Want Better Customer Insight? Avoid These 7 Customer Feedback Mistakes

Gathering customer feedback is a powerful way to build relationships. It can also give your customers a much-needed outlet for their comments, and provide a channel to help you defuse negative reviews and social media comments before they get posted publicly.

But many companies rush through the feedback process and don’t take the customer into account when creating these vital surveys. 

Customer feedback surveys are a great opportunity to create happy customers, meaning it is vitally important to get surveys out quickly and at the right touchpoints. However, don’t make these 7 common feedback mistakes in the process.

Mistake #1: Creating a Bad User Experience

The impact of the user experience, for better or worse, is the difference between customers completing a survey or abandoning it. It is that important.

Think of your customer feedback survey as a stand-in for you, the company. You’re not there with the customer, but the survey should still communicate care, respect and your brand values.

_    Keep the survey simple and easy to navigate.

_    Don’t waste your customers’ time. Only include questions that actually serve the purpose of your survey.

_    Order your questions wisely. Start off with easy warm-up questions and then move into more complex, time-consuming questions. Finish the survey with demographic questions and space for additional comments.

Don’t forget the power of branding in the user experience. Ensure you brand your survey with your corporate design colors and logo to help the customer make an emotional connection to you.

Mistake #2: Ignoring Design

In Mistake #1, we mentioned keeping the survey simple. Bear in mind that being straightforward does not imply being generic and boring.

Give your customer feedback surveys a professional touch with thoughtful design.

_    Give your survey a title

_    Use your brand colors

_    Use white space strategically to give customers’ eyes a place to rest

_    Avoid the clutter of messy fonts and an overabundance of images – in fact, avoid irrelevant images altogether

If your survey looks like a five year-old put it together, you’ll make a bad impression from the start. Take the time to make the survey look professional if you want meaningful results.

Mistake #3: Asking Customers to Do Too Much Work

Open-ended questions can lead to valuable customer feedback and insight – but use them wisely, because they can be exhausting for customers to complete.

_    Don’t begin with open-ended questions, save them until later in the survey.

_    Keep the number of such questions to a minimum – use them only when they’re absolutely necessary.

Make the survey as easy to fill out as you can, while still keeping the questions focused on the purpose of your survey. It’s a balancing act, but when done successfully, you’ll be rewarded with invaluable customer insights.

Mistake #4: Not Taking the Time to Proofread

Grammatical errors, punctuation problems, misspellings – allof these issues will hurt your credibility as a company. Don’t let them slipinto your customer surveys.

Take the time to proofread your survey before you send it tocustomers. Or better yet, have someoneelse proofread before launch. It’s all too easy to miss mistakes in yourown writing.

Mistake #5: Not Taking Action

No one likes having their time wasted. Your customers are noexception.

When your customers take the time to leave you feedback, andyou don’t do anything with it to improve the customer experience, it leavesthem feeling that you don’t value their opinions, which can really hurt yourrelationship.

Think of your customer feedback data as an opportunity toimprove. Listen to what your customershave to say about:

_    Their experience with your company

_    Their experience with specific parts of your company

_    Your products and services

_    Their ideas about new products and services

Your customers want to know that you’re listening. Use their feedback to make improvements and they will become advocates for your business in no time.

Mistake #6: Neglecting to Say “Thank You”

Offering a coupon or free gift to your customers after they fill out a survey can be a nice touch. But a simple thank you goes a long way, too.

Always display a thank you page after your customer has completed the feedback survey. Not only does this communicate your appreciation, but it also graciously tells the customer that they have come to the end of the survey and ends their experience on a positive note.

Mistake #7: Keeping the Loop Open

Closing the loop is an easy way to continue the conversation with your customers while ensuring that they feel you are listening.

Never let customer feedback go unanswered. Whether it is positive or negative, follow up with a personalized response.

_    Address their concerns

_    Fix any outstanding problems

_    Offer an incentive to come back after a poor experience

_    Thank them personally for a compliment or suggestion

Closing the loop with customer feedback does require commitment. Appoint a team member to spearhead the effort, and use technology to systematize the process.

What’s Your Score?

Given the speed of business today, it is easy to make at least some of these common feedback mistakes. Improve your processes and ensure your surveys deliver real results, talk to Questback – our solution makes collecting feedback painless and help you achieve better customer insights.