Collecting, Analyzing, and Reporting on Customer Feedback
It’s time to get into the “who, what, when, where, why?” of a CX strategy. The idea sounds great, but where do you start logistically implementing something like this in your business? Let’s take a look at how others are doing it to find out.
Let’s start with the “when”. Many businesses collect feedback at key points in the buying process and/or promptly after an interaction. While asking for feedback shortly after an appointment or service will naturally yield higher response rates, an additional 20% of respondents incentivize their customers to give them feedback. Based on your business type, it could be beneficial to have a strategy that includes the option of either method.
While you can see here what most people are doing, we have to stress that this is not one-size-fits-all for any best practice. Using a majority as a jumping off point will give you good direction. But it is crucial to constantly monitor and analyze feedback to better understand and pinpoint the crucial points in the lifecycle of your specific customers.
In addition, 45% collect feedback at time points unrelated to their most recent interaction. Only 20% of non-Listen360 customers give incentives to customers to encourage their feedback.
So, who should be responsible for the feedback process and the data it brings forth? The survey says that it will fall mostly to operations and marketing, and that makes sense. Operations should always want to know how to better and more efficiently serve customers, and happy customers are much easier to serve. As for marketing, why wouldn’t they want to know about customers’ perception of the brand? They can dig into what customers like about the business as a whole and amplify positive feedback to grow their brand’s reputation.
Customer service/support and customer experience departments/teams are also involved.
While feedback is monumental, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Our survey shows that most companies are integrating feedback data with other data sets. Customer feedback is strongly correlated with things like operational data and profitability, so it’s a good idea to pair feedback findings with other metrics to set better goals and measure progress.
Integration of operational data is most common.
While the idea of a customer feedback system seems pretty straightforward based on the trends in the data, there are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to logistics. The majority of companies use a 3rd party dashboard for feedback reporting. Consolidating and automating the process lets you focus on what matters most — executing strategies based on the findings.
Secondary reporting methods include company scorecards and dashboards, and verbal presentations.
So how often should you be looking at this data? If you ask us, it should be all the time, and survey says: yes. The data shows that higher performing brands are more likely to analyze feedback on a daily basis or in real time rather than on a weekly basis. Diligence is key to pleasing your customers.
Higher performing brands are more likely to analyze and report in real-time or on a daily basis, rather than on a weekly basis.
Who exactly should have access to the numbers? While it’s a bit more rare to find companies that share all the details with individual frontline employees, the data shows that local management is in the know. When leadership of multiple levels has access to these insights, team-building, training, and inspiration come much more easily.
Fewer companies share customer feedback data and analysis with individual employees.
Our hearts are with every person and business impacted by the harsh realities of COVID-19.