It makes sense to reach out to your customers to ask them what they want – or don’t want.

Customer feedback can be helpful and profitable for your business.

In “How to Use Customer Feedback to Drive Meaningful Business Changes,” Carol’s recent post on the Nextiva blog, she shares some techniques that can entice your customers to provide feedback. Carol begins:

Change is a vital part of any business’ success and growth. Regardless of how many ideas you generate in-house, however, you can target ideas more precisely when you introduce the customer voice into the mix.

To improve your current products or services, or if you’re ready to branch out into new areas, consider the following ideas to avail yourself of knowledge gleaned from real-life customer experiences.

1. Support issues often identify customer wants and needs

Your support team probably talks to customers more frequently than any other group in the company and customers often express wishes when they seek support for specific issues. The minute that they say, “I wish that the product did this,” or “If only your company provided this service,” mental alarms should go off.

Support team members should immediately share customer wish-lists with the people who develop new products or services. These ideas can improve your offerings, while helping to forecast potential winners.

2. Customers don’t always reach out voluntarily

Customers are seldom shy with complaints. They are less generous with ideas, though, so you have to coax them using any of a number of tools.

You can read the rest of the post here.