Importance of User Feedback: A Comprehensive Guide

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

The more user feedback you garner, the deeper understanding of your customers you get. In addition, user feedback enables you to 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 you're a conglomerate founded in the 1900s. 

Whether you follow traditional search engine marketing methods like SEO or are just big on modern marketing methods like YouTube and Instagram marketing, doesn't matter as well. Asking for feedback will always remain important and rewarding to your marketing efforts and eventually 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 the decisions of others. 
• Positive user feedback can fuel the brand’s reputation and scale up the business, for instance, ranking you up higher in SERP, due to increased visitor footfall.
• Most potential customers will check out your social media profiles and feedback by 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 strong marketing tool. 

2. Customer Engagement

• Listening to user feedbacks 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 acts as a way to make user’s feel a part of your brand, and this can retain them for a longer time, increasing 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 that can help in improving 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 which will eventually result 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 which also defines loyalty, is an important factor for any business’ success and profits.

• Customer satisfaction is directly related to profits, and therefore it is an extremely important 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 methods 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.
• The best way to know whether your product or service has any drawbacks or loopholes is to study user feedback.
• 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 feedbacks are their views from personal experiences and therefore you can get diverse insights on the kind of improvements that you can do to elevate your product.

6. Increased Customer Retention

• Right from visiting your brand’s website to browsing, purchasing, and after-sales service, if anything goes wrong, then the 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 will be. 
• By getting honest user feedback, you can discover the aspects in which your business is lacking and quickly get over it.
• Thus, user feedback can lead you to achieve your key metrics.

What are the different ways to collect user feedback?

Customer feedback is collected in more than one way. There are various customer feedback software, tools, and techniques to help you.

1. Detailed customer feedback form

• The most common and basic way to collect user feedback is the detailed customer feedback forms sent via email to the customers.
• You need to be very careful while drafting the customer feedback questions for the long form-based surveys, as it needs 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.
• For the creation of long surveys, there are tons of tools available to help you leverage user feedback power.
• The questions should be precise, meeting your goals, open-ended, and should not be repetitive or loading.
• To promote users to participate in long service provide them with hooks like discounts or free gifts. (See example below.)

Example: Shopify

Source: https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/sending-survey-via-email-how-to-get-the-best-results 

2. Short In-app Surveys

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

Example: Headspace App 

Source: https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/sending-survey-via-email-how-to-get-the-best-results 

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 their feeling.
• 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.
• By talking on the phone, you can figure out which features and services users like or dislike in detail. 

4. Transactional Emails, New & Existing Customer Email Surveys

• Whenever a user signs up with your website or app or signs up for any new service, they get a transactional email. 
• Transactional emails if designed with proper aesthetics and planning, can act as an effective way to bag user feedback and that too honest ones.
• Email surveys act as a great way to engage customers, whether they are new or existing, as they can get you answers to the 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 review 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 the customers in case they are facing any issues, but these chats act as an excellent way to get feedback and improve your services.
• When a person is talking live, you can expect a fair amount of feedback after every interaction from them that can turn out to be useful.

Example: Max Bupa Health Insurance

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

Quick & Easy Ways to Get Customer Feedback 

Here are some of the quick and easy ways to gather customer feedback. Anyone can start collecting customer feedback through these ways.

1. Social media activity monitoring 

The most effective and efficient way to communicate with your customers is through social media. 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 follow trends and events that would have a positive effect on your business.

2. Regularly call your customers

The best way to connect and know your customers. At times it can be tricky and 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 to a complaint or query, send out an email survey to know the customer's experience. The purpose of this survey is to examine whether the resolution meets the customer's expectations in real-time. You can keep the survey simple or provide them with rating options for their experience. Even if you receive negative feedback you will have an idea of how to handle the situation in a better manner 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 seeking feedback about a customer’s online shopping experience. Questions like did you face any difficulty? Or did they find the desired product? Also, if they are happy with the options etc., can help. Multiple-choices questions should be asked and kept as brief as possible. It is necessary to have a generic text box for additional remarks in addition to multi-choice questions.

7. Online Polls

Online polls typically take only a few minutes to complete. Thanks to it, the consumers may quickly participate and offer you 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. Keep in mind the reviews should appear genuine, most 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 were to receive 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. Not only positive feedback but negative ones 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 that made them 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 and whether they were satisfied with the alternatives given. In addition, it is advisable to inquire about any problems that may have faced or any improvement they want to incorporate.

Conclusion

User feedback has a significant impact on your business. They help you to improve and understand your customers. We hope that these strategies will provide you with some ideas for obtaining high-quality client feedback on your website.