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9 Strategies To Obtain Customer Feedback

The document discusses 9 strategies for obtaining customer feedback including email surveys, SMS surveys, feedback collected via WiFi networks, paper feedback cards, beacons, live chat transcripts, customer interviews, recorded sales calls, and website session replays. Gathering feedback is important to identify issues, improve customer experience and retention, and ensure marketing budgets are effective.

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92 views

9 Strategies To Obtain Customer Feedback

The document discusses 9 strategies for obtaining customer feedback including email surveys, SMS surveys, feedback collected via WiFi networks, paper feedback cards, beacons, live chat transcripts, customer interviews, recorded sales calls, and website session replays. Gathering feedback is important to identify issues, improve customer experience and retention, and ensure marketing budgets are effective.

Uploaded by

John evans
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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blog.hubspot.

com

9 Strategies to Obtain Customer Feedback


Shane Forster

8-10 minutes

Metrics like customer acquisition cost, conversion rates, and even


micro-metrics like bounce rate and time on-site are numbers that
companies live-and-die by to measure the success of their sales and
marketing organizations.

But ultimately, none of these truly matter if the customer experience is


lacking or fails to meet customer expectations.

All of the work to acquire the customer is likely for nothing if they are
not being retained by the customer success team. Consequently, their
lifetime value is greatly diminished, which makes budgets more
difficult to attain for acquiring more users and customers. It's a
downward spiral which ultimately may result in campaigns being
deemed unprofitable or marketing budgets drying up completely -- it's a
ruthless cycle.

So what can be done about this? Everything comes down to monitoring


customer satisfaction.

All business owners instinctively believe that they have happy, loyal
customers -- but is this really the case? Are there any issues with your
product or service which you aren't aware of, but may be just a critical
element that stops your customers from buying from you again?

Proactively and consistently gathering feedback from your customers


is key to ensure that any issues which they are experiencing are not
only identified, but can be resolved before too many other customers
have the same poor experience.

By having an appropriate complaint management process in place, it


may even be possible to turn a customer who had a negative
experience into an advocate simply by listening to their critiques and
being human when you respond.
9 Strategies to Obtain Customer Feedback
Depending on the nuances of your business, collecting feedback from
your customers can be done in several ways. Whichever method you
use, it's critical that this is undertaken in a manner which can facilitate
analysis and action -- otherwise, you risk operating within an echo
chamber and subconsciously only acknowledging feedback which
reinforces your current perceptions.

Basically, have a goal and an action plan of what you'll do with the
customer feedback (for example, response to aggrieved customers,
segment customers based on response, inform product improvements,
etc.)

1. Email Feedback

The most frequently used method to request customer feedback is via


email, once the service has been provided or product which the
customer bought has been delivered.

If you have ever shopped online or stayed at a hotel, you have


undoubtedly received a request to rate your experience.

Various providers assist companies with automating this process and


many will also ensure that reviews are distributed amongst the most
important portals, such as Facebook, Google, TripAdvisor, and Yelp.

2. SMS Surveys

Not to be underestimated, SMS is still one of the most powerful


channels to request feedback from customers. In an age when
consumers are never more than a few feet away from their phones,
SMS is still a great way to communicate with your customers. With
higher open rates than email, they are a strong alternative to use when
only a phone number is known.
3. WiFi Networks
Cafes, bars, hotels and even stores are now choosing to provide free
wifi in order to attract more customers to their locations. This also
presents opportunities to gain feedback from customers which
shouldn't be missed.

Whether requiring a free account to be created in order to access the


wifi, then using the captured email address to request feedback shortly
thereafter, or simply asking how their experience is while they're there,
exploiting free customer WiFi to ask for feedback can be a fair value
trade for both business and customer.

4. Paper Feedback Cards

Some companies still prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, by


using simple feedback questionnaires with pen and paper. This is
undoubtedly the most cost-effective manner to collect reviews, but it
can also have a lot of hidden costs when it comes to collating and
understanding the feedback given.

In order to be able to extract meaningful actions from the feedback, the


responses often need to be tabulated in a spreadsheet and then
analyzed -- requiring both significant time and effort. Factoring the
salary of a junior staff member spending only 10 minutes each day to
enter responses into a database and minimal analysis, this can easily
exceed $500 per year.

5. Beacons

Although beacons haven't really taken off like the hype predict when
they first launched, they are still an interesting technology which can
be used strategically to gather customer feedback.

If you are lucky enough to have a mobile app which is installed by


many users, beacons can serve a push-notification to users once they
arrive in the vicinity of the deployed beacon.

This can be a great way to ask users to leave feedback about their in-
store experience while they're still there.

6. Live Chat Transcripts

On-site live chat tools are becoming more and more frequently used
not only for user-acquisition but also customer support.
Reviewing transcripts of the chats and categorizing any feedback
points into categories can help you identify inefficiencies in your
business. Frequently mentioned topics tend to be problem areas for
your business which can be improved to not only improve customer
satisfaction but also reduce the customer support resources required.

Although qualitative chat transcripts can be cumbersome to review,


they also tend to be the most direct feedback from customers which
you can receive.

7. Customer Interviews

Interviewing customers doesn't need to be exclusive to major retailers


or market research companies who have big budgets to fund these.
Frequent and loyal customers are generally very happy to give
feedback if you simply ask them. After all, they're the ones who are
most invested in your product or service.

Try finding a number of segments which interest you and select


various customers who fit these profiles. To increase your potential for
success, ensure that the customer is being contacted by a real person
as this will not only make them feel like a VIP (and become even more
loyal), but will increase your chances that they will provide valuable
feedback.

8. Recorded Sales Calls

If you have an outbound sales team, it's likely that they are making
potentially hundreds of calls every day, which these logs can be
invaluable for not only training purposes, but also as feedback to your
product. While they may not be customers (yet) they also tend to give
the most direct feedback to your product as they have no vested
interest. First impressions last after all!
Even if they haven't completed a trial of your product, listening to what
their feedback is on your product and presentation can help you
overcome any hurdles which may be putting off other potential
customers.

9. Website Visitor Session Replays

Want to know how people are using your website and why they aren't
taking certain converting? Then Session Replays could be the way to
gather the feedback required to overcome these hurdles.

Providers such as Hotjar and Yandex record user interaction with your
website so you can easily see what they are viewing, clicking on and
interacting with.

While this may sound creepy, this type of feedback is invaluable and
can really help you see the website from your visitor's viewpoint and
see issues which you may not otherwise have noticed.

It's clear that customer satisfaction is no longer just the responsibility


of customer service teams, but a fundamental element to all
departments which have an interaction with customers. If you aren't
already exploring ways to gather customer feedback at your company
it's time do so.

Not only will you cost-effectively generate more customers for your
business, but they will become more loyal to your brand with greater
lifetime value -- which, for marketers, means that we can push for even
larger budgets to try new and exciting campaigns.

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