Customer feedback loops represent synchrony between business owners and their customers. For feedback loops to become truly successful, you need to not only show a willingness to accept customer feedback but you also need to find an effective means to receive that feedback. Certainly, all small business owners take comments, reviews, and customer advice seriously … but collecting feedback and analyzing your customers’ sentiments can be a time-consuming and expensive effort if not managed correctly. It is then imperative that business owners interested in creating and maintaining customer feedback loops know about free and accessible tools available to them .

Getting a feedback loop off the ground and keeping a loop in working order, however, are two entirely different processes. So, depending on your business’s current capacity and scope, certain tools may suit your system better than others.

Creating a Feedback Loop

Free Survey Platforms

Google Forms: Google Forms is a great starting point for small businesses who are interested in creating their own surveys but aren’t certain what features would best suit their current arrangement. Unlike other big-name tools which limit the number of responses free users can receive or view per survey, Google Forms allows users essentially unlimited options for creating their own multiple choice or open-ended questions.

SurveyPlanet: Another robust option for creating surveys from scratch is SurveyPlanet which houses all of the tools a small business would need to get feedback and more. On top of legible and slick templates, SurveyPlanet allows for easy sharing via social media, meaning that if you ask in your survey, your most loyal customers can actively widen your feedback loop by re-sharing your surveys. On SurveyPlanet’s free plan, administrators can create infinite surveys and collect infinite results meaning you can continue using the same survey indefinitely – unlike other tools which may limit your total engagement.

Free Live Chat Platforms

Tidio Live Chat: For ease of integration and versatility without the price tag, Tidio Live Chat just might check the right boxes for small business owners looking to begin a live chat system with no financial obligation off the bat. Tidio’s free, basic account allows business owners to integrate a widget for the program directly into any WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify website. Tidio allows free accounts to chat without message limits with up to 100 unique visitors per month. One big downside to Tidio’s free package, however, is that only 3 chat operators can work simultaneously for your website. Impressively, however, Tidio’s free plan also allows up to 500 follow-up response emails to be sent to chatters each month; this can be a big help for businesses looking to improve their feedback loop’s efficiency.

HubSpot Free Live Chat Software: HubSpot’s well-known CRM software comes packed with a lesser known live chat software which may just fit your small business’s needs. If your business isn’t already using HubSpot for your CRM solution, you can set up a free account easily. HubSpot Live Chat’s free package functions near-identically to Tidio’s widget format, so add the chat system directly to your website. Unlike Tidio, however, HubSpot gives free users access to their chatbot builder program meaning that business owners can customize their responses and styles even more than any other free program. Free users, however, must deal with rather visible HubSpot branding and an inability to customize the color of their chat widget. Of course, if you find HubSpot’s program fitting to your needs, even the most basic paid packages allow you to customize your bot to almost no end.

Maintaining a Feedback Loop

Free Data Analysis Tools

LibreOffice Calc: LibreOffice is a collection of software acting as the open-source alternative to the Microsoft Office Suite. While Microsoft Excel has several means to get free access like student accounts and other workarounds, LibreOffice Calc offers identical and sometimes superior tools at absolutely no cost. Calc is likely one of the best free options for transforming your survey and customer sentiment data into actionable information.

Google Charts: If you are looking to create more complex and detailed data visualizations, finding a free tool becomes increasingly difficult. Luckily, Google Charts includes several of the more high-end features typical of paid alternatives. As long as you know your way around the basics of HTML, you can even add charts and meaningful data to your websites and employee resources in order to quickly share visualized data with relevant staff.

Free Social Media Monitoring/Listening Tools

Mention.com: Monitoring and analyzing your business’s mentions on social media without the help of a tool can become a full-time job faster than you may think.  Even if you have a staff member meaningfully watching your business’s social media mentions and chatter, sites like Mention.com aggregate social media posts based on keywords and phrases, streamlining the most menial part of social listening. Mention.com is free and allows users to track keywords in both mentions and replies between Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Google Alerts: While traditionally seen as a tool for aggregating news stories based on a similar topic, Google Alerts can be a useful tool for bookmarking direct mentions of your business on the web. Google Alerts are completely free and can be bound to any keyword you choose. Further, Google Alerts can be tuned to specific platforms like Facebook or Twitter, but of course, maintaining a meaningful feedback loop means collecting and acting on as much data as possible. Once you set a Google Alert, uses of your chosen keyword will be sent to an inbox or device whenever a match is found.

Of course, Google Alerts doesn’t help businesses follow up directly on customer feedback unless the business owner goes out of their way to investigate the source and legitimacy of every alert. But as free tools go, Google Alerts can help small business owners get a better idea where and who is talking about their business before they further fine-tune their strategies.

A Unique Loop for Every Business

It’s unlikely that a small business would need to use every single tool on this list to create a fulfilling feedback loop for their business, but that simply speaks to the case-by-case nature of feedback loops themselves. Feedback loops change and grow in parallel with the products and practices of the business itself. In that same right, feedback loops are anything but static. These free tools are safe and test-friendly playgrounds in which you and your staff can develop the right system to collect and meaningfully respond to feedback. 

Successful businesses naturally tend to expand. As a business’s sales, resources and headcount rise, it comes as no surprise that new products and even ventures into new industries will soon follow. While it’s not baffling for Amazon to start a streaming service or Uber to start car rentals, small businesses often deal with a unique set of questions and constraints before moving into a new industry. Small businesses looking to expand their services or products into areas wholly new to their team or history must do so cautiously and strategically as you have much more to lose than your larger counterparts if things don’t go as planned. 

Small businesses feeling out new products can run the serious risk of overextending or alienating existing niches. The most thoughtful small business expansions should not be done only for capital gain or easy parallel growth; your public image and current customer perception must be considered before any major change to your business’s services or products. Consider this list of conditions to weigh if your business (and your customers) risk overextending when branching into new product territory.

Parallel Expansion

Before making a change or expansion that would dramatically change or redirect the type of product or services you offer, find out if your customers are already satisfied. The most successful expansions are parallel in that they both expand your scope and bring in new clients as well as further benefit your existing base of customers. Here’s an example: A basic one-room laundromat manages to buy/rent an adjacent space and plan an expansion. While adding in more washers and dryers is certainly a safe bet, management is also considering investing in space for dry-cleaning and other specialty services. This is a perfect example of a measured, safe, and likely parallel expansion that customers who already do their washing and drying could more than conceivably take advantage of those further services. Better yet, new customers would be likely to take advantage of the business’s original wash and dry services even if they came in for their new specialty services at first.

Parallel expansion, however safe, often doesn’t account for branching into wholly new industries or reinventing your business. But, if you plan to offer entirely different services in addition to your existing ones, it is likely wise to make sure you don’t alienate your existing customers in doing so. In fact, if done properly, your existing customers could be your very first customers for the new service!

Increasing Overall Customer Value

If your expansion is not wholly replacing your existing products, try to find ways to have both old and new products benefit the same customers. 

Offering new products that appeal to your existing customer base is important but building a full relationship with new customers who benefit from your pre-existing services is equally important. Consider this: a bicycle rental company has enough trained staff and experts to begin offering repair services in addition to their rental services. Bicycle rentals and bicycle repairs are services needed by two  different target markets; but that doesn’t mean that consumers can’t benefit from both services. If a new customer brought into the shop because of the shop’s new repair service finds out the shop also offers rentals, they could just as well rent bicycles the next time friends or family visit. In the best cases of product expansion – those that have the best chance of being successful – both avoid alienating existing customers and make it extremely easy for new customers to benefit from existing services as well.

Customer Research

Whether or not your business is able to financially support an industry-based product or service expansion usually doesn’t give a full enough picture as to whether that expansion is a sound choice. Market research is an essential step before launching an expanded product line. Survey your existing customers and collect as much input as possible before even considering a major expansion. While the interests and passions of business owners ought to play a major role in the expansions of their own businesses, those passions run the risk of turning dry if customers don’t share those sentiments.

For customers that patronize your business in person, gauge their interests on the spot. Or better yet, write up a collection of multiple choice, Y/N, or open-ended questions about your business that can be asked quickly during a check-out process or a visit to the office. Those customers enthusiastic about your business and who already consider your business part of their daily rituals are quite likely to participate especially if you can demonstrate how helpful their input truly is.

If you have a website or a list of customer email addresses, consider creating a free survey with straightforward and simple questions. Questions for digital surveys ought to be considerably less time-consuming than in-person counterparts. No matter the medium, your survey should be direct: ask very specifically… “If our business were to offer (whatever new product or service), would you add that to your existing purchases at our business?” or “Are you satisfied with our existing products or services?” Once you have a pool of thoughtful and legitimate responses, sit down with trusted staff and all relevant decision makers in your business to see if your customers’ opinions can inform expansion direction.

Marketing

Making a major change to your product line or business structure is hard enough to follow through on internally, but it is essential that you and your team make sure your customers are just as excited about your changes as you are. Consider the ways that your best and most frequent customers learn about your business. Do you have an email list? Do you send coupon circulars in your local area? Do you  sponsor and have a booth/space for fairs or events? Investigate the ways customers interact with your business and use those spaces to celebrate your business’s changes.

A worst-case scenario and the opening steps to overextending in a small business is investing in a new product and having that new part of your business overshadowed by your existing system. Make sure your customer knows the most specific details about your new venture and any potential ways it may affect how they already interact with your business.

Likewise, make sure you have a well-thought out strategy to launch and market your new products to any new potential customer groups.

Pilot Runs and Steady Entries

Wherever possible, it is generally a good idea to run pilot programs and ease your business into any kind of major changes. Of course, depending on your existing industry and infrastructure, it’s possible that large investments and equipment may block the way to meaningfully showing off your new product or venture but try to find some creative means around those roadblocks. Start by offering the new product/service on a small scale and limited basis to a small subset of existing customers to gauge interest. If the trial program goes well with those customers, that is proof enough that the expansion may be worth the fuller investment.

No Way to Know but Many Ways to Try

Every expansion is a risk. No matter how dead-set or fully certain you and your team are that you’ll succeed, the only way to know is to try. Do your research and make sure your staff are equipped and educated about your upcoming changes and do the same for your best customers. Small business owners are uniquely informed about the needs of their customers and often equally aware of their own abilities. Trust your instincts and listen to your customers, and overextension ought to be the least of your worries.

Filling your pipeline with sales leads is one of the most important tasks for you as a business owner. Afterwards, however, what’s even more important is customer retention – turning your first-time customers into repeat customers, or better yet, lifetime customers. Getting repeat customers is crucial to the future of your business, as it guarantees future sales, and selling to an existing customer is typically cheaper in terms of customer acquisition costs than acquiring a new one.

There are several ways to encourage return shoppers, even during these harsh economic times.

Automation Works

Manually keeping in touch with your existing customers can be an exhausting task, and one that you probably don’t have the time and bandwidth to do as a small business owner. Fortunately, there are software packages out there that can do the work for you by automatically sending text and email messages to existing customers advertising a promotion or a sale, conduct a customer satisfaction survey or send them newsletters or blog post alerts if your website offers content.

On average, email marketing produces an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent, according to consumer research group Litmus. Additionally, 97% of Americans own a cell phone and use their phones to shop, and according to a study by Simply Texting, mobile phone marketing campaigns have an average conversion rate of 45%. There are many email automation software packages out there (and some of them are free!) to choose from, as well as SMS marketing tools you can use to automate these processes.

“Because You’re a Loyal Customer…”

One of the most powerful methods of getting a repeat sale is to make the consumer feel as if they’re getting a special discount or bargain. You can use this as a strong selling point to existing customers who already know your brand and, presumably, trust you. Send them special offers on either updated products or ones similar to what they’ve already purchased via a text or email campaign. This will make your existing customers feel special and less likely to view your promotional messages as spam.

Additionally, “aftersales” are a great way to retain customers, especially if you’re a services firm such as a cleaning firm or a car mechanic shop. You should reach out to existing customers to gently remind them that they may be due for another cleaning, or that they’re cars are due for another oil change or maintenance.

Do Your Employees Care?

Let’s face it, whether you own a retail store or an eCommerce business, your employees are the key to successfully retaining customers, as they are largely the ones who deal with them and thus provide the “customer experience.” As consumers, however, we all-too-often deal with employees who simply don’t care – be it a sales clerk at a retail store or a customer service representative on the phone. These employees are often young and get paid subsistence-level wages, and therefore aren’t concerned about whether customers choose to buy products from your company. Even if you tell them that you’re unhappy and threaten to never buy a product from their company again, their response will most likely still be total apathy.

If this is the situation you find yourself in as a small business owner, you can join the rest of the older generation and ruminate over Millennials’ and GenZers’ supposed lack of work ethic, or you can take a more constructive approach by asking yourself, ‘Am I doing enough to incentivize my employees?’ Offering performance-based bonuses, career training on sales, being flexible when it comes to work schedules and promoting a strong team environment will motivate your employees to want to contribute. 

Listen to Feedback!

Listening to your customer feedback is key to improving your business, and how you react to it is one of the important keys to retaining customers. You should diligently examine whether your business has been reviewed. Think of every review, whether it’s on Yelp!, Google Reviews or social media, as a chance to retain a customer. You should also view negative reviews as positive – if they’re reasonable and rational, they will offer you a roadmap on how to fix issues with your business to make it more attractive to customers, as well as a chance to appease any unhappy customers. 

It’s also important to personally respond to both negative and positive reviews. With negative reviews, be apologetic and offer either some sort of clarification or ways to make it up to the customer. Other consumers will see that and this will enable you to make a positive impression on other potential customers. 

Retention is Key to Survival

As a small business owner, much of your time will be spent trying to gain new prospects and customers. While that is certainly vital for your business, what’s even more important is keeping the customers you already have. Relatively small investments in automated email software packages and in a good training program for your employees will go a long way in ensuring the longevity of your business.

Action loyalty, in short, is the grand culmination of cognitive, affective, and conative loyalty blasting in a crescendo emblematic of what most business owners would consider true loyalty. To achieve action loyalty with your customers is to reach a true synchronicity with the human who is patronizing your business; your business is a piece of their personality and a proud piece of their outward preferences. Forming action loyalty with your customers is perhaps one of the strongest forms of security for your business, as customers who exhibit action loyalty are the most likely to come back to your business out of respect for you and your brand.

What is Action Loyalty

In his study “Whence Consumer Loyalty,” Dr. Richard Oliver describes action loyalty as the “commitment to the action of rebuying.” And then in many more words, Dr. Oliver explains the key signs of action loyalty exhibited in consumers: action loyalty exists only in customers who have already bought/experienced your product and then actively choose your product over other choices in the same field. For example, A business is closed on Sunday. Then, on a Sunday, a customer arrives at your business seeking a product they have purchased from you in the past. Seeing that your business is closed, a consumer exhibiting action loyalty would then wait until your business is open again to purchase/experience your product specifically. Consumers who lack action loyalty to your brand would go somewhere else to get what they need on that same Sunday.

Action loyalty is exhibited both in the tendency to repurchase as well as the tendency to turn down alternatives to a certain product. Consumers with action loyalty would inconvenience themselves to patronize your business again.

Tips to Achieve Action Loyalty

Establish a Niche

Being that one of the key elements of action loyalty is the preference for your product over others in a similar space, it is essential that your products and brand do something all their own. Or more specifically, your customers need to earnestly believe there is something special inside your product or brand. More often than not, this means establishing and cultivating a niche within an existing industry. Your goal, in a way, is to find a subset of customers or a subset of an industry in which you can heavily gear your products, brand, and whole outward appearance toward catering.

A great example of niches lies in the music industry. Consider niches like genres; it’s all music, but a genre is a demarcation for a style or like-minded feeling. Every industry has its own genres. For example, bakeries that make specialty products or cater to specific crowds like vegans, pet owners, or people with food allergies are taking advantage of a niche. In the case of all three of these demographics, traditional bakeries likely do not suit their needs outright, so a bakery that goes out of its way to suit their needs is implicitly more attractive. Simply having the tools to cater to a niche, however, is only half the battle when seeking action loyalty; use all the tools in building cognitive, affective, and conative loyalty to build a customer relationship and action loyalty will hopefully come about as a result!

Know the Alternatives Your Customers May Seek

To have your brand chosen over alternatives, you must know those relevant alternatives inside and out. America is known for its variety of choices; this likely rings true for your specific industry as well as most other industries that would seek action loyalty in their customers. Take it upon yourself to follow the footsteps of how your potential customers may interact with your business. Then, see what other competitors show up on that same path. Whether simply Googling “pipe fitters near me” or genuinely interacting with your competitors to understand their unique appeal (or even pricing), consider that action loyalty usually follows common sense: if there is a near-identical product vastly undercutting the price of your own, you need to give customers the cognitive incentive to believe your product is superior.

Action Loyalty is Bound to Strong Brands

Distill the benefits of patronizing your business and associating with your brand into tangible, relatable terms. Sit down with trusted staff and management to find if you already have an existing trend among your customers you can emphasize. If not, go out of your way to develop one. Action loyalty requires customers to turn down alternatives in favor of your brand and product, so imagine this: a densely populated urban area has several competing grocery stores. Groceries aren’t a specialty service, so it is up to each store to build loyalty with their customers or lose them to very local competition. Each store ought to ask themselves “who already shops at my store” or “who do I want to shop at my store?” Whether you are the discount store, gourmet store, import store, health food store, or any other tangible style of store, having and holding that specific brand appeal is the basis of action loyalty. This example extends far beyond grocery stores and the general lesson is simple: action loyalty attaches itself to strong brands.

Routines and Rituals

Attaching and including your business in the daily routines and rituals of your customers is a veritable fast track to action loyalty. This is more specific (and emotionally bound) than the act of conative loyalty. Conative loyalty simply implies that customers return to your business after an initial transaction but intertwining with rituals and daily routines means that a business is part of a customer’s preferred daily path and routine.

Capitalizing on existing rituals and routines varies widely by industry; each industry has different expectations as to when their customers ought to come back. Consumer repair technicians, for example, aren’t likely to find their way into the daily or weekly routines of their customers… but that doesn’t mean they are wholly out of the action loyalty game. Our dentists and doctors are deeply intertwined with our semi-annual rituals. Take a note out of doctors’ and dentists’ books and find tactful ways to schedule future visits and check-ins with customers. At first, this is nothing more than conative loyalty. But over time and repeat positive experiences, this is one of the most likely paths to develop action loyalty.

Loyalty is Your North Star

Action loyalty is perhaps one of the most tangible examples that a customer prefers your brand over another. While cognitive loyalty is the basis of knowing a product is more premium, this says nothing about the customer’s individual preferences. On those preferences: affective loyalty means that a customer positively associates with your brand but says nothing about their willingness to patronize your business. And conative loyalty expresses, indeed, customers’ willingness to come back after an initial interaction but action loyalty trumps all: even if the customer is personally inconvenienced on the road to get your product or patronize your brand, they still do it.