before they decide.
It was also a sign of confidence on our part to guarantee the quality of our products. This turned out to be a perfect marketing strategy, and as a result, we’ve seen a significant increase in online sales from customers who appreciated the generous return policy.
Todd Saunders, General Manager, BIG Safety
Shifted to Outsourced Team Management
Companies often work with freelancers. Even having seen it myself, though, it did not click that I should help them manage their outsourced teams until clients started asking.
Previously, my main selling point was excellence in marketing writing. However, my experience includes managing creative and content teams, roles that are rarely in-house nowadays. Once clients began asking for design indications and copywriting, I remembered the headache of being in corporate and not having contact with the web, graphic design, or partnership teams.
Now, I start my relationship with clients by explaining how closely I will work with their other freelancers. We integrate just like an in-house team. This led me to offer a white-glove role I call Chief Writing Officer.
Taking on the management of creatives leaves clients to do their best work while I apply my empathy and expertise in creative management to building their reputation, hand-in-hand with their freelancers.
Nadine Heir, Founder, Write Wiser
Holistic Approach to Executive Placements
Recently, I placed a big-name hire at a burgeoning startup; everyone involved was very satisfied. So when the deal went south only a few months later, I was surprised.
After inquiring, I realized that while the executive looked like a perfect fit on paper; they clashed with the broader company culture. Nothing egregious—but a shift in the office atmosphere had people fearing for the direction the company might take. That was enough for the owners to pull the plug during the probationary period.
Personal values used to be a non-starter in C-suite placements, but in today’s highly polarized environment, these factors matter.
Taking a more holistic approach to executive placements is now crucial to my success.
Travis Hann, Partner, Pender & Howe
Customer Feedback Drives Product Evolution
As a provider of software solutions for customer service teams in industrial environments, we rely 100% on customer feedback. The own use cases for the own software are rare, so further development, as well as adaptation of the software, is always 100% dependent on customer feedback.
Because of this, our “first software” ADTANCE Support has developed over time into the entire ADTANCE Smart Service Platform, which now comprises eight additional modules and has been fully developed based on customer feedback.
Customer feedback is therefore absolutely crucial for software companies that cannot use their own software daily, because it is the only way to continue to guarantee added value and also maintain business operations.
Nils Arnold, CEO, ADTANCE
Added Review Feature for E-Commerce Brands
As the founder of TrackMage, we listen to our e-commerce brand customers and added a “review” feature based on their feedback. They wanted more detailed feedback from their customers on the tracking page, which we addressed with this feature.
Before this new implementation, we only had a rating section on the order tracking page for customers to provide feedback on their delivery experience. However, we realized that many of our e-commerce customers wanted more than just a rating.
They wanted customers to leave specific comments or suggestions about their delivery experience, which is why we added a text box to our review feature.
The addition of this feature has benefited both our target customers, e-commerce brands, and our business growth. It has improved overall customer satisfaction and enhanced our value proposition as a post-purchase delivery management solution.
Irina Poddubnaia, CEO and Founder, TrackMage
Pivoted to a Customer-Focused Strategy
At Codific, we take customer feedback seriously. Our strategy is based on a customer-focused approach.
As software developers operating in Ed-Tech, HR-Tech, and AppSec industries, we use our customer feedback as a direction for how our product should be built.
By maintaining strong communication and relationships with our customers, we ask them to provide us with consistent feedback on how our product is working, what they would like to change, add, adapt, and more. From there, we either build or adjust the software products or services that meet their every need and want.
Adjusting to this strategy was challenging, as it requires more pull and motivation from the customer side. However, it is very rewarding, as it enables us to build strong and loyal customer relationships through high satisfaction, which helps spread word-of-mouth marketing.
Michaella Masters, Growth Strategist, Codific
Hired Industry Consultants for Expertise
We constantly receive feedback from our clients about apps and web products we develop. As we work with a variety of industries, like logistics or environment, we should understand specific aspects of each industry.
A few years ago, the harvesting product we were working on was lacking a certain feature that was critical for client needs but was not considered by our Senior UI/UX designers. Even with their expertise, they missed a specific detail that becomes obvious for harvesting professionals with years in the industry.
We did not plan to change the existing product roadmap—we realized that listening to our customers’ professional feedback was crucial in such cases if we wanted to truly meet their needs.
We took action by hiring industry consultants so we could have this priceless industry-specific knowledge. Our specialists attended a lot of seminars to know more about digital products in each industry, so such expertise could be added to their main one.
Michael Chepurnyak, CEO and Founder, Ein-Des-Ein
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