Okay, we lied! Collecting customer feedback isn’t effortless.
To collect customer feedback, you need active strategizing, dynamic processes, and thoughtful execution. So yeah, it requires effort. Just using the first repository of questions that comes to mind and sharing your survey with a random email list isn’t enough.
To ensure maximum returns from your feedback collection process, consider following these expert tips. Please keep reading to find out what they are. But, before that, let’s start with the basics.
What is customer feedback?
Customer feedback is the voice of your clientele. It’s the direct information they share about their experiences with your products, services, or overall brand. Think of it as a conversation where customers tell you what they love, what they wish was different, and what they hope to see in the future. This feedback can come in various forms, such as surveys, reviews, comments, or even direct communications.
It’s a goldmine of insights that can highlight areas of excellence or pinpoint improvements. More than just opinions, feedback is a reflection of how well a business meets its customers’ expectations and needs. By actively seeking and valuing this feedback, companies can adapt, innovate, and grow in alignment with their customer base, ensuring long-term success and loyalty.
Why collect customer feedback
Collecting customer feedback is essential because it tells businesses exactly what their customers think. This feedback helps companies improve their products and services, ensuring they meet customer needs. When businesses listen and act on feedback, they build customer trust and loyalty, leading to more sales and success. In short, feedback is a direct line to understanding and satisfying customers better.
How to collect customer feedback: 7 popular methods
1. Feedback Surveys
To your customers, you are just one of the countless brands. A good percentage of them will even be your loyal advocates, but by no means do you take center stage in their lives.
So, if they take precious time out of their lives to tell you what they think of your brand, you must mean something to them. Either you exceeded their expectations with your excellent service, or they are miffed with you so much that they want to give you a piece of their mind.
“For every customer who bothers to complain, 20 other customers remain silent”, they say. Customer feedback surveys every six months shouldn’t be the only time you reach out to your customers. Keep them actively engaged and remind them of your brand now and then. Please don’t overdo it and find your emails in the spam bin. Strike that precocious balance where your customers wouldn’t mind your emails and even look forward to them.
You can eliminate the chances of your customers forgetting you by organizing campaigns, coming up with giveaway contests, having an active social presence, or having good PR. Market research surveys are another win-win solution to remind your customers that your brand exists and that you care. If they remember you, they are more prone to respond positively to a feedback request. Be a friend to your customers. And you can use SurveySparrow’s company for that. Sign up and explore them for free.
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2. Feature Updates
Are your customers up-to-date with your company’s latest developments? Do they know about the new features you introduced recently or the launch of a fresh product? Are they aware that you’ve expanded with a new branch?
When customers are kept in the loop, they feel valued and trusted. This transparency encourages them to share their concerns and needs openly. Such insights are invaluable, particularly when determining how well your offerings align with market demands.
Customers must believe in your brand’s commitment to their feedback. When they see their input making a real impact, they’re more inclined to help you pinpoint areas for enhancement, ultimately elevating the overall customer experience.
3. Survey Incentives
Now that we agree that your customers are doing you a favor by offering you their feedback, you can see that you’ll get more feedback with some incentive.
With unmotivated respondents, your survey response rates can stoop as low as 20%. If that’s not a sad statistic, I don’t know what is!
Offering your customers a tangible bonus in exchange for their feedback is a clever tactic to improve your response rates. A gift card or free coupons can work wonders for your response rates; it’s been proved. People are more prone to help you if they know it’s worth their time.
4. Customer Interviews
There is nothing quite like a personal, one-on-one conversation. While this strategy isn’t always the most practical, you can occasionally pick up the phone, talk to your customers, and gauge their response. That’s customer interviews in a nutshell.
This proactive approach is not for everyone, but we highly recommend that you do it occasionally. It guarantees a better response rate and elicits a more positive response.
You mustn’t be merely going through the motions while making the phone call. The customer, on the other hand, should be enticed by your approach and realize that his opinion matters to you as it should!
5. Customer Testimonials
You’ve heard of the ‘people are sheep’ analogy too many times that it’s probably nothing new. You might also know that, people are usually big on joining the wagon. So, it’s logical that if you were to display positive customer feedback you receive on your website or social channels, more people would want to be part of the legacy. More of your customers would readily pitch in about what a fantastic brand you’ve built.
Displaying positive customer feedback will give you more than credibility. It enhances your goodwill and encourages more people to share their experiences. In this case, the more, definitely, the merrier!
6. Support Tickets
A friend of mine was planning to buy a design tool that she found was a perfect fit for her requirements. She requested a demo, and no one responded. Mildly annoyed but wanting to buy the device because it looked perfect, she paid for it. However, the payment process was so cluttered that she encountered specific problems. She left messages in the chat box and raised a ticket with the support, requesting someone to help her with the payment.
I was appalled to know that they didn’t get around to responding this time either. Annoyed, she left and found a suitable replacement, this time with a support team that was only delighted to help her.
Few things can be more frustrating than waiting around for someone to get back to you, especially when you are in dire need of some support. When a customer encounters an issue, they need your help, and they need it immediately. Good or bad, each feedback deserves to be acknowledged promptly and in a gracious manner.
Do yourself a favor and ensure that you have a proactive live support team at all times.
7. Negative Reviews
Only in Utopia will you not have any disgruntled customers! Take the negative feedback in its stride, and wow them with your gracious response. Even the worst kind of customer feedback can be used to your advantage if you have the skills to rectify the situation. Brands like Zappos are legendary for their countless customer service examples that everyone can learn from.
Negative feedback should be treated as an opportunity you showcase professionalism. Own up to your mistakes. Start with a genuine apology and do whatever it takes to make it up to your customer. Prove to your customers that you prioritize them. Win them over! You know you have it in you!
These seven top-secret ways are just the tip of the iceberg. When it comes right down to it, collecting feedback is an art.
From the ideal channels, you should use to the survey UI that can charm your respondents and raise your survey completion rates, from the obvious rules you overlooked and caused your online surveys to fail to the questions you should never ask, from sending canned responses and other customer experience mistakes you should avoid altogether, there are way too many things that go into making your feedback collection an effortless activity.
Er… the easiest and most effective action, if not effortless! Because, like everything else worth having, customer feedback doesn’t come free!
How do you get customer feedback online?
The easiest way to get customer feedback online is through a tool like SurveySparrow. Here’s why it’s so user-friendly:
- Create a Survey: With SurveySparrow, you can quickly design engaging surveys. They offer a variety of templates and customization options to fit your brand and your needs.
- Share Easily: Once your survey is ready, you can share it through email or social media or embed it on your website. SurveySparrow makes it super simple to reach your customers wherever they are.
- Collect Responses: As responses come in, SurveySparrow organizes them in a way that’s easy to understand. You can see your feedback in real-time.
- Analyze Results: The platform provides clear analytics, so you can easily spot trends and insights from your customer feedback.
14-Day Free Trial • No Credit Card Required • No Strings Attached
14-Day Free Trial • No Credit Card Required • No Strings Attached
Wrapping Up
Collecting customer feedback online is easier and more effective if you know these tactics. Which is what we are here for!
Now, to make your feedback collection easier, all that you have to do is just put your hands on the effortless feedback collection tool SurveySparrow! Try and let us know. That’s all for now. Happy day, folks!
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Collect Critical Customer Feedback With SurveySparrow
