Customer Feedback has evolved at an unprecedented rate over the last few years. Originally, stores, restaurants and hotels only had comment cards. They enabled customers and guests to tell a business how they felt, but also involved reading their handwriting, and being able to manually collate the data. Text information can be particularly difficult to analyze as it relies on being able to ‘code’ comments, so you can identify common issues or positive experiences. In turn, this makes it hard to use the data to improve your competitive advantage.
With the advent of online techniques for collecting information, Customer Feedback has gone through a number of changes. From email to online surveys and social media, collecting Customer Feedback has evolved from comment cards. It is now common for websites to open with a pop-up asking for you to fill in an online feedback survey. Large online stores, like Amazon or Ebay, ask you to rate and review the product and service you received. With Facebook and Twitter, customers can comment on a ‘Bricks-and-Mortar’ store, restaurant or hotel they visited. Additionally, on sites like TripAdvisor, comments can make the difference between a guest or customer visiting hotels or restaurants, or discounting them, impacting on the profitability and viability of the business.
The problem with the techniques above as feedback sources, is that many of them still require manual intervention to collect the data – especially as information needs to be collected from a number of sources. Online surveys, may automatically collate and report on the results, but they are often too long, and have a high rate of dropouts. On average about 30% of customers will complete an online survey. Even using smartphones, the number of people who are prepared to fill in a lengthy online survey is limited.
So while these techniques are easy on the surface, they have a number of significant drawbacks.
The solution? Short, mobile surveys that replicate the immediacy of customer comments cards, without the difficulties associated with processing, long narrative answers. By limiting the number of questions and focusing on simple questions and answers – like YES, NO, MAYBE and visual rating scales, you can get high rates of completion. You also receive real-time feedback and reporting, as the data is collated and processed automatically. This means you can respond to any issues quickly, and also see the compliments – which help you focus on maintaining high customer service levels. Mobile surveys produce data that helps you focus on the things that matter to your business.
Limiting the amount of feedback a customer can give may sound counter intuitive, but when using a smartphone or tablet, it is often time consuming to write full length comments. Using simple feedback, allows the business to focus on what is important to them, rather than complicated comments, that potentially leave out aspects of feedback that are valuable to the business.
Also, simple, mobile helps you collect ‘heat of the moment’ information. This avoids the customer going home and ‘cooling off’. If customers have a good experience in your store, but then has problems in another store, and goes home angry, it is likely that your feedback will be tainted by the negative experience, making the data less meaningful.
If given the opportunity to provide feedback while the customer is still in the store or restaurant, or shortly after, the feedback is likely to be more accurate than if the customer had had time to ‘cool off’. This means the data reflects the customer’s current state of mind, rather than memories that may be flawed.
Mobile also offers the opportunity for customer recovery via real-time notifications. Within 5 minutes of receiving the feedback, stores have the ability to contact the customer (if they leave their details) and rectify any problems that have been identified.
With Suggestar you can get accurate, streamlined customer feedback data, enabling you to use mobile surveys to gain a business advantage. While a customer is queuing for the cash register, you can ask them to scan a QR code, and fill in the survey on their phone, as they wait. The same QR code could be placed on cards that customers can pick up as they pay, or with their receipt. It can even be placed on a company’s website.
Suggestar Surveys are easy to design. Questions can come straight from the Suggestar Question Bank, meaning the survey can not only be quickly created, they can also be easily amended – to focus on a particular issue, new service or product. This is a huge advantage over pre-printed cards and surveys, even online surveys, which are much more complicated to alter.
With a Suggestar short, mobile survey, you are constantly collecting data which can be invaluable to a company. With automatic aggregation, and reporting on the data, it is simple to view the issues that are most important to the business. Customer Feedback is incredibly important as the data leads to better products, environments and customer service. Suggestar helps you become more competitive and offer an a retail or visitor experience that customers love.
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