By now you have surely noticed that you cannot do anything online today without a site asking you for feedback about your experience. Whether it’s finding a plumber, ordering food, or – you guessed it – partaking in online training, you will at some point be asked to share your thoughts. Some users view this task as a pain in the rear, but others will always oblige and provide the requested information. It might take a few minutes to complete a survey, or to write a short blurb that either gives a thumbs up or down, but don’t discount the importance of the task. Your words are not only helping a company improve its products, they are helping other people make informed decisions about products and services.

Good Business is All About Research

It’s no secret that businesses spend millions on research and development of their products, using focus groups, surveys, and other methods to determine what it is people want. Customer feedback gives companies the ability to rate themselves against the competition and find ways to entice the consumer to spend their hard-earned dollars on their products as opposed to their competitors’. This research takes a great deal of time and effort, but if the net result is positive word-of-mouth, the effort is worth its weight in gold.

Customer feedback is especially important when a company loses customers. It will determine why customers are no longer buying its products. The goal of the survey becomes finding out if there is anything the company can do to win a customer’s business back. For example, a company that sells accounting software for small businesses might call thousands of former customers to determine why they stopped using the product. The company might discover that customers do not like paying $19.95 per month for 10 features, when most use only two or three features; they may prefer an alternative pricing structure. Regardless of the reasons, the company would have no way of knowing what was turning off its customers without contacting them.

Feedback is Especially Important For Online Training

In order for online education and training to gain a solid reputation as a viable mode of learning, feedback is especially important. Those who purchase training courses or partake in other types of online coursework must make an effort to provide feedback so other learners can get a sense of what its all about. Remember, regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative, the contribution is the most important part. If the content creator is reputable, he or she will consider the comments left by learners in order to improve or modify the content to make it more user-friendly and appealing to everyone.

Coggno wants to practice what we preach. If you’ve used our online learning marketplace, leave us a comment on our Facebook page.

If you have a story you’d like to share about a good or bad online training course you’ve taken, post it here!