Optimize Your Feedback Loop
Collecting, Responding and Reacting to Customer Feedback
Shep Hyken interviews Joshua Liebman, founder of BackLooper. They discuss strategies for collecting customer reviews and feedback and what to do with it after you collect it.
Top Takeaways:
- First you have to get customer feedback. Next you must respond to it. Then you should do something with it—as in, use it to improve internally.
- Customer ratings and reviews can be a powerful employee motivator. If they know their performance will be graded, they may strive harder to achieve good results.
- It’s important to ask for feedback or reviews while the experience is fresh. Optimize your request so that it occurs either during or after the customer’s experience with your brand.
- 42% of companies don’t actively collect feedback from their customers. This represents a huge opportunity across the board to implement a survey program to help improve a brand’s experience.
- Set up an automated system that collects on an ongoing basis. It is easy to do this using the tools and technology available today.
- Making surveys quick and easy will increase the number of customers who complete them. Be upfront and honest about how quick and easy you’ve made the process.
- Quantitative surveys should be no longer than 10-12 questions long—ideally shorter. Sometimes it’s good to offer a qualitative (free response) question to allow your customers to tell you how they truly feel in their own words.
- After you get the feedback, you must respond to it. Ideally, you should respond to every single review (positive and negative), but if you have limited resources, prioritize responding to the negative reviews. These are opportunities!
- Remember, when you respond to a negative review, you’re not only talking to the customer who wrote it, but all potential customers who may read the review. One bad review could turn away up to 30 potential customers if not handled correctly.
- After responding to feedback, you must react to it inside your organization. This could mean fixing a broken process or improving an aspect of your service.
- Dig deeper than the surface of what a bad review is telling you. For instance, if someone complains about the price, the right thing to do isn’t necessarily to drop the price. Instead, ask if you’re providing the value customers expect.
Quotes:
“Strike while the iron is hot. Ask for feedback or a review while the experience is still very fresh in your customer’s memory. Take a proactive approach and incorporate asking for feedback into the hospitality component of your business.”
“42% of companies do not actively collect feedback from their customers or do any type of survey program. We need to work on that stat as service professionals as a whole. With the tools and the technology that we have today, it is very easy to automate a system to request feedback from our customers.”
“The more you’re doing to collect feedback through internal channels, then the less negative reviews you’ll have online. Just one negative review has been shown to turn away 30 prospective customers. That adds up.”
“When you’re responding to a review, know you’re not just talking to that customer directly; you’re talking to anyone who might be turned away from your business by reading that review.”
“When we talk about responding to feedback, we’re talking about that connection with the customer. When we talk about reacting to feedback, we can turn it internally toward the business. Respond is to the customer; react is what we do inside.”
About:
Joshua Liebman is the founder of BackLooper, a consumer insights tool that helps businesses optimize their feedback loop and foster customer loyalty. His passion for customer experience comes from his background in hospitality and tourism.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.
