How to Collect Customer Feedback in 2021 and why it matters?

As 2020 have dramatically changed everything, the basic business practices and norms are changed, moreover, the service delivery mechanisms are completely changed. People are expecting a whole new eco-system. Businesses have immediately adopted this change and did whatever they could do to satisfy their customers by improving the customer journey and overall customer experience. Let us say you made huge changes and invested a lot to facilitate your customers, but how would you know your strategies are working and the customers are truly happy? What is the impact of all those investments on your customers experience and how did those upgrades improve customer satisfaction level? The answer is a super-efficient customer feedback system!

Why Customer Feedback Matters?

A customer feedback system will let you understand the impact of your current upgrades and changes that you have made to meet the new demands of the customers. Their feedback will help you further improving the process and evaluating your current setup. By gathering customer feedback you will be able to understand their perceptions and their thoughts, and of course their demands. This customer feedback not only allows you to take vital decision to improve customer experience and customer journey, but it will also help you to evaluate your existing service delivery mechanisms and customer journey. As there are a lot many feedback collection methods, so you also have to choose which method is suitable for you and can ensure good results. The year 2021 will be a completely new era in the service industry and in this blog we will elaborate on different methods to gather customer feedback in the year 2021.

Here are a few benefits of collecting customer feedback:

Chance to understand customer’s preferences, their likes/dislikes
Customers will feel that your care for them and their suggestions matters a lot for you
Build trust in your brand, improve your reputation and enhance your brand identity
Understand the new market trends, demands and people’s expectations
Take vital decisions to improve your services/products and service delivery mechanism
KPIs will help to improve the customer journey and evaluating the agent’s efficiency
Help to retain the existing customers and also maintaining a steady growth
Help in the decision making for future investments and innovating new ideas to improve customer satisfaction and service delivery mechanisms

These are just a few major benefits you can get by collecting customer feedback. In short collecting customer feedback will help you a lot in keeping up with the new trends of 2021 and gaining a competitive edge.

How to Collect Customer Feedback in the Year 2021?

Well 2021 will be a completely new landscape for the service-based industry, not only the behaviour of the customers/visitors will impact your growth but it could also directly impact your reputation and brand identity in the market. So, it is very important that you collect comprehensive feedbacks and conduct surveys, do follow-ups with the customers and request them to share their experiences and thoughts about their last visit to your branch.

Here are the most popular and most effective methods to collect customer feedback in the year 2021:

1. Customer Happiness Meters

Customer Happiness Meters are the most simplified form of collecting customer feedback. Usually, the feedback is taken in the form of a happiness scale which indicates how was the customer’s experience at the branch. The meter could range from 3 to 5 simple icons or emoticons or buttons. These inputs range from a visual representation of worst experience to great experience and in between usually followed up by a simple question such as “How was your experience today?” or “How well you were served today?” This type of feedback has the highest attempt rate.

To further improve the interaction you can also link your customer feedback system with your digital queue management system or CRM software to link the feedback to the customer who is providing the feedback and in case of negative feedback, your support staff could later contact them to learn more about their experience and to take more suggestions. Another simpler method is to request customers to input their contact details after submitting negative feedback, though this will reduce the feedback rate still it is a very effective method.

Usually, the customer happiness meter is installed in touch screens and tablets and placed on all counters, or at the entrance or exit points, where the customer can easily access it. Different businesses require different solutions.

2. Customer Feedback Surveys

Traditional surveys are always the best approach to get a deeper understanding of your customers experience and their expectations. But in today’s busy life who has time to conduct 30 minutes or 45 minutes long customer feedback survey? It requires a certain strategy to make people conduct such a long survey. However, these days single slide, or a few slide surveys are the most popular form. It also depends on which platform you are conducting the survey through. As usually on the website a popup with basic or no personal info and a one or two slide survey is the most efficient way to collect the feedback on a large scale from a very large audience.

Some surveys are targeted such as they are designed for a particular product or service and catered to a specific audience. Either through emails, SMS, social media, QR codes, etc. Such surveys have a lower rate but can provide very specific information. If you want to improve or evaluate a particular product or service you can use such surveys to collect feedback.

Of course, when it comes to the survey you might have tons of questions that you want to ask your customers, but you must have to make your survey short and precise. Here are a few tips you should consider while designing a customer feedback survey:

The first and very important point is to have a clear goal and objective of the survey
Ask only those questions which can help you with your goal
Avoid irrelevant and suggestive/leading questions
Use open-ended questions
Try to maintain a flow in the questions and arrange them with great care
Use very simple and easy-to-understand language
Avoid technical questions or complicated questions
Choose the answers wisely
Create interesting graphics for the slides
Create a closing slide or thanks message at the end of the survey

The customer feedback surveys can be transmitted on various communication channels, so sign-in or collecting the identification/personal information should be short and easy, also allow anonymous sign-ins for online surveys, this will ensure your audience that they can bluntly describe their emotions without any fear of being identified for the negative feedback.

3. Smartphone Applications

Smartphones are already surpassing the numbers of traditional computing. Especially in Dubai, UAE and all across the GCC, people often have high-end smartphones with internet connectivity. In UAE almost 90% of the population is using smartphones and have internet access. This lead to an entirely different trend, people tend to look up in the smartphone for everything from groceries to buying properties, everything is available on the internet just a few taps away in your mobile screen. People also tend to search for their common problems on the internet from let say their cat is not eating to headaches and illnesses symptoms, people are searching for everything through their smartphones.

This is the reason more than 90% of the businesses are also offering different services through their smartphone applications. As the year 2020 lead to a whole new online era, the market is also shifting its focus from more traditional to smart and online approaches. Smartphones applications are providing ease-of-access, comfort, convenience and they save a lot of time. You can offer small surveys on your mobile phone applications, let say if a customer is performing a certain task, at the end of that task you can ask them for their feedback, as the customer has recently used a specific feature so the chances are very high that they will also do the survey or feedback related to that.

4. Transactional Emails

This is also a great method to collect very precise and targeted customer feedback. The transactional emails are the emails that you send to your customers after doing any transaction or performing a certain task, such as I have visited my bank to update my contact details, after a day or two when the new information got registered they will also send me an email. Or for example, I have recently purchased a watch from Amazon and they sent me an email after the delivery. Did they ask me how where the product and my overall experience? Such emails are called transactional emails. They have a very good rate and people tend to do such surveys more often than any other email surveys. You can use such emails to ask them a few simple questions about their experience at the branch, bout the service agent’s behaviour, about the product or service itself or any such questions. But ask only relevant questions that will help you with your survey goal, do not make it complex or complicated, otherwise, people will not attempt it or even left it after a few slides.

5. Phone Calls

Although this is a bit traditional way to collect the feedback and it also involves multiple variables, but still the data we can collect is quite useful. You can utilize your existing call centre or support staff with a little bit of training to start calling customers and asking them for their opinions, try a little bit research, sort out all the customers as per their occupations, choose a suitable time accordingly to make the calls, avoid calls in the off hours, or weekends, or early morning. Ask your customers for their consent first before shooting out the questions, choose questions wisely, make them easy-to-understand, small, and subjective. Do not ask for personal information, just confirm the name and their visit schedule and ask them about their experience. It is always the best approach to call a customer on the very next day of their visit to your branch. If you will call them after some time, they might not respond well, or chances are you might fail to get their actual opinion, they might try to escape from the call and give you an only positive or neutral response.

6. Social Media Polls and Voting

Social Media platforms have completely transformed the marketing and communication landscape in Dubai, UAE. Everyone spends multiple hours on social media platforms in a single day. People get connected to their friends and relatives through social media platforms, they share their opinions, view news and consume all sort of information from these platforms. Usually, people feel more comfortable in giving their honest opinion and expressing their thoughts on social media platforms. If you utilize social media platforms you might be able to collect valuable customer feedback data from there.

But in social media there are certain things that you must understand before starting any campaign, the first and foremost important thing is that you should have to understand the particular social media platform which you are using let say, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn are the most popular social media platforms, all businesses have their presence there. People often do short polls and ask for other’s opinion through voting, or short questions with multiple options, single question surveys, etc. These are the most popular and most effective methods to collect customer feedback from these social media platforms in Dubai, UAE.

Conclusion

Before starting a customer feedback collection campaign you should determine the clear objectives and the goals of the data collection. Then choose the most appropriate method to collect your customers’ feedback. Prepare the questions and answers carefully, use open-ended questions, avoid suggestive or leading questions. Make it short and less time-consuming. Then gather all the feedbacks and sort them out accordingly, generate reports from the data you have collected either by a single channel or multiple channels. Then evaluate your current service delivery systems, mechanisms, queue management systems, customer flow and service delivery efficiency. In short, evaluate the entire customer journey and customer experience to determine how customer satisfaction can be further improved.

Take actions to improve every aspect which could impact customer satisfaction. The year 2020 was totally unprecedented, the marketing research agencies and academics are still analyzing the impact on the service industry. RSI Concepts being a leading IT consultant and service provider in Dubai, UAE, we have already introduced a lot of innovations in our existing products and services along with many new solutions to meet and greet the new market trends in Dubai, UAE. You are welcome to reach us through our Contact Us page or through the below comment box.

Check this out: Sharjah Library acquired Customer Feedback and Survey System from RSI Concepts