What Are the Best Ways to Get Customer Feedback?
One thing any successful business knows is that customer feedback is everything. Are you wondering about the best ways to get customer feedback? Read about the best ways to receive customer feedback here!
Table of Contents
- Usability Tests
- Surveys and Feedback Forms
- Incentivize Your Following
- Stay on Top of Online Reviews
- Follow Social Media
- Exploratory Customer Interviews
- Comment Cards
- Start Earning Better Customer Feedback
It’s no secret that gathering customer feedback can help you improve your business offerings. According to 73% of consumers, the customer experience is crucial for earning their business. When you can supply a product and customer service offering that solves their issues and delivers better results, it only makes sense that buyers will give you a chance.
The trouble is that customer issues change, and so do the solutions they need. You can learn how consumers feel about your products/services through the input. If you stop paying attention to the customer’s voice and fall out of touch with the buying experience, you’ll see the outcome in your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). There’s a 91 percent chance unhappy customers won’t do business with you again.
To sustain your brand image and adapt to customer demands, you need to follow customer feedback. Sometimes you have to solicit feedback, and other times you can find it in the right places. Some may be reluctant to leave reviews or fill out surveys if they find them inconvenient. The questions you’re asking might not make the customers feel comfortable. You should be asking your audience the right questions at an appropriate time to get more responses.
We’ll show you the best ways to get customer feedback so you can start pushing your customer satisfaction scores up a notch.
Run Usability Tests
Usability tests require more prior planning to give you valuable data. They help you discover challenges that customers are unaware of. And they provide insights to improve customers’ experiences.
Your business can count on usability tests to polish new features or design details. For instance, if you are planning to improve a product, you can ask for feedback from customers. Use the suggestions given to adjust the product to your customers’ standards.
User testing may work for your business in niches like IT, health, education, or entertainment. If you offer a subscription-based product, you may provide customers with a free trial period. Ask them to record their experience while using the service or product.
Surveys and Feedback Forms
Customer surveys are the most efficient way to answer your most pressing questions. You can use short 1-3 question surveys to gain customer perspectives and improve in several areas, including:
- Product features, pricing, or marketing
- Website or app usability
- Customer service
- Content strategy
- Net promoter and customer satisfaction scores
With all the marketing automation tools and online resources at your disposal, there’s no limit to the number of places you can get your questions in front of the right audience.
Personalized Emails
Use email to gather opinions from customers once they use a service, buy a product or attend an event. The feedback request email helps build customer loyalty for a long time and drives sales. You can also use it when gathering valuable insights that will help you improve a service or product.
Send the email within 3 to 5 days after confirming a customer’s order. You may inquire about how they chose to buy the product/service from your site. The email can help you discover how the customers found your business and their feedback on the product/service.
If you’ve been in the game for a while, you’re using some kind of customer relationship management system (CRM) or email workflow service like Constant Contact. These tools allow you to automate tasks like sending out emails and surveys in a targeted way. Here are a couple of ways you can do this:
- Send surveys to select contact lists to get specific types of feedback
- Personalize the emails before sending them to attract sincere responses
- You should also include a clear call-to-action and inform the recipient about the purpose of the feedback
- A catchy subject line will help compel the recipient to open the email
- Automate email surveys to go to customers that performed an action or bought on your website
CRMs are getting more robust, and email integration is standard nowadays. You can link a survey from a service like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to your CRM contacts and create new workflows, making the communications personalized for the customer.
For example, you can set a process where the customer receives a survey when they do something on the website. Depending on what they do with the survey (complete it or ignore it), you can send either a customized thank you or a reminder email.
Customer Feedback Surveys
Short questionnaires on your website or mobile app give visitors feedback options. Like email surveys, you can target specific website visitors who land on certain pages, exit the website, or trigger other events. Users can provide immediate feedback on their experience and any issues as they encounter them. They’ll help you gauge how your brand performs with customers. Use them to identify customers’ unmet needs and customize your services to meet these needs.
Send surveys as either long-form or one-question surveys depending on your goals. Customers are very picky when responding to surveys. You should thus ask questions that can help you meet a particular goal.
The surveys should feature thoughtful, open-ended questions to attract responses. You should also add consistent rating scales for clients to rate your brand or offerings. Exclude leading or loaded questions in the surveys since they limit customers’ responses.
Feedback Tool on Your Website
A website feedback tool makes it easier to gather customers’ opinions on your site. The tool allows your site visitors to submit feedback with pictures or annotations. The user answers two questions, one asking them to rate their experience and a short field for suggestions on how to improve your website. Insights gathered from it can help you improve the user experience on your website.
Add the feedback tool on your order confirmation pages to understand customers’ shopping experiences. You’ll get visitors’ opinions on the navigation features, product selection, and checkout process. Ask them to suggest improvements to the website too.
Install a popup enclosed in a text box to appear when someone abandons a cart on your site. Ask the customer why they decided not to finish the purchase. You can also add a multiple-choice list for them to share their reasons.
Incentivize Your Following
Incentives are a chance to explore creative ways to collect feedback and give yourself a slight business bump. Wherever you distribute your customer surveys, you can offer a gift or exclusive deal in exchange for responses. Some possible offers include:
- E-books
- Whitepapers
- Coupons
- Event access
- Video tutorials
Your incentives don’t need to be something of financial value. But even if you do offer exclusive discounts, you can still keep margin in the offer and almost guarantee another sale when the customer takes the time to fill out the survey.
Stay on Top of Online Reviews
Reviews on Google, Yelp, or Facebook give you excellent customer feedback, a real-life look into the service experience. Even though you might want all 5-star reviews, you tend to get some of the most detailed feedback in negative criticism.
Negative reviews aren’t always bad. Consumers are more likely to trust and shop with someone with a few bad ratings than a business with a flawless record. More importantly, you get an opportunity to follow up with dissatisfied customers and change their attitudes.
It takes work, but your attentiveness will positively impact your business. Roughly 95% of shoppers check reviews before making a buying decision. They take a favorable view of a business owner who tries to correct mistakes and improve customer satisfaction.
Follow Social Media
Social media is a center for customer outreach and a place to keep your finger on the pulse of your customer base. Encourage customers to leave feedback on the comment section of your social media posts. Take advantage of mentions, direct comments, and messaging on social networks for feedback. Most social networking sites even have built-in polling tools that you can leverage. It’s quick and simple enough to post an Instagram poll or Facebook quiz, and you can add some personality and contest incentives to keep your audience engaged. Run social media contests to drive engagement on your posts. Every time customers engage with the contest, they will likely leave valuable feedback.
Customer feedback comes in many forms on social media, and they’re all relatively easy to monitor. You can track mentions to see what users are saying about your goods and services, or you can see what kind of comments and reactions you’re getting on your posts.
Opening up dialogues with customers on social media can give you detailed insights into what they care about and how you can make the experience better. Being quick to respond to comments and reviews in an informal setting is a humanizing way to manage your brand’s reputation.
Use the Stories feature on social networks like Instagram and Facebook to collect feedback. You may run a poll or pose questions within this feature. Social monitoring tools can also help you identify conversations around your brand and offerings.
Social media also gives you a window into your content strategy.
Hopefully, you’re using your social media pages to promote new content. You can gain valuable information on what customers like and dislike based on their engagement with your posts. If a post is getting a lot of shares, comments, or likes, it’s a good indication that your customer wants to see more on a topic or a particular type of content.
Conduct Exploratory Customer Interviews
Customer interviews can help you capture qualitative stories that make the feedback reliable. They’ll help you learn about personal experiences with your brand or offerings. As a result, you’ll understand the motivations behind customers’ decisions.
Conduct customer interviews to improve the reputation of your business. Begin them with an open-ended dialogue to give the respondents a chance to explain themselves in detail. Get into more specific details as the interview progresses and listen actively.
You can conduct the interviews via video conferencing apps or SMS, no matter where you are. Either way, inform the customer about your intentions before beginning the interview.
Distribute Comment Cards
You can gather feedback the old-fashioned way using comment cards. Though this method has many hidden costs, it’s cost-effective for a brick-and-mortar business. Comment cards give a more immediate sense of how a company meets customers’ expectations.
Ask customers to rate their experiences with your products/services on the card. You can also invite any complaints or compliments people have toward your business.
Remind the respondents that you appreciate their honesty and loyalty. Remember to ask (not demand) the customer details and add open-ended questions.
Start Earning Better Customer Feedback
There is a diverse array of customer feedback options that business owners can implement today to learn more about their customer’s needs, desires, and pain points. Use these tips to gather customer feedback, which will inform your product/service improvements. When done correctly, these methods can help you increase the integrity of your offerings. Use them to identify unhappy customers, measure customer loyalty and reduce losses. Start monitoring the customer’s voice and asking questions, and you won’t have to guess how to improve your service.
Count on Four Winds Agency for your promotional and marketing needs in Sandy Springs Georgia, Dunwoody Georgia, Marietta Georgia, and Buckhead Georgia. Our goal is to use innovation to boost clients’ online reputation and success. Set up a consultation to learn how we’ll help accelerate your business growth.