A suggestion box is a really good idea for your business. It can help you get valuable feedback from your customers — feedback that they don’t normally think to share with you. Here are some tips for success.
- The suggestion box should be in a location where it is easy to see and contain plenty of premade pads and pencils to make it easy for your customers to contribute their opinions.
- Sales people should be trained to prompt customers to provide feedback at the check out.
- If at all possible, offer an incentive (monthly drawing or free gift) to customers who do take the time to provide their feedback.
- Use the feedback provided to add to your product offerings or improve your business.
These suggestion box “suggestions” apply to a brick and mortar business. But what if you don’t have a brick and mortar location? You can still use a suggestion box. Just place a link in a prominent place on your website and call it your suggestion box.
What ideas do you have for implementing a suggestion box on your website? Please leave a comment
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September 2nd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
This is good advice Denise. I’d like to note that I represent SuggestionBox.com and we’ve created a hosted solution for companies that want to capture insights from customers, allow their customers to vote for their favorites and then keep them in the loop with status updates. Outside of offering an incentive, we really feel like people just want to be heard and kept in the loop on what happened to their suggestion. The fulfillment of actually receiving a response is a great incentive for most people.
Please come by and check us out and leave us your own suggestions!
cheers,
BJ
Twitter: deniseoberry
Says:
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:18 pm
BJ — You are so right. Just knowing that a suggestion didn’t fall into a big, black hole is all that is needed for some people. I like the concept of your site and hope to see more of it across the web. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.