Customer Feedback: What It Is & How to Use It

To customers, good customer service involves being heard. They want you to listen to what they say and respond. In fact, a recent survey revealed that 80% of people are likely to use a business if it responds to their reviews. We’re not even talking about complaints here, or queries. These are reviews, telling the business what they’re doing correctly, or incorrectly. The moment customers receive a response, they feel they have your attention and are content. They believe you’re showing that you care about them, and they can trust you.

The secret is to use customer feedback to your advantage. Don’t just request a response and do nothing with it. Use the information you’ve gathered to make your customers feel heard, and happy. If they have valid complaints, listen to them, act on them and your business will reap the rewards.

Let’s Define Customer Feedback

Customer feedback relates to any info your customers share with you about their experiences with your services and/or products. It’s not just a review, or a complaint; it’s how your customers tell you exactly what they feel and think. It could be a comment made when a customer filled out a form, something they say on social media, or an email congratulating or berating you about something.

Customer feedback comes in two forms, and both matter:

1. Direct Feedback: This is when you ask for a comment, and the customer responds, perhaps in a survey, or a review, an email, or on a live chat. This provides a clear answer.
2. Indirect Feedback: It is often found on social media platforms, in forum discussions or reviews when the person isn’t talking to you directly. This is often a more honest response.

The 4 Types of Customer Feedback

Your customers often concentrate on only the part of the experience they did or didn’t enjoy. Be aware of this. There are four types of customer feedback, and if you track all of these, you’ll have an idea of what your customers are really saying.

Brand Feedback: This covers your brand’s reputation, how your customers view your business, and whether they consider you reliable, trustworthy and worth using again.

Customer Effort Scores (CES): These measure how simple it was for a customer to solve a problem. The simpler it was, the happier the customer.

Customer Service Feedback: It focuses on your customer support and how good or bad it was. You’ll find out whether the customer was happy after the fact, whether they felt it solved the problem satisfactorily. You find this out through CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Surveys) and ratings after an online chat.

Product Feedback: Here, you learn how customers feel about the products you offer, whether they are of good quality, were suitable and valuable. This also tells you whether customers found it difficult to use a product, what they found worked and what didn’t. This is great feedback to assist you in improving your product base.

Why Customer Feedback Matters

Customer feedback provides honest answers to what is working, and what isn’t. If you use it positively, you will be able to offer customers exactly what they want. Also, if you ask customers for feedback and they give it to you, and you use that feedback to improve, they notice this. They know you’re listening to what they have to say, and they trust you to give them what they want.

When you know what a customer wants, and you give it to them, this is half the battle won. You build a loyal customer base that trusts what you offer, because you listen to what they are saying. When they follow up with a positive review, this is excellent publicity for you. It helps new customers decide whether to use your products and/or services or not.

Collecting Customer Feedback

There are various tools you can use that provide customer feedback successfully. Remember, you must ask clear questions to get the right answers. If you want to know about a particular subject, such as how to help your customers help themselves, then ask that particular question and you’ll receive a response that will help you.

Here’s a checklist:

•  Using the Product: Was using the item difficult or confusing? Did it do the job it promised?
•  Fast Customer Support: Was your support team able to respond quickly and assist the customer?
•  What Did the Customer Do? Was It Simple? Were customers able to find the answers through FAQs themselves? Or did they use a chatbot, help centre, or email service? Did they find it easy to receive assistance?
•  Setup Steps: Did the customer find the product simple to use, or did they need to ask for assistance once? Or more often?
•  Was Billing & Pricing Clear? Did the customer understand everything regarding the price? Or did they find this difficult?
•  What Was Missing? What do your customers wish you had offered regarding assistance?

How to Collect Feedback

·       CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) Surveys

A CSAT is a short survey; it asks customers to rate their experience, usually on a scale of one to five. Send this directly after you’ve resolved a request from a customer, or after your customer has bought a product. Find out more about CSATs here.

·       Customer Follow-Ups

Following up after your support team has assisted a customer will give you an idea of how happy the customer was with the assistance provided. So, send a short email to them after they’ve been assisted, or as they purchase an item, and ask if they’re happy. Their answers will give you a good idea of how they feel at that moment.

·       Live Chat Ratings

If you have been chatting to a customer online on live chat, request feedback at the end of your conversation. This will tell you whether the chat helped the customer or not.

·       NPS (Net Promoter Score) Surveys

An NPS asks a single important question: "How likely are you to recommend us?" and requests an answer on a scale of one to 10. Send out an NPS after onboarding a new customer, or when they renew a subscription.

·       Online Reviews

Customers also share feedback on public channels, such as Captera and Google Reviews. They often use the brand’s social media to make comments, too. This is often regarding repetitive complaints, a trust issue, and even praise. Always respond, especially when someone has an issue.

·       Simple Customer Feedback

Use a simple form or a small pop-up to ask your customer about the product they have just bought, right after checkout. Keep this short and simple.

How to Use Customer Feedback

It’s all very well collecting customer feedback; the important thing is to use it.

Step 1: Sort it

Start by categorising the feedback like this:

• Billing issues.
• Feature requests.
• How to’s.
• Pricing concerns.
• Product issues.
• Support Quality.

Step 2: Respond

Respond to every single query. First respond to repetitive issues, then use some type of customer service software to direct the issue to the correct support team member, whether its regarding a product’s features or issues with that product. Ensure your support team is properly trained to assist, and that they know how to respond to all common customer queries. When something is too complicated, they need to be handed over to someone who can assist.

Step 3: End with Feedback

Take the time to show the customer you cared, by telling them what you did with their feedback. Send a short message, such as, “You reached out with a problem. We’ve sorted it.” It will let the customer know you cared enough to solve the problem and are following up to tell them this.