Get Customer Feedback on a New Product
Getting customer feedback on products is essential to the success of any business, and is particularly important when launching a new product. The only way to predict how a product will do in the market is to ask the people who will buy it. When launching a new product, customer feedback is important both before and after the launch. There are a variety of ways you can find out what your customers think.
Instructions
1. Use focus groups to get customer reactions to new products before they hit the market. Focus groups consist of a handful of targeted consumers expressing their opinions. Focus group participants can sign confidentiality agreements to prevent them from leaking product information, if necessary.
2. Talk to customers directly. If you launch a new product in a brick-and-mortar store, take the time to ask customers what they think of the product. Face-to-face feedback is often the best option, because you can press customers for further explanation of their opinions and get a dialog going.
3. Question employees who work with customers about customer reactions to the new product. These employees are a valuable source of feedback, because they get to deal directly with the customer.
4. Send surveys by mail or email following the purchase of the new product. This is easiest done with products bought online, because you have access to a customer's personal information. Surveys get higher response rates when they are accompanied by an incentive, such as a coupon or the opportunity to win something if the survey is completed.
5. Track the sales of your new product carefully. Your sales can tell you whether or not the product hit on the mark.
6. Supply comment cards to customers. The easier a comment card is to use, the more likely it is to be completed. Brief comment cards that use numerical ratings for different criteria are a popular choice.
7. Hire a company to conduct telephone surveys on the new product to past customers.
Tags: comment cards, Customer Feedback, Customer Feedback Product, customer reactions, Feedback Product, launching product, their opinions