How small businesses can use feedback from existing customers

Small businesses can use feedback from customers to refine and improve their investor or funding pitches, as well as their businesses.

While the market can give feedback on its needs and the benefits it wants from a product or service, this input is quite generic and does not relate directly to your product’s features or functionality.

“Your customers, on the other hand, can tell you about their actual experience with your product and whether it is meeting their specific needs. Moreover, as your relationships with your clients evolve, you can expect the feedback they deliver to become more candid,” Allon Raiz, Raizcorp CEO and Engen Pitch and Polish judge, says.

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As small businesses operate in an environment where technology constantly changes as well the demand profiles and even culture, the needs of the market and your clients likewise constantly change, he says.

“It is very likely that the products and services you offered five years ago are not appropriate for meeting the needs of today. No business can afford to rest on its laurels – especially when the competition is changing and quite possibly creating different expectations in the market. To survive and thrive, you need to continually repeat your offering.”

Best and cheapest feedback

Raiz says the best and cheapest source of genuine market feedback for a small business comes from its existing client base.

“You can regularly touch base with them and ask pointed questions about their changing needs to stay relevant. They can not only give you legitimate feedback but, more importantly, feedback specifically about your product or service”

They can, for example, tell you they need your product to be able to do a bit more of this or a bit less of that or they need it to integrate into something else. This may not necessarily illustrate an immediate change in what the whole market needs but, often, it can alert you to an emerging need that you may want to investigate now or in the future, he says.

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How do you go about getting feedback as a small business? Raiz says there are various ways to solicit client feedback.

“A common method for startups, particularly in the software industry, is to set up beta user groups. The beta users (clients) get the software product for free or at a substantially discounted price and, in return, are asked to regularly meet with the company’s leadership, salespeople, business analysts and developers to provide feedback on the product’s ease of use, bugs, suggested features and the general intuitive nature of the user interface.”

Or try a partnership

Raiz says another method smaller businesses that may not have the luxury of giving away or highly discounting their products or services use is the concept of forging partnerships as opposed to being regular suppliers.

“In these cases, the small business will partner with a large business to develop a relatively bespoke solution. However, the downside to this arrangement is that the final product or service may be too tailored and may not have a broader application across the market. The upside is that the development costs are covered by the client who is prepared to pay to have their specific needs met.”

He says whatever the approach you choose – traditional client feedback, beta groups or partnerships – existing clients remain your most valuable source of product-market fit information.

“To trot out an old idiom, you are hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth. By definition, there can be no better form of feedback.”