Importance of User Feedback: A Comprehensive Guide

Every company's ultimate goal is to provide its customers with the best products and services and excellent customer support. However, this is only possible when you know what users genuinely think about what you offer and the best way to do that is through user feedback. 

The more user feedback you garner, the more profound understanding of your customers you get. In addition, user feedback lets you determine where you can improve your production services and where you stand compared to your competitors.

Asking for feedback is not beneficial only for a specific size and type of business. It also doesn't matter if you just started your startup or are a conglomerate founded in the 1900s. 

It doesn't matter whether you follow traditional search engine marketing methods like SEO or are big on modern marketing methods like YouTube and Instagram. Asking for feedback will always remain important and rewarding to your marketing efforts and, eventually, your overall business.

Why is user feedback important for your business? 

The benefits of gathering, analyzing and using customer feedback are multifold. Here, we have discussed them in detail:

1. Brand Advocacy

• Customer feedback highly influences others' decisions. 
• Positive user feedback can fuel the brand’s reputation and scale up the business, for instance, ranking you higher in SERP due to increased visitor footfall.
• Most potential customers will check out your social media profiles and feedback from your other customers to enable them to build your brand’s image in their minds.
• Brand awareness is essential and is created by positive reviews. Positive reviews are a vital marketing tool. 

2. Customer Engagement

• Listening to user feedback can make them feel engaged with your brand.
• Asking customer feedback questions shows your interest in the customer’s views, thereby building better customer relationships. 
• User feedback can help make users feel a part of your brand, which can retain them for a longer time and increase their customer lifetime value (CLV).

3. Predicting Customer Behavior

• Customer feedback analysis is the best way to predict customer behavior.
• By studying the user feedback thoroughly, a view of the customer’s vision can be developed, which can help improve customer satisfaction by offering proactive customer service. 
• The more you know your customer, the easier it will be to offer hyper-personalized customer experience products and services, eventually resulting in massive sales. 

4. Tangibly Measuring a Sentiment/Customer Feedback Management

• If customer feedback management is your goal, then you should be able to measure customer satisfaction.

• Customer satisfaction defines loyalty and is essential for any business’s success and profits.

• Customer satisfaction is directly related to profits, and therefore, it is a fundamental metric to measure. 

• You can discover customer satisfaction by asking for their opinions and analyzing them. User feedback and rating can clearly show their level of satisfaction. 

• The best method to measure customer satisfaction is through NPS and CSAT scores. 

5. Improving Products and Services 

• Data collected from product feedback forms and surveys help you with in-depth custom feedback analysis.
• Studying user feedback is the best way to determine whether your product or service has any drawbacks or loopholes.
• You may be unaware of customer needs before introducing a product or service, so you can ask the user for product feedback once you launch the product and improve accordingly.
• Most user feedback is based on personal experiences, and therefore, you can get diverse insights on what improvements you can make to elevate your product.

6. Increased Customer Retention

• If anything goes wrong when visiting your brand’s website, including browsing, purchasing, and receiving after-sales service, user feedback will reflect it in the form of a negative experience review.
• By thoroughly analyzing these negative experience reviews, you can know what went wrong and improve the next time.

7. Helps You Meet Key Metrics

• Customer feedback analysis scores like the Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score and Customer Satisfaction Score are highly profitable to measure. The better this metric the better the other metrics like sales and ROI. 
• By getting honest user feedback, you can discover the lacking aspects of your business and quickly get over it.
• Thus, user feedback can help you achieve your key metrics.

What are the different ways to collect user feedback?

Customer feedback is collected in more than one way. Various customer feedback software, tools, and techniques help you.

1. Detailed customer feedback form

• The most common and basic way to collect user feedback is by sending detailed customer feedback forms via email to the customers.
• It would be best if you were very careful while drafting the customer feedback questions for the long-form-based surveys, as they need to be crisp and relevant.
• Adding too many questions may not provide the expected and honest user feedback, or the user can even back out.
• Many tools are available to help you create long surveys and leverage user feedback.
• The questions should be precise, meet your goals, be open-ended, and not be repetitive or loading.
• Provide users with hooks like discounts or free gifts to encourage them to participate in long service. (See the example below.)

2. Short In-app Surveys

• A customer feedback software can help you create these in-app surveys.
• While using your business’ app, the user may not like many things or want something more convenient or better.
• You can get real-time reviews by adding short in-app surveys for user feedback, with no more than two to three questions relevant to each screen or feature.
• Choose these short surveys when you want to take frequent feedback from customers.

3. Phone Calls

• Phone calls are one of the best ways to get the most honest user feedback, as you can sense the tone and judge the person's feelings.
• You can get data from forms and surveys, but talking on a phone call can give a personalized review of your product or service from the user.
• You can figure out which features and services users like or dislike in detail by phone. 

4. Transactional Emails, New & Existing Customer Email Surveys

• Whenever a user signs up with your website or app or for a new service, they receive a transactional email. 
• Transactional emails, if designed with proper aesthetics and planning, can be an effective way to gather user feedback and that too honest feedback.
• Email surveys are a great way to engage customers, whether new or existing, as they can provide answers to questions that can improve your product/service.
• These surveys can be personalized for different users to get user feedback for various scenarios.

5. Live Chat Support

• Live chat is one of the most potent customer feedback tools.
• Live chat can allow you to take user feedback while they are visiting your website for instant reviews on things they dislike or are stuck on
• You engage users in conversation and get honest feedback about their experience or whatever they are sharing willingly.
• The main goal of live chat support is to help customers if they are facing any issues, but these chats are also an excellent way to get feedback and improve your services.
• When a person is talking live, you can expect helpful feedback after every interaction.

Example: Max Bupa Health Insurance

Overall, the goal is to have a solid customer feedback system across the customer journey and ensure that this system uses effective tools and technologies to collect precise customer feedback.

Quick & Easy Ways to Get Customer Feedback 

Here are some quick and easy ways to gather customer feedback. Anyone can start using these methods.

1. Social media activity monitoring 

Social media is the most effective and efficient way to communicate with customers. People these days are all over social media platforms. Without any costs, you can know their views and act on them. Monitoring your social media closely is an excellent approach to following trends and events that positively affect your business.

2. Regularly call your customers

The best way to connect and know your customers. Sometimes, it can be tricky, and you would also have to hear the negative feedback, but empathize and try to provide your customers with the right solution. The benefit of this approach is that you obtain direct input from the consumer.

3. Provide feedback forms

Providing feedback forms is the easiest way to receive customer feedback. Keep the forms quick so that they are not time-consuming and customers are interested in giving feedback. This way, you can gather information easily and concentrate on product development. 

4. Customer feedback analysis for service performance 

Whenever you provide customer service for a complaint or query, send an email survey to learn about the customer's experience. This survey examines whether the resolution meets the customer's expectations in real-time. You can keep the study simple or provide them with rating options for their experience. Even if you receive negative feedback, you will know how to handle the situation better the next time.

5. Use NPS to evaluate customer loyalty

Net Promoter Score is one of the best ways to obtain user feedback. Here's a quick look at how it works: NPS utilizes a scale of 1-10 to see if your customers would advise other customers. 0-6 is considered a negative ranking, 7-8 are neutral, and 9-10 symbolize positive experiences and are called promoters.

6. Create a feedback area on the order confirmation page.

This is an ideal window for seeking feedback about a customer’s online shopping experience. Questions like, "Did you face any difficulty?" "Did they find the desired product?" "Are they happy with the options?" etc. can help. Multiple-choice questions should be asked and kept as brief as possible. A generic text box for additional remarks is necessary in addition to multi-choice questions.

7. Online Polls

Online polls typically take only a few minutes to complete. This allows consumers to quickly participate and offer important information. 

8. Display any Positive Customer Feedback

Positive customer feedback may acquire the confidence of other consumers and give a positive impression. This also makes consumer feedback worth sharing and encourages other consumers to offer their thoughts. Remember that the reviews should appear genuine, probably with a customer’s name. 

9. Offer a gift or prize in return for feedback.

Customers would be interested in providing feedback if they received something for it. Vouchers, samples, discount coupons, and other items can be used as gifts or rewards. Ensure this doesn't look like you're luring for positive comments.

10. Use negative feedback to showcase professionalism.

You read it right. Use negative feedback. Positive and negative feedback can also be used as an advantage. Every company will have angry consumers, but that doesn't mean you can't resolve the issue. Show your problem-solving abilities and handle the bad review by apologizing and responding respectfully. Do not leave negative feedback unattended.

11. Create a feedback area for cart abandonment.

You can establish the Feedback Area if a consumer leaves a cart and does not check out. The customer can be asked why the order has not been carried out. Alternatively, you might provide them with a simple checkbox with broad alternatives of reasons why they did not place the order.

12. Ask for feedback at the point of service.

Point of service can be an apt time to ask for feedback. For example, ask whether they had any trouble browsing the site, finding the goods they wanted or being satisfied with the alternatives given. In addition, it is advisable to inquire about any problems they may have faced or any improvement they want to incorporate.

Conclusion

User feedback has a significant impact on your business. It helps you improve and understand your customers. We hope these strategies will give you some ideas for obtaining high-quality client feedback on your website.

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