7 Ways to Improve Customer Feedback

Customer feedback examples from real customers is a big reason online reviews are such an essential part of the buying process for most people. Nearly 60 percent of consumers look at online reviews at least once a week and 93 percent say that online reviews have an impact on their purchase decisions. With the power of online reviews growing each year, local businesses are placing more emphasis on building their online reputation. But how do you get customer feedback that’s valuable to both your business and customers? To help you out, we’ve outlined seven quality customer feedback examples.

1. Ask for Specific Customer Feedback

One of the biggest problems that businesses run into when collecting reviews is customers not taking the time to leave in-depth feedback. While your star rating and the total number of reviews are important in attracting the attention of online searchers, the content of your reviews is what has the most power to influence purchase decisions.

To solve this problem, we recommend asking customers to give you feedback on a specific aspect of your business when you ask for a review. If you’re a car dealership, you might ask about the cleanliness of the showroom or the length of the car-buying process. If you’re a home services business, you might ask about the friendliness or knowledge of your staff.

Oftentimes, the reason why your customers leave shorter feedback is that they don’t know what to write about. By asking for specific feedback, you will help your customer focus their thoughts and the result will likely be a review that’s more valuable to your business and to future customers.

2. Make Leaving Customer Feedback Easy

Today’s consumer is going to take the path of least resistance. If you make it hard for them to review your business, the odds are that you won’t get as many reviews as you’d like. In the past, the process for inviting your customers to leave a review was cumbersome and time-consuming. Many times it required your customers to create an account just to leave a review.

Even if your customers love you, they probably aren’t going to take the time to do that. So what you need to do is use technology to your advantage. Solutions like the one offered by Podium can point your customers directly to review sites they already use and are familiar with like Google or Facebook. Streamlining the process and focusing on sites like these will significantly increase your invite conversion rate.

Bad customer feedback examples

• Creating microsites to collect reviews

Good customer feedback examples

• Gathering reviews on sites that your customers already use like Google and Facebook

3. Gather Customer Feedback From Everyone

It might seem like a good idea to only ask your happiest customers to review your business. This will ensure that you are always putting your best foot forward with potential customers, but it also could create a false narrative about your business. If your actual customer experience doesn’t line up with customer expectations created by reviews, you could have a lot of unhappy customers on your hands.

What we recommend is asking all of your customers to leave you feedback. This is the best way to ensure that your online presence is representative of actual experiences. Don’t be afraid of getting a negative review every now and then. No business is perfect and having bad reviews mixed in with your good reviews will give your online presence authenticity.

Bad customer feedback examples

• Gaming the system by only asking happy customers for reviews

Good customer feedback examples

• Seeking feedback from all customers regardless of their experience

4. Have Multiple Ways to Collect Customer Feedback

Online reviews are just one source of customer feedback, but there are a number of different avenues for gathering feedback, including:

Text message conversations: Sometimes surveys take too long for customers to complete. That’s why we recommend collecting feedback through methods that are less intrusive and more conversational. Using text messaging to ask customers questions about your business is more casual than a formal survey, so you should see response rates increase. This is especially true if the interaction is personalized.

Monitoring social media: Social media is another area where you can find unsolicited feedback about your business. Make sure you have tools in place to track the sentiment of conversations happening about your business online. This will help you quickly identify trends in real time that will help improve your customer experience.

Aggregate customer interaction data: Customer interaction data from your business text messaging will provide you with a wealth of knowledge about your customers and experience. Managing and mining that data will help you quickly identify what’s working and what you can do better.

Bad customer feedback examples

• Having only one source of customer feedback

Good customer feedback examples

• Taking a holistic approach to collecting customer feedback

5. Monitor Your Competitors’ Customer Feedback

Another way to improve your feedback is by looking at what consumers are saying about your competitors. This will help you highlight areas where you might have an advantage that you can exploit, while also helping you identify areas you can improve. When conducting a competitive analysis, it’s important to know not only which businesses you want to benchmark yourself against, but also the criteria of what you want to track.

6. Personalize Customer Feedback Requests

If you want a surefire way to increase the conversion rates on your online review invitations, try and make them as personal as possible. It might seem easier to send review invitations out in bulk at the end of the day or at the end of the week, but these types of messages often come off as robotic and impersonal.

Best practices would be to send the invitation as close to the transaction as possible, so the experience is top of mind. Another pro tip is to have one of your employees set the expectation for the review invite and then have the invitation come from that individual.

Bad customer feedback examples

• Sending out bulk online review invitations

Good customer feedback examples

• Making the online review invitation personal and having it come from someone the customer interacted with

7. Respond to Customer Feedback Whenever Appropriate

Finally, it’s important for you to respond to your feedback. Now, you don’t necessarily have to respond to every online review, tweet, or Facebook comment, but you should make an effort to respond regularly. Responding to reviews shows your customers and potential customers that you are listening and that you care about what they have to say. Your responses don’t have to be super in-depth. Usually, a simple thank you is enough. If you create customer surveys, making sure you follow up with everyone afterwards adds a great and personal touch as well.

However, when you get a negative review, you will need to put a little more effort in. You will need to respond quickly with an apology as well as offer a proactive solution to make things right for the customer. Even if you aren’t able to make that customer happy, future customers will see that you made an effort to fix the problem.

Bad customer feedback examples

• Ignoring feedback from your customers

Good customer feedback examples

• Engaging with your customers regularly on all the platforms you collect feedback