"Treat your customers like they own you because they do."
-Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and media proprietor
The words of Mark Cuban ring especially true for eCommerce business owners.
The simple truth is, that your customers know your product or service more than you. They are the ones who use it time and again.
Your customers know your strong points and what needs improvement.
And you can use customer feedback to your advantage!
You know how important online reviews are for social proof. Your customer feedback is the reflection of your business as a whole.
So, no matter what stage you are at with your brand... NOW is the time to sharpen your customer feedback strategy.
Continue reading as we go through the key points:
- What customer feedback entails, including customer feedback strategy
- The importance of collecting customer feedback
- Different methods of collecting customer feedback
- Efficient tips for your to collect customer feedback
- What you should do after you collect feedback
Before we deep dive, first you need to know...
What Is Customer Feedback?
Customer feedback is the information your customers share about their experience with your business.
It can come from different channels such as email, social media, customer reviews, or even face-to-face interactions with customers.
With that said, you can also gather customer feedback through different methods we'll further discuss on this blog.
This is what a customer feedback strategy entails. With this consumer feedback, you can better understand how to create a better customer experience.
And that's just for starters.
Up next, let's talk about...
Why Is Customer Feedback Important?
1. Improves Different Features Of Your Product Or Service
You know every nook and cranny of your business, don't you?
From top to bottom, you've poured a lot of time into researching and implementing every aspect of your business.
But that could also be the reason why you cannot see its flaws.
So, when you gather customer feedback, you get to see the blind spots of your product or service. Customer insights show what your customers like and dislike.
With their product feedback at hand, you can make improvements to it. Which also boosts overall customer satisfaction levels.
These types of actionable feedback can also...
2. Makes Customers Feel More Important
Besides an excellent customer user experience on your eCommerce site, nothing beats this method of making your customers feel significant...
It's by asking them for feedback... and taking action!
Yes, simply asking for your customers' opinions will make them feel valued.
And implementing customer feedback means you truly value them.
A customer's feedback has the ability to...
3. Acquire New Customers
Nine out of ten consumers read reviews before buying a product.
Yep, website visitors find reviews from other customers in high regard.
When they see how many customers you helped, it can remove any hesitation they have from buying.
Of course, your satisfied customers can give you good feedback that helps with acquiring new ones. But that doesn't mean you should ignore unhappy customers.
That's because...
4. Negative Feedback Gives You A Chance To Improve
Remember: You and your competitors are just two clicks apart.
So if customers leave not-so-positive feedback, you should listen to them!
Not tackling customer complaints will leave them more unsatisfied... leading them to go to your competitors instead.
Here's more...
Instead of leaving anonymous comments on social media, they made an effort to share their customer experience. That means they trust you enough to fix their problem.
Not only do you build your brand through negative feedback, but it's also a chance for you to improve aspects of your eCommerce brand.
By this point, I'm sure you want to know...
What Are The Ways To Collect Customer Feedback?
There are a lot of ways you can gather feedback. Let's go over the popular and efficient methods you can use for your business:
1. Email
There's a reason why email lasted this long.
It's cost-effective and familiar to your customers. It's also a channel that people check regularly.
Users actually expect businesses to send invitations that ask for customer feedback.
They are also acquainted with the process. This makes them feel more confident when opening your request for them to share feedback.
With your email, you can incorporate...
2. Customer Feedback Surveys
Who doesn't love a simple and direct way of getting customer service feedback?
With a customer feedback survey, you can ask specific questions about your eCommerce site. It gives you the chance to get feedback on aspects you want to focus on.
To maximize this method, it's better to launch a short satisfaction survey. People don't really like answering long ones.
Another type of survey to measure customer satisfaction is the satisfaction score survey. It doesn't require a lot of your customers' time and effort.
To ask for customer feedback, you need to consider...
3. Website Feedback
Think about this...
Your eCommerce site is your digital real estate. Every space of it is an opportunity to lift customer happiness.
Here are ways you can use for collecting feedback through your website:
- A dedicated page for feedback. This can also act as the page for your survey link on emails.
- Feedback tab. Your customers can answer a couple of questions without interrupting their buying process.
- Feedback widget. It's not uncommon for websites to have bugs. Having a platform for an immediate report of this can be helpful.
These methods are for getting qualitative feedback. For the net promoter score, it's best to use...
4. SMS
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is important quantitative feedback that shows customer satisfaction.
You can tabulate your NPS by asking, "How likely are you to recommend this product to your friends and family?"
Your final score would be the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors.
And the most effective way of getting answers to your questions? SMS.
You won't get overwhelmed with a huge amount of feedback. It's also a great way of getting feedback for a single purchase.
Customers' feedback is on...
5. Social Media
Customers are more honest about their product feedback on social media.
And even if most of the time the feedback are not constructive, you can still get valuable feedback from social media comments. Or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
You can look for posts that your customers tagged you on. Hashtags are also helpful when searching for any customer issues.
Of course, you can ask your followers to answer short surveys through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. You can even post a QR code (using a custom QR code generator) on social media for collecting feedback.
Collecting methods are not limited to asking customers. It's best to also include...
6. Heatmaps
Heatmaps show you how visitors go around your website.
It can show you which part of your site users mostly visit, where they click, and which ones they avoid.
With these data, you can improve your visitors' navigation through your website.
Analyze customer satisfaction with...
7. Interviews
Do you want an in-depth look into your customers' experience?
One-on-one interviews can give you a better insight into your customer journey.
Yes, interviews are labor-intensive. But hearing your customers' tone gives you a better sense of what they think about your brand.
So again, analyzing customer feedback starts with the methods we discussed.
Let's get down to...
What Are The Best Practices To Gather Customer Feedback For Your Business?
To get positive feedback, you need to...
✅ Define Your Goals
Here is what happens when you blindly jump into gathering feedback with no clear goals...
You'll get lost!
Setting your tools and then jumping headfirst will only get you unusable data in the end.
So, you should name your goals first. Consider your audience and how the feedback you collect can help them better.
For instance, you want to know what your competitor's edge is. Monitoring your social media can answer some of your questions about your main goal.
To get more feedback, ensure that you...
✅ Choose The Right Method And Time
As you know, defining your goal makes it easier for you to choose effective methods.
Of course, you also need to think of your resources. You can consider your sales team and tools that can help you to collect feedback.
Customer service interaction also needs to happen at the right time.
For example, you can get better customer satisfaction when you...
- Ask visitors why they abandon their carts. You can use a popup to ask users why they did not check out. By taking action on their feedback, you can decrease the cart abandonment rate.
- Ask after a purchase. Asking for customer feedback right after purchasing can boost customer loyalty. They feel included when they share their opinion with a brand they like.
- Get customer feedback after a live chat session. After helping a customer, you can get raw feedback right at the live chat. Use icons or emojis as options for their feedback.
To get a better sense of customer satisfaction, you have to...
✅ Ask More Than Once
Yes, there is a high chance that your customers will toss your feedback request into their spam folder. Or maybe they won't get to see it at all.
So, you can ask for customer feedback more than once.
Use an automated email system. It can schedule your request for you.
Increase customer loyalty when you...
✅ Ask Different Kinds Of Customers
You might think of only asking happy customers for survey responses. After all, they have nothing
but stellar praise for your brand.
Of course, most unhappy customers may have uncomplimentary words they can say about you.
But only asking loyal customers can skew your customer feedback data.
And you won't know any issue your site might have if all your customer feedback comes from positive reviews. Doing so will let the issue fester and can be detrimental.
✅ Make Analyzing Customer Feedback A Habit
Gathering one open-ended customer feedback is all well and good.
But to continually gather and analyze customer feedback? It can immensely help your customer satisfaction.
In fact, you might even observe trends in your surveys. This way, you can utilize customer feedback to the fullest.
Each customer interaction you have is a chance for you to...
✅ Experiment And Adapt
Embrace experimenting!
It can help you research a facet of issues, as well as achieve better results on your customer feedback.
For instance, you can change up your product survey questions to answer other ecommerce survey questions you have. Or you can use different keywords when searching social media platforms.
Once you gather and categorize customer feedback, you have to ask yourself...
What Should You Do After Gathering Customer Feedback?
💡Improve Your Product Or Services
Follow your customers' advice.
Doing so will let your customers know that you are open to their opinion. That can set you apart from your competitors.
Moreover, if you're having a hard time brainstorming new products to sell or services to offer... Your customers' feedback can enlighten you in more ways than one.
Another way you can maximize feedback is when you...
💡Improve Your Conversion Funnel
Once you have your data through heatmaps, you can optimize your website. It tells you which part of your eCommerce site needs fixing.
You can lower bounce rates when you see where your customers drop off.
Also, you can create a better user experience for visitors. This will prevent further leakage in your conversion funnel.
The feedback can also show you which parts are the highest converting. That way, you can put more of your focus into them.
With the feedback at hand, it gives you the ability to...
💡Turn Customers Into Brand Advocates
Gathering feedback can identify which customers are happiest with your business.
So, you can nurture them into becoming advocates for your brand. They can recommend your product or service to their friends and family.
A feedback follow-up like a simple thank you note can go a long way.
Another thing that you can do is to...
💡Amplify Your Marketing Efforts
Your customers can rave about your product in their feedback. You can use what they say they like about your product or service and run with it.
Choose the features of your brand that they engage with the most.
When you find it, there are different ways you can include it in your marketing campaign efforts, such as:
- Offer discounts and codes that they like.
- Categorize customer feedback, then adapt the ads to target each customer category.
- Customize the type of marketing they want to see from you, like video marketing.
- Create more helpful content.
Wrapping up...
Be A Customer-Centric eCommerce Business!
With customer feedback, you can improve customer service... and be a better brand overall.
Once you choose the right method of collecting for your business, continue experimenting to perfect your customer feedback strategy.
And here's the best part...
The Debutify Review App is coming! So keep on the lookout because it's going to be epic!
While you're waiting, you can still collect positive feedback with an awesome eCommerce site.
With Debutify as your reliable Shopify theme, you'll have a beautiful and super-fast site.
Here's more... It's also your Profit Optimization Partner.
With over 50 Add-Ons, you can increase conversions, AOV, and boost profits.
Create A Wonderful Customer Experience With Debutify For Free!
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