Listening to customer feedback, both positive and negative, is how companies collect the insights they need to make meaningful changes to business operations. By understanding the voice of the customer, the kind of journeys clients take when making transactions, and their expectations, business leaders can differentiate their company from the competition.
Currently, around 82% of survey respondents say they expect retailers and business leaders to accommodate their preferences and adhere to their expectations. However, in order to compete in today’s marketplace, companies first need to be able to listen to their clients across multiple channels and interactions. That’s where customer feedback tools come in.
Designed to work alongside other CX solutions like Customer Relationship Management tools and CCaaS software, customer feedback tools make it easier to collect useful information about the customer journey and experience. Here’s how businesses can start comparing some of the options available on the market today.
Step 1: Examine Your CX Landscape
The first step in choosing the right customer feedback tool or system for any business, is evaluating the existing CX environment. Customers have a multitude of ways to leave feedback and share their thoughts with companies in today’s digital landscape. This means organisations need to think carefully about where they’re going to interact with clients and request their insights.
First, business leaders need to think about how they can ask for feedback across the channels offered by their contact centre. Requesting feedback after a customer call, message-based chat session, or video conferencing makes it easier to gather direct information about how a client felt about the discussion “in the moment”. However, it’s also worth thinking about the rest of the customer journey, and how the client interacts with the business.
Alongside contact centre focused tools, some companies may also need to invest in “social listening” solutions, capable of tracking brand mentions across various online platforms. This will be particularly important for businesses with a strong online presence.
Step 2: Look for Integrations
Customer feedback is just one of the many tools companies can use to better understand their target audience. However, it works best when its aligned with other information and context. Being able to associate different kinds of feedback with different user groups and products makes it easier for business leaders to determine what changes to make to the CX strategy.
A customer feedback tool capable of integrating with existing tools and services used by the company can often provide a more comprehensive level of visibility and understanding. For instance, many feedback solutions on the market today can integrate directly with contact centre software, so companies can automatically collect feedback with an IVR at the end of a call or chat message.
There are also tools which work seamlessly with customer relationship management software, making it easier to connect certain reviews and complaints to specific customers. The more connected the CX environment is, the better a company’s insights become.
Step 3: Search for Immersive Analytics
Many of the tools available for collecting customer feedback today do a lot more than simply automate a request for a review or testimonials. Some of the top tools can also integrate with email marketing tools, to send requests for information from customers at specific times. Various other solutions come with built-in analytics and AI-powered tools.
Companies hoping to get the best possible understanding of their target audience, for journey mapping, customer experience enhancements, and service upgrades, need the right features. When comparing feedback tools, business leaders should also look for additional analytical capabilities built into their software. For instance, it may be possible to automatically search for trends in customer reviews using some tools, or analyse the sentiment in a customer’s voice with AI.
Advanced analytical features included within a customer feedback service will assist businesses in transforming the information they receive from their customers into actionable insights and intelligent decisions. Plus, they can help with creating easy-to-follow reports for teams and shareholders.
Step 4: Prioritise Ease of Use
Around 89% of customers say they actually want to be able to give feedback to brands in the current landscape. One of the main reasons many companies struggle to get the right reviews and testimonials, is they’re not making it easy enough for people to share their thoughts.
In today’s fast-paced and chaotic world, users don’t want to struggle to leave a comment with a business about their service or product. As such, companies comparing customer feedback technology should make sure they’re focusing on a solution which delivers an exceptional user experience.
The best tools should make it as simple as possible for customers to share their feedback after an interaction with a business, using everything from rating scales to multi-choice questions. They should also give clients a range of ways to reach out to a business if they have a complex issue.
Ease of use needs to be a priority for employees using a feedback service too. Team members should be able to visualise data and understand trends in feedback at a glance.
Step 5: Explore AI and Automation
Finally, many of the most effective tools for collecting customer feedback today are designed with extra tools for intelligence and automation. These solutions help users to define trends in feedback patterns without having to sort through thousands of reviews or conversations. They can also make it easier to pinpoint which complaints and positive reviews should be prioritised.
Automation features built into a feedback tool are particularly important because they reduce the amount of work an employee has to do to collect data from customers. The right solutions can automatically request a review from every client at the end of each conversation with an agent, so the human employee can focus on other tasks.
Some feedback tools can even use automation and AI to detect when general sentiment towards a brand is growing increasingly negative, and alert business leaders to the problem. This can help companies to keep on top of their brand reputation.
