3 Great Strategies for Gathering Real-Time Customer Feedback
Your customers are sharing their feedback with friends and family after every interaction with your company. But are you listening?
If you are using customer feedback surveys to keep tabs on your customers’ experiences, you’re off to a good start – but there is more you could be doing. Did you know that only 4% of dissatisfied customers share their experience with the company?
Asking is great. Listening is better.
1. Talk to Your Sales Reps
Your sales team is the front line of your operation. When it comes to customers, your sales team isn’t solely the voice of the company, but they are an invaluable way of listening.
Survey your sales reps regularly to hear what customers are telling them. The insight they receive from the customers they talk to every day can be just as valuable as the insight you get from customers directly. And it can also let you hear the voice of any customers that don’t share their feedback through other channels.
Getting an understanding of sales reps’ experiences can help you:
_ Pinpoint customer pain points
_ Get a different perspective on a common customer issue
2. Use Social Media
Social media is often the first place consumers turn to when they have had a powerful experience with a company – for better or for worse. It’s where you’ll find both raving fans and furiously disappointed customers.
By paying attention to what is being said about your company on social media, you can get unsolicited, honest, real-time feedback. You can also get to know your customers in a more candid way than with a formal survey.
In addition to keeping tabs on your customers’ experiences, you can also use social media to:
_ Launch surveys
_ Deliver promotional campaigns to specific influencers
_ Develop win-back campaigns
3. Offer Surveys at Every Touchpoint
Asking a customer to fill out a survey after they have purchased from you is a smart move – but there are many other important touchpoints to consider. And the more touch points you can get insight on, the more accurate the context of your customer feedback will be.
Consider deploying customer feedback surveys at these points in the customer’s journey:
_ At regular intervals after the initial purchase (after all, if something is going to go wrong, it may not happen immediately after the customer has bought from you)
_ After an interaction with customer service
_ After an interaction with the technical support department
_ After a customer has returned a product
_ When a customer puts a product in an online shopping cart, but doesn’t complete the purchase
_ When a customer speaks with a sales rep, but does not complete the purchase
Read more about Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
