Customer feedback is invaluable for any business looking to improve its product/services and overall customer experience.

Listening to your customers' opinions, complaints, and suggestions will help you gain insight into what is working well and what needs improvement. This feedback comes in many forms, such as online reviews, surveys, or direct customer communication.

In this article, we will explore different methods for collecting customer feedback and how to effectively use it to make meaningful improvements to the customer experience, which will ultimately drive business success.

Collect Feedback

Collecting feedback is the first and most crucial step in using customer feedback to whatever end there exists.

You must seek feedback wherever it may be. Ask for feedback through surveys, social media, or email, and provide a simple and easy-to-use feedback system to encourage participation.

Additionally, monitoring online reviews and comments on websites, like google reviews, and social media platforms also helps to identify feedback. Moreover, providing an open feedback channel, such as a suggestion box or a dedicated feedback page on your website, encourages customers to leave feedback.

Some of the commonly used methods to collect feedback are:

1. Surveys: You can use online survey tools to create and distribute surveys to your customers via email, social media, or SMS.
2. Customer service interactions: Encourage your team to ask for feedback during customer interactions, usually via email or phone call follow-ups or by asking customers to complete a brief survey after an interaction.
3. Social media: Monitor social media channels for customer feedback and comments. Try to respond promptly to their comments and address their concerns.
4. Website reviews: Encourage customers to leave reviews on your website or third-party sites.
5. Focus groups: Organize focus groups to gather customer feedback in person or via video conference.
6. Feedback forms: Have feedback forms available on your website, in-store, or on products, encouraging customers to provide feedback on their experience.

Making the feedback process as smooth as possible is important as it wouldn’t discourage customers from providing it. In addition, feedback should be collected through multiple channels to get a broad perspective. Also, value your customers' time and only ask for the necessary information.

After collecting feedback, it's important to categorize and organize it effectively.

Categorize Feedback

Reading and reviewing all feedback helps to identify themes and common issues, which you can then organize by creating categories and tags based on the issue or topic.

Prioritizing feedback based on frequency and severity can help you focus on the most important issues.

The following are some steps to categorize feedback efficiently:

1. Review: Read the feedback to understand what customers say.
2. Identify themes: Common themes or topics that customers are mentioning. This will help in categorizing feedback into segments that make sense to the customers, such as customer service, product quality, pricing, or website navigation.
3. Create categories: based on the themes you identified. For example, if customers mention product quality issues, it would be effective to create a category called "Product Quality Issues." Which will apply to all the issues you identify.
4. Tag feedback: Tag each feedback with the appropriate category to make it easier to find and analyze later. Keywords, tags, or labels are all common tools to use for tagging purposes.
5. Prioritize feedback: based on the frequency of the comments, the severity of the issue, or the potential impact on the business.

It's important to keep an open mind and look for insights that may not be immediately apparent. This is why analysis always follows collection and categorization.

Analyze Feedback

By analyzing feedback, you can identify patterns and root causes of common issues and use data to find the underlying causes.

Using metrics to quantify feedback can also help you prioritize and assess the impact of each concern. This can help you set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals to address the most important issues.

Moreover, looking for insights that may not be apparent a first glance can also help you identify areas for innovation or improvement that may not be immediately obvious.

Here are some tips on how to analyze feedback effectively:

1. Look for patterns: Identify common issues or themes that customers mention. This could include customer service, product quality, pricing, or website navigation issues.
2. Group feedback: Group similar feedback together to identify the root cause of the issue. For example, if customers mention issues with the slow website speed, group those comments together to understand the specific issue.
3. Use metrics: Use metrics to quantify the feedback. For example, calculate the percentage of customers who mentioned a specific issue or the average product or service rating. These metrics are integrated within any omnichannel contact center solution and are easy to track and analyze through their intuitive interface.
4. Prioritize feedback: based on the frequency of the comments, the severity of the issue, and the potential impact on the business.
5. Look for insights: Look for insights that may not be immediately apparent. For example, if customers mention product quality issues, is there a specific product or product line causing the problem?
6. Net Promoter Score (NPS): The Net Promoter Score is an inbound Key Performance Indicator that assesses your customer happiness. It measures the possibility of your client referring you to someone based on a simple question: “How likely are you to suggest our product/service on a scale of 1 to 10?” NPS is the average number of customers who will say that they will recommend the product or service versus those who will do just the opposite.
7. Sentiment analysis: A technique mainly used to analyze customer feedback and identify it with either a positive or negative sentiment. You can use a Lexalytics sentiment analysis tool to determine whether the feedback is positive, negative, or neutral.

This can help you make data-driven decisions and prioritize actions to improve the customer experience, which takes us to the next step.

Take Action

Developing an action plan to address issues, assigning responsibilities, and establishing timelines for implementing changes can help ensure the changes are effective.

Monitoring progress and making adjustments as needed is also important to ensure the changes have the desired impact. By taking action based on customer feedback, you can improve your products, services, and customer experience and build customer loyalty.

Remember that it is important to proactively address issues and make changes to meet your customer’s needs and preferences and continuously evaluate and improve your business based on their feedback.

One company that comes to mind when talking about taking action is Hootsuite. As a social media management platform, they assumed their visitors already knew their services, so they loaded their landing page with high-level features.

Shortly after, they didn’t get the results they hoped for. That’s when they called Qualaroo, a customer feedback tool, to help them to deploy on-site surveys to test their initial hypothesis.

And long story short, after asking their visitors, “Do you think there is enough information on the page to make a decision?” Hootsuite realized that 65% of their visitors needed more information on their products. And through A/B testing, they boosted their conversion rates by 16%.

Taking action based on customer feedback can help your business stay competitive in the marketplace and drive growth.

Here are some steps to take action effectively:

1. Set priorities: Determine which issues are the most important to address first based on their impact on the business and the frequency of customer feedback.
2. Develop an action plan: This could involve updating your products or services, improving customer service, or changing your policies and procedures.
3. Assign responsibilities: Assign responsibilities for implementing the action plan to specific individuals or teams.
4. Establish timelines for implementing the action plan and set deadlines for completing each task.
5. Monitor progress: Monitor progress regularly to ensure that the action plan is implemented effectively and has the desired impact.
6. Communicate changes: Communicate any changes you make to your customers. This can help show them that their feedback is important and that you are committed to improving their experience.

It's important to track the impact of the changes you make and to continue monitoring feedback to identify any new issues. This can help you make ongoing improvements and stay competitive in the marketplace.

The last action you will take involves communicating the changes to your customers, which is our next section.

Communicate Changes

Sharing your changes in response to customer feedback can help build customer loyalty and demonstrate that you value their opinions.

Change can be communicated through various channels, such as email newsletters, social media posts, or blog updates. Therefore, it’s important to use clear, concise, and jargon-free language to ensure your customers understand the changes and how they will benefit from them.

These are some tactics to communicate changes to your customers effectively:

1. Be transparent: Be transparent about your changes and why. This builds trust and shows that you value your customers' feedback.
2. Use clear language: Use clear, jargon-free language to explain the changes. Avoid technical terms or industry jargon that customers may not understand.
3. Highlight the benefits: Highlight the benefits of the changes for your customers. This can help show them that the changes are made for them and designed to improve their experience.
4. Provide clear instructions: Provide clear instructions on how to use any new features or services to help avoid confusion and frustration.
5. Listen to feedback: Encourage customers to provide feedback on the changes. This helps identify any issues that need to be addressed and show customers that you are committed to ongoing improvement.
6. Use multiple channels: Use multiple channels to communicate the changes, including email, social media, and your website. This ensures that your message reaches a broad audience.

By effectively communicating changes to your customers, you can build trust and loyalty and create a positive customer experience.

It is also crucial to monitor feedback and make adjustments as needed to ensure the changes have the desired impact.

Make the most of Customer Feedback with NobelBiz (News - Alert).

NobelBiz is an all-in-one Omnichannel Cloud Solution for Contact Centers. It will provide you with everything you’ll need to cater the best experience your customers could ask for, and paired with our Voice Carrier, your contact center performance will soar. As a result, you are meeting the needs of any contact center, regardless of size, industry, or activity (Inbound, Outbound, or Mixed).  

Without any need to worry about compliance, we got you covered, ensuring the best conditions to exceed your customers’ expectations.

NobelBiz OMNI+ integrates all communication channels (phone, social media, webchat, and SMS) into a unified platform. In addition, they offer remarkable features with an easy-to-use interface that helps agents deliver seamless customer interactions.

Additionally, with our integrated Reporting and Analytics feature, you can make data-driven decisions while referring to customer data and feedback to better assist you in fulfilling your client’s needs.

With NobelBiz OMNI+, you will eclipse your competition while exceeding your customer’s experience. And you will do it knowing that you are fully compliant with laws and regulations, thanks to our Safe Select—the safest contact center Ecosystem.