7 Effective Ways to Gather Customer Feedback
--
If a business is looking forward to provide users with the products they need and wants to satisfy them completely, then knowing how to collect customer feedback and utilizing it successfully it’s crucial. The customer feedback informs the business about what it needs to introduce or change and guides towards new goals and inter-structural reforms. The feedbacks greatly influence the roadmap of the product. it also allows you to measure the satisfaction level of your customers.
I’d like to share with you different ways in which you can get some prospects and current customers to provide you with feedback. You will get to know how the customers feel about your product, support and the overall company’s vision.
Different ways to collect customer feedback
First of all, you may start collecting customer feedback, but have you defined it clearly in your mind that for what purpose, are you going to collect the feedback for? You have to outline the complete process according to the outcomes that you will receive. This is an essential step before starting to gather customer feedback. Otherwise, it may happen that you keep on asking about feedbacks from customers blindly and that will lead you nowhere, thus resulting in no understanding of customer requirement.
So, before you start to gather customer feedback, answer the questions below:
- What will you do with all the collected data?
- Which part of the user experience will you try to improve?
- What is the channel that will work best for achieving your goals?
The last question is being answered in this article. Below mentioned are some of the most effective ways that you can opt for collecting feedback from the prospective or current customers.
- Emailing customers for their valuable feedback
There is no doubt on this that email tends to be an effective tool for collecting feedback from the customer. Now, how can you maximize the effectiveness of this channel? There are a few ways by which you can improve how the customers will be reaching you through email. You have to ensure that all these changes will then be creating a better experience for the customers also.
There are three important parts that need to be focused on when you are trying to gather feedback via email.
- Providing customers with a speed assurance
- Formation of a properly structured customer feedback system
- Some candid follow up emails can also be sent
A. Significance of a ‘speed assurance’
It is a basic assumption that prevails in most of the people around the globe. Customers think that their feedback will not be considered important and that the businesses to whom they are giving the feedback will not consider their suggestions and bring any changes. Thus, the customers avoid from leaving feedback or complaints because it is obvious to them that company won’t listen to the unhappy customers.
However, if the same company assures the customers that their feedback is important and will have a fast response to whatever their feedback is, then surely the customers would love to leave their feedbacks.
B. The structure of email feedback system
A proper system should be made that can handle all the product feedbacks. For this case, there is a very effective tool called “Trello”. You can easily create boards within the Trello that can be accessed and contributed by anybody. One such board can be about the “Product Ideas” like what the customers want to see and the features they have requested; another board can be “Up Next” i.e. the package on which the company or business is currently working on; and finally the “Roadmap” i.e. the future plans to work on.
Within each boards there can be some cards that will help you in categorizing all the requests. Under the board of Product Ideas, the cards like “List of Ideas”, “Discarded Ideas”, “Perhaps, will integrate” (i.e. the ideas are good, but there is no need to work on them now), and the “Apps” i.e. request of integration.
You can now add the people by inputting their email addresses within the cards. For example, if a person has asked you to upgrade the reports, you can add him or her to any list within the card. Hence, the person shall be given a notification via email whenever you will complete the upgrade. The Trello system is a very effective tool in all these working ideas as it gives the employees of your company an organized roadmap.
C. The value of a personal email
If you want your customers to leave you a candid response, then you can simply ask them to give you one. When the customers visit your site to get information, ask them to sign up via email, after that use that email as an opportunity to contact your customers and send them some autoresponder emails for gathering feedback from the customers. You can ask the customers about different problems that they have to face with your site or business and improve your services accordingly.
Do request the customers to reply you with their feedback. If you talk in a polite tone, then it is very much possible that most of the customers will provide you with their responses which will be candid. Considering the fact that you are asking this in private unlike social media which is public, it is expected that the customers will be quite open to you while providing their feedback.
2. Testing Usability
You need more upfront planning for the testing usability. This method will deliver you more insights than any other method. The usability test can help you reveal such things that even the customers don’t know that they are struggling with. Thus, by testing the usability, you will have a clear path guiding your way towards providing better user experience to your valuable customers.
At PeekUser.Testing, the company regularly conducts the usability tests for gathering details of website design for a certain feature or process. Now, the feature may be complete by more than 90% but valid test results will ensure that the remaining percentage is absolutely right. For example, our company (ThinkRTC.com) has been working on a new feature for quite some time and now the feature is ready for launch in the upcoming weeks and we have done some extensive usability tests with our customers so that we can get perfect details. The method works so well that you will sometimes, re-design entire process and align it with the customer expectations in a better way.
3. Get Customer feedback through surveys
It is very easy to create a simple customer feedback survey. You can ask many questions from your customers but be mindful that you ought to opt a careful approach. Rather than asking your customers fill up the longer survey forms, you can opt for a shorter survey i.e. an on screen appearing slider. You can see what serves the purpose in a better way. But, if you feel that the shorter surveys will be enough, then you should go for them.
The questions that you ask should be relevant and fulfilling the end goal.
- Only ask the questions that are smart and open-ended.
- Any sort of loaded and leading questions should be avoided
- At one time, ask just one question
- The rating scales should be consistent
4. By the help of Social media channels
The social media is also one of the most effective tools from where you can receive candid customer feedbacks. The users can comment on your social media posts or send you direct messages. Thus, allowing you to gather some candid responses. However, being a public platform, the responses from customers may not be that direct and relevant.
The engagement of customers with your social media channels is highly significant and the social media platforms can be expertly and successfully utilized for having the company and customers on one page.
5. Interviewing the customers directly
If you are able to reach out your customers directly and then receive their feedback, then it will be the best possible way in some cases. You will be able to talk to your customers directly about their experience with your company or products. The communication barrier that is faced in other methods listed here will be avoided by getting explanatory customer interviews.
You have to keep some basic things in mind while getting some explanatory interviews from your customers which are mentioned below:
- Focus on the attitude of your users. Understand how they think about any problem. You have to ask them if they are facing problems with any complicated feature and request their suggestions on altering features in a way that problem can be resolved. Thank them for the time they have spent with you.
- The critical incident method will work well over here. Ask the customers to recall the times when they faced problem with any specific feature and tell you about that. You can also ask them to tell you about the features that worked absolutely perfect for them.
- You can also ask your customers about their habits. For instance, ask them how they perform any task normally? You will come to know about the problems that your customers have not figured out. For example, if there are jumping over 4 menus to reach something which can be done in a single step, then you have a new shortcut feature idea to introduce in your website.
- You can have live session with your customers on skype or by using other online meeting tools, you can even share screens. This will allow you to get a detailed insight on what customers feel and want from your website.
6. Comment boxes
Another great way to measure the satisfaction of the user is by including a comment box at the end of particular pages. These comments will be actually the feedbacks of customers including complaints and suggestions about that certain page.
The live-chats and pop-ups will require an employee around which requires some more effort but is quite productive in terms of customer feedback. But, the live chat panel also interrupt the customer in what he was doing. So, strategically inserted comment box at the end of the pages can draw attention of the customer and also allow them to provide you with some sort of a candid feedback where you won’t require any employee to sit around all the time. Moreover, it won’t disturb the customer too.
7. Assessing the on-site activity by using analytics tools
The on-site activity can sometimes provide you with the best feedback. You can always turn to see the analytics to know that how the different customers are interacting with your site. For instance, consider using content as a form of customer service. In this case your Frequently Asked Questions are the best way to see how customers react with your content. They turn to the FAQ page to get answers to their questions. But the thing which you have to find out is that how are they utilizing that information?
For example, if there is an awful bounce rate on your FAQ section and 0:09 average time that user spends on the page, then you have a clear idea that something is wrong and that the FAQ is not serving the purpose correctly. There is miscommunication due to which people visit the page but don’t get the information or if they do get the information, they are not utilizing it.
The significance of customer feedback
The customer service team needs to know about the problems that the customers are facing. Obviously, if you want to improve the services then you have to know about that particular sector of your service that is having a problem which becomes evident only when customers speak to you about it. The company needs to take customer feedback seriously and for that matter, proper organized structure for collecting, sharing and acting upon the customer feedback is essential for the company. It plays a vital role for pushing the business and products forward. Customer feedback can be thought of as a direction to your business.
