The first thing that comes to mind when creating a new product or a service is having a great idea and implementing it.
But once you’re up and running, you need a way to make sure you’re giving people what they really want.
That’s where client and customer feedback comes in. And by taking this feedback onboard, you can create products, services, and content that people love!
So let’s dive into the specifics of client and customer feedback and see how a client feedback tool makes both processes more effective.
What is client feedback?
Client feedback is about aligning your vision, ideas, and concepts with your client and making sure the project meets specific standards. This can be about following brand guidelines or getting approval from legal and compliance departments.
Anyone working with clients has two seemingly simple goals; keeping the client happy while amazing them with their ideas and projects. But this process is far from smooth sailing, and getting client approval can be a long and bumpy road.
So no matter what project you’re working on, always try your best to collaborate with your clients and seek their feedback to deliver your best work.
Five reasons client feedback is important
The first time you show your work or a concept to your client can be a scary moment.
Despite following the brief, you’re always a little bit in the dark about how they’ll react to your work. But by looking at your clients as a source of knowledge or doorway to their brand, you can make your work even better.
Here are five ways client feedback can help you and your team:
- Make sure creative concepts meet the brief
- Check product descriptions are accurate
- Get approval from legal or compliance
- Resolve problems faster
- Absorb knowledge from brand and product experts
What is customer feedback?
Customer feedback is about learning from your customers’ experiences to improve your product, service, or communications. While equally important as client feedback, customer feedback has entirely different goals to fulfill.
Both you and your client can easily get stuck in the production side of things and forget how your users will actually interact with your product, design, or service. Customer feedback has the power to make you stop for a second, reach the “aha moment,” and make some vital improvements.
Five reasons customer feedback is important
How many times have you worked hard on something only to find that it doesn’t resonate with your customers?
By making customer feedback an integral part of your review process, you can save yourself a lot of that stress.
Here are five ways customer feedback can help you:
- Make sure your content resonates with your target audience
- Fix usability problems with your product
- Enhance the customer experience
- Expand your customer base
- Make better business decisions
Finding the sweet spot between client and customer feedback
I know what you’re thinking. How do you strike a balance between creativity, client expertise, and customer insights?
That, my friend, is the million-dollar question.
That’s why great products, services, and communications are the champions in balancing these three forces.
Here are some things to look out for when finding the sweet spot between client and customer feedback.
If you only listen to client feedback, you may forget about your customers
One of the most important things when working on a project is keeping customers in mind. Whatever you’re working on, only listening to your clients puts you at risk of forgetting about the people that matter most – your customers.
Balancing client wishes with customer satisfaction is always tricky. But you should never compromise customer experience solely to feed your client’s ego by implementing their ideas.
If you only listen to customer feedback, you may miss your company goals
As much as only listening to your clients can lead to poor results the same goes for focusing too much on customer feedback.
No matter how useful it can be, customer feedback can also be a distraction, pushing you to focus on new features or key messages that don’t align with your company strategy. If you follow the wishes of every single customer, you risk spreading your team too thin and missing that targets that have already been set.
Use both client and customer feedback to create the best products, services, and communications
Like everything in life, the key becomes finding the right balance. Trust your strategy and your client’s experience, and reach out to your customers for help. Then put it all together to create something you can truly be proud of!
With a client feedback system like Filestage, you can share your work with clients and customers at the same time and use both to improve your product.
Three ways a client feedback system can help
Think collecting feedback is more trouble than it’s worth? Think again!
Here are three ways Filestage helps you manage feedback from clients and customers – all in one place.
1. Create separate review steps for client and customer feedback
With Filestage, you can create separate review steps for your clients and customers. Then you can invite them to give feedback right on top of your content. That way you can ask your clients for feedback and gather customer reviews all at once.
And by playing around with the settings in your review steps, you can request approval from your clients while only collecting feedback from your customers.
2. Get collaborative feedback on any file format
In Filestage, you can collect feedback on top of almost any file format. And because all the compression is handled in Filestage, all you have to do is drag and drop your files into your project dashboard.
This includes:
- Videos
- Images
- Designs
- Documents
- PDFs
- Live websites
- Interactive HTML
- Audio
Once you upload your file, the reviewer simply needs to point and click to add a comment. You and your reviewers can then reply, post emojis, and attach files to keep all your discussions in context.
3. See how your content has developed over time
There’s nothing more satisfying than watching your content develop over time. With each version and review round, your content quickly transforms from concept to masterpiece.
Filestage has version management built in for all your file formats, so you can quickly hop back to previous review rounds to see how far you’ve come. And with our side-by-side comparison feature, it’s easy to check that new versions meet your feedback too.
Final thoughts
Creating great content, products, and services is no walk in the park. But when you include client and customer feedback in the process, you increase your chances of success.
To see how easy it is to manage client and customer feedback in Filestage, start a free trial →
