Okay, we lied! Collecting customer feedback isn’t totally 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 going to be enough.
To ensure maximum returns from your feedback collection process, consider following these expert tips. Keep reading to find out what they are.
What are 7 methods of collecting customer feedback?
1. Feedback surveys
To your customers, you are just one of the countless brands there is. A good percentage of them will even be your loyal advocates, but by no means do you take the center stage in their lives.
So, if they were to 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 wonderful 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 every now and then. Don’t overdo it and find your emails land 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 with good PR. Market research surveys is 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!
2. Feature Updates
Do your customers know what is happening within your company? Are they aware of the feature updates you rolled out two months ago? Do they know that their favorite brand has released a new product? Were they told, that you have opened a new branch?
If your customers trust you to not keep them in the dark, they’ll happily open up to you about their biggest pain points. Better, they’ll share with you what they’re willing to pay for. This information is pure gold, especially if you are researching about your product-market fit!
It’s important that your customers trust you enough and care about your brand to understand, that their feedback will make a difference. They’ll readily help you identify the kinks you need to iron out to improve your 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 stats, 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 to your response lates; 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 still occasionally pick up the phone, talk to your customer, and gauge their response.
This proactive approach is not for everyone, but we highly recommend that you do it, once in a while. It guarantees a better response rate and elicits a more positive response.
It is important that you shouldn’t be merely going through the motions while making the phone call. The customer at the other end should be enticed with 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 most often, people are 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 an awesome brand you’ve really built.
Displaying positive customer feedback will give you more than credibility. It enhances your goodwill and encourages more people to share their own experiences with you. In this case, the more, definitely the merrier!
6. Support Tickets
A friend of mine was planning to buy a designing tool that she found was a perfect fit for her requirements. She requested them a demo and no one responded. Mildly annoyed but wanting to buy the tool because it looked really good, she proceeded to pay for it. However, the payment process was so cluttered that she encountered certain problems with it. 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 good 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 opportunities where you can 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 7 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 effective action if not effortless! Because, like everything else worth having, customer feedback doesn’t come free!
Wrapping Up
Collecting customer feedback online is easier and more effective if you know these tactics. Which is what we are here for!
