There’s a factor within marketing that is incredibly simple, and commonly overlooked. What are your customers telling you?

A lot of companies, to their detriment, see customer feedback and survey responses as something procedural. But customer feedback shouldn’t be seen as an irrelevant pile of opinions – this is a direct window into the customer experience. In the action of seeking feedback, which can sometimes be referred to as the voice of the customer, you are gaining valuable insight into what your customers experience. 

You can see what they value, what frustrates them, and how as a company you can enhance their experience. This is a direct, organic form of feedback that can be extracted to uncover new opportunities, build on areas of improvement and further business growth. 

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The Meaning of Customer Feedback Strategy

Customer feedback strategy is the way in which a company collects, analyzes and uses feedback in order to make decisions based onoff the data presented. Customer feedback can be obtained in various ways. Some of the most common include:

• Online reviews
• Interactions with customer support
• Feedback forms
• Customer interviews
• Customer focus groups
• Customer surveys

With the Redfast platform, you will gain access to detailed information on your customers through our enhanced data capturing software. While other tools can provide you with a way to present a form or survey to the end user, Redfast is the only platform that can personalize the survey to each user based on what they have or have not done previously. For example, if a user initiates a cancellation because they experienced site errors during their visit, the prompt messaging can automatically acknowledge this and offer a remedy 

One way this information can be harnessed and actioned upon is by using a feedback loop. This is where the user feedback is taken into consideration and implemented into the business strategy. 

If this is successful, the business will likely see an increase in user satisfaction rates, as well as a decrease in customer complaints and issues. It also reflects well on the company. When customers can see that a business genuinely shows interest in their opinions, it builds a level of trust for your brand. The solidity of any relationship depends on trust, and in order to create this secure foundation, you must demonstrate a commitment to not only listen to feedback, but to implement it into the running of your company.

If a business continues to do so, it furthers the trust that customers hold in your brand, developing into loyalty. It has been proven that customers are more likely to not only use, but to stay with a brand that values their feedback. 

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The Benefits of a Customer Feedback Strategy

Through the development of a successful customer feedback strategy, many benefits can be produced. These include:

• Increased rates of customer satisfaction
• Increased revenue and sales conversions
• Increase levels of customer loyalty
• Optimization of contact center operations

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Methods of Collecting and Leveraging Customer Feedback:

Incentivize the Experience for the Customer

• A proven way of successfully obtaining useful amounts of feedback is by offering rewards to your customers for giving their opinions. Let’s use a customer focus group as an example. If your company is hosting an in-person focus group, make sure your customers are provided with refreshments. You could also offer a free product, special offer or discount for future purchases. By doing so, you are not only thanking them for their time, but you are showing your appreciation for the feedback given.

Follow Up with Customers

• Once the feedback has been obtained, analyzed and actioned upon, you should allow some time for these changes to reach your customers. Once a reasonable amount of time has passed, contact should be made with customers to gain their feedback on the implemented changes. If successful, you will see an increase in customer satisfaction, with less complaints being raised. 

Categorize, Analyze and Create Reports

• Once enough customer feedback has been collected, you should begin the process of analyzing and sorting through this data. This data will ideally have come from various sources and demographics. Ensure that you gather the customer feedback data into one place, then begin the process of categorizing accordingly. With Redfast’s analytics software, this information is captured in a way that is easy to break down and analyze. 

Gather Both Qualitative and Quantitative Feedback

• Qualitative feedback is related to the voice of customer responses, whereas quantitative is related to numerical data responses. If only quantitative data is collected, you will see the statistics in your areas of strength and weakness, but you won’t know exactly what your customers like and dislike about it.

Quantitative data can be collected through:

• Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT)
• Net Promoter Score Surveys (NPS) 
• Other rating/ranking style survey questions

Qualitative data can be collected through:

• Focus groups
• Written and open-ended survey questions

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Upgrade Customer Feedback Collation through Redfast

When creating a successful customer feedback strategy, the support of a digital customer engagement platform is massively beneficial. Redfast features advanced and sophisticated software to collect detailed customer feedback from various sources. 

If you’re interested in how we can help your business to successfully leverage customer feedback, visit our How It Works page or contact our team to request a personalized demonstration. 

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