10 Effective Ways of Collecting Customer Feedback

Collecting customer feedback is important. But customers have short attention spans.

So, how do you overcome this hurdle and get this extremely valuable customer feedback?

By creating an easy and seamless experience.

There are many options for you to choose in collecting customer feedback. The list below provides short yet comprehensive descriptions for each one.

Why is collecting customer feedback essential?

Today everything is quick, sleek and convenient. This is especially true for websites and other digital services. All this convenience is now taken for granted and many people won’t bother if they have to put more than the minimum amount of effort required.

As service and product providers, we need to adhere to one maxim: ‘The customer is always right’.

Because convenience and ease-of-use are expected, business managers and board members need to gather customer feedback in order to deliver on those aspects.

What is funny is that the process of gathering customer responses needs to be easy and convenient as well.

There are many instances where the process of asking for feedback has actually deterred customers or prompted them to submit bad reviews out of annoyance.

Take a look at the list below and compare it with your requirements. You will surely be able to identify which way of collecting customer feedback will suit your needs best.

1. Live Chat

This option is great as it puts the customer and the specialist directly in touch.

Feedback is instantaneous and the specialists can ask for more details. Rather than having a few hours or days turnaround through emails.

A live chatbox is easy and quick to use. Most people are accustomed to chat boxes so there is no risk of intimidating the customers.

This approach is informal and renders quick results, both for the customer and support team.

Live chat is a promising service that seems to offer enhanced customer satisfaction. ICMI has compiled a list of results outlining the success of live chat.

Some of the highlights are:

• 53% of customers would prefer to use online chat before calling a company for support. (Source: Harris Research)
• Chat has become the leading contact source within the online environment, with 42% of customers using chat versus email (23%) or other social media forum (16%). (Source: J.D. Power)
• Live chat has the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel, at 73%, compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone. (Source: Econsultancy)

As outlined above, live chat seems to be the leading choice for customers who want to get in touch with a company.

It has the highest level of success and one of the factors that might contribute to this is the quickness with which queries can be solved.

Opposed to other ways of collecting feedback where the customers are prompted by the website that they’re visiting, live chat fully depends on the initiative of the visitor.

At no point, the availability of live chat will be deemed annoying or distracting.

PROS ? CONS ?Instantly connect a customer to a developer or technician Time-consumingDiscuss feedback in-depth and offer customer support Text onlyCustomers are accustomed to chat boxes

2. Pop-ups

If your website visitors are not actively looking to provide feedback, you can prompt them through a pop-up.

When they are navigating, a quick, short message asking them to rate their experience will most likely encourage them to respond.

Following their response, you can kindly ask them to provide more detailed feedback if they wish to. It’s all about making it convenient for them without forcing them to do it.

However, this method should be implemented cautiously. Brian Clifton has made a good point on his blog saying that poor deployment of pop-ups has negative repercussions.

He says that customers might even submit negative feedback out of annoyance.

So how can you implement pop-ups without annoying your customers? Here are a few suggestions:

• Show the pop-up on customer’s intention of leaving your website
• Display the pop-up after navigating between pages so that the experience is not interrupted
• Make the Close button of the pop-up very obvious
• Use pop-ups after a certain scroll depth

Now there’s a variety of “pop-ups” formats for websites, the alternatives include slide-ins, floating bars, countdown timer offers.. etc. Learn more about how to use pop-ups as a way to improve customer communication with the expert of the field OptinMonster.

PROS ? CONS ?Very easy for customers to submit feedback Annoying if implemented poorlyMight prompt visitors who did not intend to leave feedback Disturb customer’s experience

3. Purchase Confirmation Pages and Emails

Is your website an online store?

You can use this to your advantage and ask your customers to provide their insights after they finish a purchase. If they were interested enough in buying a product from you, chances are that they will have the disposition to provide feedback in return.

According to Chamaileon, up to 70% of customers open order confirmation emails. This means that this is an excellent time for collecting customer feedback as well.

For something as small as adding an additional link at the bottom of the email, you can gain valuable insights of your customers’ experience.

As an additional note, you can combine this way of asking for feedback with the pop-up approach which we’ve discussed above.

There is a recurring issue for online retailers where customers leave the website in the checkout section, abandoning their shopping cart. This is a prime time for collecting customer feedback. For example, whenever the customer has the intention of closing their tab or browser during the check-out process, you can use a pop-up asking them to explain what is their reasoning behind it. Whether they were simply browsing and were not interested in buying or the total cost was too much, having this information can help you tailor your services accordingly.

PROS ? CONS ?A high percentage of customers will be exposed to the feedback option The feedback request might be ignored as customers have completed their taskCustomers will have a tangible experience to refer to

4. Automated Email

If you have an email list of people who are definitely interested in your services, you are sitting on a feedback gold mine.

They have intentionally given you their contact information to keep updated with any changes and news.

This means that if they have the option of throwing in their two cents on how to improve your website, they most likely will.

Again, as most points we’ve discussed so far, the customer feedback experience needs to be as quick and easy as possible.

Contacting them through their email lightens their workload even further. One good practice to keep in mind is to address the customer by name in the beginning of the email. It’s an easily programmable feature and adds that extra degree of personalization which can enrich the customers’ experience.

This is an easily implementable feature and will definitely give you bonus points considering that your customer has given you their contact details.

According to FluidSurveys, the average Response Rate for Email Surveys is 24.8%. This means that one in four people will take their time to complete a survey. This article gives you a good overview of the 12 Best Online Survey Tools in 2020.

Taking into consideration that you have gathered your emails directly from your customers, that percentage might be even higher.

PROS ? CONS ?Direct interaction with customers Might be regarded as spam and ignoredYou have the ability to send the feedback request alongside other information, such as newsletters or offers The customer might not feel valued if it’s simply an automated email

5. Feedback Side Button

Discreet, omnipresent and fully customizable.

You can get this button to do anything; open up a new page, call out a pop-up widget or expand into a feedback form.

All those features can be hidden within one small button located on the side of your page.

Customer feedback tools, like Usersnap, offers your customers the option to access a feedback form at all touchpoints of the website and app.

This would enable them to report something as soon as they notice it. Let’s say a feature is not working properly, it would be very easy for customers to click and submit feedback rather than leaving your app instantly.

This method implements user-solicited feedback in a very convenient way. It can be customized to either be something simple as a comment box appearing for a short text-based message, or a complex form with ratings displayed on a pop-up page that disables interaction with the rest of the site.

Read about how Drift, Typeform and MyTaxi (FreeNow) design their feedback loops in this ebook.

PROS ? CONS ?Seamlessly integrates with the website  You are only passively waiting for customers to feedbackEasy to access and use when feedback is necessary

6. Social Media

This is arguably the most powerful tool nowadays.

Here are a few options available on those channels:

• Set up polls
• Chat to customers directly
• Gather reactions to your posts
• Encourage customers to comment on your posts

Another great part of using social media is that people don’t have to take time to go to your website!

They can simply submit their feedback as part of their normal social media experience. They don’t even need to follow your page. Using advertisements, they can interact directly with you without ever having that intent before.

And with all the clever algorithms used by social media platforms nowadays, customers will have a search history that has included your website or related websites.

This means that even targeting people that do not follow you is not like shooting in the dark.

Those people have had a genuine interest in searching for your services or related ones.

Facebook has a page outlining ways of targeting your audience. They have identified three options of choosing an audience on Facebook:

1. Core audiences – Based on traditional demographics such as age and location
2. Custom audiences – Uploading your existing contact list in order to connect with them on Facebook
3. Lookalike audiences – Using existing customers’ information to find people of similar demographics or with similar interests
   So, besides funny cat videos and old high school friends bragging how much they got their life together, social media can be the most powerful tool in gathering customer feedback.

PROS ? CONS ?Very easy to reach out to customers in a non-intrusive way Might get lost in the noiseWidely used by all age and social groups Requires recurring payments to reach your audience Adverts might reach the audience and would be ignored

7. Comment Box

Similar to the feedback side button, a comment box would allow quick and easy submission of in-moment customer experience straight to the developers.

This system really checks all the boxes in terms of convenience and quickness. Access the website. Type in the comment. Press Enter. It’s really simple and really effective to remove any sort of inconvenience from the feedback process. Even though it’s limited in terms of the format of the feedback message.

Customers may find it difficult to verbally describe their problems, especially if it is a display error on the website. This would lead to confusion for the support and technical teams, and they would then have to go back to the customers to ask for more details.

PROS ? CONS ?Quickest and easiest mode of submitting feedback Limited only to simple textAlways available Might be difficult for customers to outline a problem in good enough detailNon-intrusive and takes up little space on the webpage

8. After Completing Contact Forms

Customers who actively engage with your websites are more likely to provide feedback. So you can prompt them to leave feedback after completing a Contact Form. Their experience will be fresh and will be able to identify straight away any problems that they’ve noticed.

This method is also non-intrusive as opposed to pop-ups. The visitors would be free to leave the page without being interrupted by your request for feedback. These are so many advantages! It’s at a right time in their experience, it’s not annoying, and they have something to talk about!

The customer feedback request form can also be as complex as you want since the page can be repurposed following a successful contact form. You can gather more information and you can have any kind of style associated to your feedback forms. Comment boxes, stars, drop-down menus, the page is your oyster.

PROS ? CONS ?Prompts the user to submit feedback at a good time during their visit Customers might shut the page promptly after completing the formFully customizable page once contact form has been completed Customers would not want to put in extra effort to complete the feedback

9. Signing up on the Website

Whether you have a subscriber list or your website requires account creation, you can definitely use the visitors’ interest in to gather feedback. When somebody is keen on signing up for your services, they will be way more likely to respond to your feedback request as they have an active interest in receiving a good experience.

Any time visitors engage with your content or take their time to interact with the website, not only do they have more to talk about, but they will take their previous interest in consideration into writing.

PROS ? CONS ?Customers are definitely interested in your products or services Customers need to choose whether they opt in or out the feedback schemeYou can request feedback at any time after you get the customers’ contact details If they opt in by accident, they might be unhappy with the feedback requestsYou can request feedback either via your website or send a form via email

10. Direct Reach Out

Customers want to feel valued. And what better way to show customers how important they are than reaching out to them directly? There is often this faceless, cold interaction when navigating through a website. It’s easy to break through that by having a real person interacting with the customer.

‘Hi Felix, Thank you so much for your recent order. I wanted to make sure that you had a great experience and did not have any inconveniences. If you have the time, let me know what you thought of the process and I will make sure that your feedback will be heard and incorporated as soon as we can. Have a wonderful day, Ashley’

Sounds a bit more engaging than:

‘Thank you for your purchase. We are always trying to improve our services. Please leave any feedback in the box below.’

Of course, there are other ways to contact customers besides emails. You can, for example, call them directly on their phone. Talking directly to the customer will allow the conversation to flow naturally. You can either have a free conversation to talk about the experience, or you can use a form to ask specific questions.

An article from CallCentreHelper.com outlines a few key points for efficient phone feedback.

These points were suggested by industry experts.

• Keep Surveys Short: questionnaires should have no more than 5 questions or last more than 3 minutes
• Maintain a happy attitude on the phone
• Rotate questions between customers: if you need answers to more than 5 questions, ask each customer a different set of questions in order to cover them all
• Maintain the scales of measurement: If you ask one customer to rate their experience on a scale from 1 to 10, keep that scale for the others
• Keep all questions relevant: only ask questions that your customers have experience in order to answer
• Use clear language: explain everything in layman’s terms and stray away from industry jargon

If you’re looking for online survey tools, here’s a nice list made by SurveySparrow.

11. Usersnap

Usersnap is a one-of-a-kind way of collecting customer feedback. It incorporates many of the functions that we’ve mentioned above.

Firstly, Usersnap allows you to gather both qualitative and quantities feedback. The application offers the best of both worlds, where customers have the option of submitting quick feedback by giving a rating without submitting any comments.

If they want, customers also have the option of adding comments and screenshots alongside their rating.

And a couple of additional unique features of Usersnap are the functions of taking screenshots and annotating those easily. Simply clicking the ‘take a screenshot’ button will create an image ready to be sent off to the business managers. Drawings can easily be done on the screen using the mouse and annotations can be added with a couple of clicks. Learn more about the visual feedback solution with Usersnap here.

If you want to use Usersnap as a technical support channel for your website along with collecting customer feedback in general, Usersnap also records the users’ console logs, it adds full XHR logs and JavaScript errors to every bug report. This information enables developers to understand the problem faster and more accurately. Learn more about the Console Recorder feature here.

PROS ? CONS ?Has many features including screenshots, drawing, and annotations Might be unfamiliar to new customersCan be used for both qualitative and quantitative data gathering Users might be unaware of all the features availableEasy to implement without any significant changes to the website design

Collecting Customer Feedback is not that Hard

As business managers and service providers, your primary goal is to deliver excellent customer experience.

Therefore, you need to find out how your customers are interacting with your website and what they think should be improved.

In this article you’ve read about 11 ways in which customers can be engaged to provide feedback. Some of the options outlined here may work better than others for your website.

If you have just released a new website, you wouldn’t have much of a customer database or email list to directly contact your visitors. In this scenario, it’s better to focus on gathering responses from new visitors and do your best not to annoy or inconvenience them with badly-implemented pop-ups.

It’s all a balancing game and you need to keep in mind that you want to deliver a good experience, and it would be a shame to ruin their experience with the feedback request itself.

Remember the law of diminishing returns and try implementing only the methods that align best with your intentions.

Want to know more about Collecting Customer Feedback and how to take actions?

Start a conversation with us today, Usersnap feedback experts will enlighten you with new strategies and tool kits. Get a free demo of Usersnap’s customer experience improvement tool here.

Or sign up for a 15-day free trial.