The Customer Feedback Loop That 90% of Businesses Miss—And Why It's Costing Them

Feedback is not fluff, it's fuel. It's data from the front lines. It's valuable. Hey, let's talk about how to turn customer feedback into a money making machine. This is awfully often neglected and ignored and a big mistake. Welcome back to the Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidell. Today we're going to talk about a gold mine most business owners, most of us are sitting on, but we never dig into for customer feedback. It's kind of like we're detectives on the detective show and we never follow up on the leads. They say these cold case things, they go out and they, you know, they just. Unsolvable, unsolvable. And then they go out and they make a couple of follow up things 20 years later and then it all unravels. And mainly there was a mystery for 20 years because people just did not follow through on the simple step of asking people what they thought, who were around and who might have some information. And so this is something that's so easy to ignore. So it's worthwhile for us to make a big deal out of it for a moment because our customers are talking. The question is, are they talking to us and are we listening? Because if they're talking and it's bad, are we going to find out, we're going to stop that. I mean, that's like a leak in your tire. You know, what's wrong? Let's fix it. Let's stop the toxic being poured out in the community about all the good, all the good we're trying to do. You know, if you get a negative Yelp interview or review, you want us find that person and fix it. You know, go into action, be proactive. But your customers are talking. If they're talking positive, well, praise the Lord. You know, this is something we can use for marketing. We let other people know we did something right that's better than a sale. And so the question is, are we listening? And if we're wanting to hit seven figures, we should be paying attention because we should be wanting to use every possible advantage we can to make good habits. We don't want to make it harder. It's hard. Hard enough to be successful. We don't want to make it harder than it needs to be. And feedback is not fluff. It's fuel. It's data from the front lines. It's valuable. And so let's talk about how to use it to explode your growth. You don't want things happening out there in conversation going on that you don't know about. But it's kind of tough. You got to go out of your way to get yourself in line to where you can actually hear that. And what we're talking about is feedback, because feedback's a mirror. You look into feedback. You don't hide from feedback. I've been in a commission sales organization all my life. The people that don't want to look at the leader sheets, the competition scoreboards, things like that, they're not making any money. The people that are competing, they're active, they want to fight, move up, and they're the ones making the money. And so you want to know what the numbers are. You want to know what the feedback is, especially if you want to make a million dollars and more out of your business. You want to build a business that one day you could possibly sell. You want to build a business that can last for maybe decades. Well, let's get this thing fixed, or let's take advantage. Let's find out what we did right and get the word out on the street. So feedback tells you how close you are or far you are from nailing it with your product. You know, are you on the money or are you off? Great companies don't want to guess what their customers want. They ask, and then they adjust. It's a matter of dialing it in. You want to know what to pay attention to. We'll start with the product usability. How easy is it to use? How easy is it to get? How easy is it to understand? We've all been frustrated with instructions from things we've ordered and that, you know, you got to assemble it. And the most useless thing are the instructions. You know, you have to. Most of the time, you have to figure it out yourself. And so how easy are we making it? You don't want to be guilty of that yourself. When you're frustrated with other companies that do that. You want your usability experience to be as easy as possible. And that means the things that go well in your company are things that you put energy into and that you make. You know, you don't guess again. You don't guess. You make it happen. And you want to make that usability great. And because you put time, energy, and effort into it, just like you put time, energy, and effort into the other stages of making it, creating it, and selling it. And so you want to make the usability a great experience. How easy was it to get how easy was it to get a involved in their life and to get it operated in their life? How well does it solve their problem and does it continue to do well or did it break down right off the bat? And so the thing is, look at service, you know, you buy the thing, you get sold on it. Does it work? The pricing, the satisfaction? The fastest way to lose a customer is to ignore their input. And if, you know, the funny thing is if things are bad, they're more likely the squeaky wheel gets the attention, but they're complaining out there. But you know, I find that people that are happy with things, it's so hard to find something that really works well. If you approach them in the right way, they want to tell you, you know, they want to let people know, you know, they want to be on your side. You know, if you've got a great restaurant, they enjoy the restaurant. They want to let people know, you know, you're going to be happy to bring your family over here. If there's an experience that you like, you want to tell other people, you want them to enjoy it. And you know, that reflects back, you know, good, good reflection back on you. So how do you get, you know, here's where the rubber meets the road. Here's the problem. How do you get that real actionable feedback and not just noise. And you know, let's, let's go through the basics. Here's the tools, the tactics, how to get the truth. You can do surveys and interviews. Now one way to really make people throw these things away is have 50 questions on there, make it simple, make it easy, have the three most important things and then maybe a chance for comments. But at least get the most important things answered and ask the right three, the three that matter the most. And then you want to know who's loyal? Ask. Would you recommend us 9 and 10 scores? If you get recommended 9 or 10 times, well that's fantastic. You can learn from them what you did right. But if they're not going to recommend you, find out why, because that's where the rubber meets the road. Are they going to be associating with you? They associate with you on the recommendation and so the user testing watch what people actually do. If you can not what they say they do, what do they actually do? The truth is in the clicks and the confusion the social listening reviews, you know, you can on a lot of these things follow reviews forums. Sometimes there's Twitter rants. Now the thing is that is actually can be annoying but it real time gold, you know, it's a place to follow up. They're giving it to you and you just have to listen a lot of things in There. If it's good, you can capitalize on it. If it's bad, you can go approach those people and turn them around. Around. And a lot of times it's a simple thing to turn the disaffected clients around. And so let's think about flipping the switch and getting this feedback to work for you where you can act on it. Let's go to work. And so turning feedback into a response is prioritized. Not every client complaints a crisis. Fix what moves the needle, you know, fix the main things. What's going to be the difference maker? And start with what makes you money. Causes people to buy and to keep and buy again. Iterate, tweet, you know, like, how many iPhones have we had now? 20. And every one of them's gotten better. And so sometimes it's not, you know, the more they, the longer it goes, it's harder to make them monstrously better. But any little improvement is an improvement. It is something you could talk about and people want the latest and greatest. So tweak, test, track, do it again. Winning is a series of small, smart adjustments most of the time. And those adjustments that once you know what they need to be and usually it's not that impossible to make those adjustments and then communicate. Let people know you heard them, show them what you've changed. That builds trust, and trust builds loyalty. So, folks, one way you say, this is over my head. This is too confusing. I've tried it. I can't make it work. Well, get a consultant. One of the things about consultants, and there's experts on everything, and it's great to get experts on the. Sometimes you only need experts on one or two things, but that's where you need the help. Just because you haven't, you'll be able to work through all the other problems doesn't mean that you should turn your back on help on this. You know, on the feedback issue, there are people that are geniuses at coming up with feedback and why they spent. They've gotten good at what they do, just like you've gotten good at what you do because they spent so much time on it and they've thought of things that maybe you would think of yourself if you put as much time and energy and effort into it as they have put. But you have it. You don't have time to put that into it. So get some experts and find the people that can get you excited about getting these answers and make it seem simple to you. Because if they can't get you convinced that this is gonna work and they can't give you suggestions on getting feedback that you say, well, I would do that. I would respond like that. I would work with a company on that. We. Well, then if they can do that, then that tells you, this is something somebody I need to work with. I like their ideas. I think this is gonna work for me. And so don't be afraid to bring in experts at this stage of the game. It's such a critical point, the make or break for your business. Cause this could, you know, you can get so far down the road, but this could be the feedback, could be the thing where you, like, pour adrenaline on your growth and gasoline on your fire. I mean, this would cause you to boom. And so don't ignore feedback because it's hard for you to. It's hard for everybody. It's hard for all of us. You know, we're thinking so much about getting things started, financing it, taking care of our people, growing. You know, there's so many other things by the time you get to the feedback thing that you kind of run out of time to put a lot of energy into it. But don't let that keep you from making it a priority because of the advantage it can give you. So, anyway, thanks for hanging out with me and talking about feedback. It's a weapon. Use it, learn from it. Let it drive you to the next level. We're looking, all looking for advantages. And feedback can be that missing piece for you that keeps you from stalling out, keeps you from flatlining, and allows you to continue to climb the charts. So thanks for hanging out with me on the Big Hitter podcast. If you found this helpful, if you helped you think a little bit different, if it helped you reorganize your priorities, hit, subscribe, share it with your team, get back in the game, and I'll see you next time. Because around here, we don't play small. We play to win. We play to win big. And we're going to come up with everything we can to help you do exactly the same thing.