Companies who embrace data-backed insights outperform competitors in virtually every money metric.

Customer behavior is changing more rapidly than ever; a trend which has left manufacturers with a great deal of pressure. To further complicate the matter, manufacturers can be two or more parties removed from the people who ultimately purchase their products leaving little chance of meaningful engagement. For these manufacturers, it’s all about getting the right products to market faster with the guidance of customer insights, a clear product strategy, and a data-driven product roadmap — all of which can help sell products into retail channels as well!

Understanding Your Customer

Customer insights can help manufacturers identify product trends, preferences, and pain points while providing the information needed to enhance their products, services, and overall customer experience. Year over year, a manufacturer’s goal is to create products that not only solve real customer problems, but at the same time exceeds that customer’s expectations. Achieving this goal means manufacturers need a foolproof product roadmap that is backed by informed product decisions.

Gathering Customer Insights

One simple and effective way to gather customer insights is by using customer surveys. Surveys are an often underestimated tool that can help you analyze past mistakes, evaluate where your brand currently stands, and determine what your future moves should be, so your customers get nothing but the best from your brand.

Here’s a straight-forward example of a customer survey that a consumer goods manufacturer might use to gather insights:

1. How often do you purchase our products?

2. What do you like about our products?

3. What don’t you like about our products?

4. How can we improve our products?

5. How important is product quality to you?

6. How likely are you to recommend our products to a friend?

7. How can we improve our customer service?

8. What other products would you like us to offer?

TIP: Go live with something that delivers a small amount of value quickly, then change or expand it to be in line with business priorities. A short, simple survey will open the door for customers to engage directly with your brand while providing you with meaningful insights.

Principles to Keep in Mind

• Remove bias: Ask the customer for their opinion without projecting your own. Get their uninfluenced, impartial opinion. You want genuine insights, even if they’re negative. An example of this could be something as simple as “What do you think we could do better?”

• Be concrete: Use simple language that asks for feedback on a specific topic. For example, “What problem are you trying to solve with our product?” will help to determine the purpose your customers are getting from the product.

  
  

• Focus: Your surveys should address one area of the customer experience. The aim is to get insights that you can then act upon for a specific product. Keep in mind that customers that purchase one product from your brand may not be the same as those who purchase another.

Keep these three things in mind as you personalize your customer survey with questions pertaining to your brand and product.

Benefits of Customer Insights

The above survey example can provide manufacturers with several benefits, including:

1. Understanding customer preferences: Through customer surveys, manufacturers can learn about customer preferences and develop products that meet their needs. Manufacturers can leverage customer feedback to improve their products, including the design, packaging, quality, and features.

2. Improving product messaging: Feedback from surveys can help marketers identify and deliver messaging that effectively communicates your product’s value, giving customers an understanding of how your product solves their specific problem.

3. Identifying product issues: Surveys help manufacturers identify issues with their products that customers may have experienced. For instance, if a customer reports that a product has an issue, the manufacturer can use the feedback to make necessary changes or improvements to the product to ensure customer satisfaction.

4. Enhancing customer loyalty: By gathering customer insights and acting on the feedback provided, manufacturers can improve customer loyalty. Customers appreciate when their feedback is taken into consideration, and they are more likely to continue doing business with a manufacturer that values their input.

5. Creating a competitive advantage: With customer insights, manufacturers can develop products, and messaging, that set them apart from their competitors. They can use the feedback to create unique features or benefits that competitors may not offer, leading to a competitive advantage.

6. Increasing revenue: By improving products, enhancing customer loyalty, and creating a competitive advantage, manufacturers can increase revenue. Customers are willing to pay more for products that meet their needs and expectations, and they are more likely to purchase from a manufacturer that values their feedback.

How to Move Quickly

Here are a few ways for manufacturers to start engaging with their customers:

1. Add surveys and polls to support pages on your site.

2. Create and/or link to surveys from social media

3. Send follow-up customer survey emails

4. Leverage your packaging by adding a QR code

5. A QR codes to point-of-purchase displays and shelf-talkers

Packaging is the single most important medium a manufacture has, owns and controls because it reaches each and every customer — no matter the channel. Leveraging packaging means brands do not incur additional costs. A simple code on packaging, or on an insert, creates the opportunity manufacturers need to begin engaging with their customers.

Authentic Labs, developer of the Real Brand Platform, offers tools to help brands get inside the minds of their target market to better understand customer experience. Real leverages QR codes to deliver product specific experiences for consumer brands that inform and increase brand engagement. With tightly integrated polls, surveys and other CTAs, brands can easily manage, collect and analyze insights from customers across all their sales channels. Real turns products into a custom communications platform to build trust, gain insights and drive sales.

Contact us to learn more about Real.

About Authentic Labs

Based in Boulder, Colorado, Authentic Labs created the Real platform to help consumer brands reach their customers at a critical moment, while product is in hand. With its integrated survey, polls and analytics tools, brands can gain valuable insights that otherwise would have required patching together a myriad of disparate systems.

The Real platform leverages QR codes to connect brands to consumers to create better brand experiences and trustworthy relationships. Learn more about Real at https://authenticlabs.com/.