Why do you want to get feedback on your business? It would be nice to have some positive testimonials. It would be great to learn where you can improve your services. And it would be amazing to have open communication between company and consumer in order to best serve the market. And in the digital world “I” wants that.

This is part 4 of my Incentivize Everything! series. If you missed it, go back and check out part 3 which was all about incentivizing new hires to get more out of your workforce.

Feedback is important. It’s easy for someone on the inside of a company to view the activities of the company in one way, when they market views them completely differently. You get locked into the day to day work, and you don’t see the big picture or hear the complaints when a product or service is not up to snuff.

When you get feedback, it will most likely fall into 2 categories: Testimonials (people who love you) or Improvements (people who did not have the best experience). Both are good for different reasons.

So how do you get feedback?

It’s obvious that there are some places where you will get feedback that is beyond your control. Yelp, and similar services, provide an open forum for consumers to review the companies that they interact with. It’s always a good idea to know what is being said about you online, but it’s important to seek feedback on your own terms as well. Most times it will be better, and it will help you improve more than just a negative review.

Surveys are a great tool that you can use to get feedback. You can send surveys out to your customers asking for feedback on specific aspects of your products or services, asking for their opinions on your marketing message or customer service, or getting their thoughts on an upcoming launch or company event. There are many free services out there, but if you can afford to spend a little money, check out www.questionpro.com.

Blogs or social media sites can be used to get feedback by specifically asking people to leave opinions and thoughts about products or services.

To get feedback, just ask for it. To get more of it, incentivize it. Offer a free prize to a random selected survey respondent. Offer a link back to someone’s website in exchange for a testimonial submission. Offer a reward for finding errors on your site or in your products. If it’s something that helps your business get better, its worth asking for, and paying for.