ISV Growth Edition Mini Series: The Importance of Listening to Your Customers
In today’s fast-paced world, where everyone is trying to do more in less time, there’s a massive opportunity for businesses who take a moment to pause and just listen – Independent Software Vendors included.
In part two of our ISV Growth Edition mini-series, we’re tackling the importance of listening to your customers, as well as how we gather and leverage user feedback here at Tilled.
Why Listen To Your Customers?
As an ISV, listening to your customers can be invaluable in understanding the experience they have with your product, as well as if it is meeting their needs. While the act of listening may seem simple, many ISVs do not effectively collect customer feedback, and don’t have a clue as to what impression their software leaves on users. This makes it difficult to identify frustrated customers, putting you at risk of losing business to the competition. On the other end, ISVs that do gather and utilize customer feedback effectively are setting themselves up for growth – in more ways than one. Consider the following benefits that listening to your customers can offer your ISV business:
1. Drive Software Development
Who else knows the product better than those you’ve created it for? Your customers can be a powerful source of real-time feedback, helping you identify shortcomings, bugs or futile functionality. When developing your software, consider inviting users to try new features and functionality in a sandbox environment, as this can paint a clear picture of how customers will use your product and what value they get from it, before rolling it out to production.
For example, we released a beta program of our consoles to both Partners and Merchants, encouraging them to test things out and share whatever feedback they had about their experiences. One consistent piece of feedback we received was wanting more transparency into fees, so we made major improvements based on customers feedback to the way our users can see fees at the transactional level – and also run reports that include fee details.
2. Increase Customer Loyalty
You’ve surely heard the phrase, “the customer is always right”, right? Well, we agree (within bounds); your customers know what they want and need, and giving them the opportunity to leave feedback, suggestions, or concerns about your product can show them they have a voice with your company. However, actually utilizing customer feedback is key in ensuring customers feel heard and that their needs matter, deepening your relationship with them and strengthening their loyalty to your application. Plus, when you give your customers the chance to provide feedback preemptively, it may just save you from a major issue/conflict down the road.
3. Attract New Business
Not only is leveraging customer feedback valuable for retaining happy customers, it can also assist in attracting new ones. When a large amount of focus is put into adding more value to your product or offering as a result of customer feedback, this supplies the business with brand new material to market. Publicizing any new and improved product and changes is a sure-fire way to attract quality leads, but more importantly, show new business that you value what existing customers have to say. Ultimately, customers want to feel wanted and taken care of, so why not promote that your business does just that?
When it comes to growing your Independent Software Vendor business, listening to your customers can provide you with the information you need to elevate your product offering, improve customer retention, and stand out against the competition. So when planning out your next quarter strategy, don’t overlook the importance of your customers and consider how you can begin gathering customer feedback and leveraging it to the best of your ability.
If you are interested in learning more about how Tilled can help get your ISV to the next level, contact our sales team here.
