17 Tips for Collecting Customer Feedback

Collecting customer feedback can be quite a challenge.  Low response rates coupled with confusing answers can be problematic.

We asked a number of our readers for their top tips.

1.    Winning Tip – Introduce a middle ground survey

We’ve introduced a ‘middle ground’ survey two weeks after contact to measure the end-to-end customer experience.  Great customer service agents will satisfy your customers, but issues in process or product can sometimes go unnoticed using a post-contact survey only.

Congratulations to Emma who wins a bottle of champagne for this tip.

2.    Get in-depth feedback from happy customers

What about getting more in-depth feedback from customers who had a good experience?

To deliver this across the board, you want to know what you’re doing well.  Maybe use a Green Alert?

Thanks to Ben

3.    Send feedback outside the contact centre

The majority of customer issues have nothing to do with the call centre!  You need to ensure that feedback goes into the rest of the organisation too, and is actioned!   Quantifiable information is really more powerful, so volume of feedback obtained is important.

Thanks to Dave

4.    Appeal to their charitable side

We donate £1 to charity for every response.  We also say that our MD reads all suggestions and sends £10 to the top 10 suggestions each month.   This generates a lot of really good verbatim comments.

Thanks to Ben

5.    Use compliments

Compliments can be as useful as complaints to understand customers’ needs and expectations.

Encourage your team to log compliments as much as complaints.  It’s not about boasting – it’s a real business need that will improve your service!

Thanks to Katrin

6.    Make the questions easy to understand

Customers rate the calls wrongly in the IVR most probably because they don’t understand or they do not respond in time.

Thanks to Hany

7.    Ensure questions are specific to the feedback

Ensure your questions are specific to the feedback you want to gather. The customer needs to easily understand the scoring or answer method.  A very clear question with an easy way of answering is essential.

Thanks to Annabel

8.    Use social media feedback

How about social media feedback?  This is a channel we monitor and we have found that it is widely used by customers for providing feedback.

Thanks to Andrei

9.    Email can give you more detail

How you collect the information dictates how much detail you get.  Email can give you more, with a longer survey and more questions.

Thanks to Carole

10.    Make the questions relevant to your customers

Know why you want feedback to make sure that your questions are relevant to your customers. You will get more responses that way.

Thanks to Victoria

11.    Listen to what customers and agents are saying

Listen to the customer but at the same time talk to, and listen to, your own staff.  Your staff will often know what the problems are with processes and how they upset customers. This is available free of charge.

Thanks to Derek

12.    Conduct face-to-face feedback

We completed face-to-face feedback sessions with some clients.  They were encouraged with some decent refreshments and a shopping voucher.  We gained some in-depth and very honest feedback as the sessions were hosted by an independent company.

Thanks to Angela

13.    Use online forms and phone back when there is a low score

Rating service online is the fastest and easiest form of feedback.  Human interaction should be used when a low score is given.  Direct agent feedback can then help to avoid repetition of a behaviour.

Thanks to Anthea

14.    SMS text messages suit the younger generation

The Millennial Generation use their handheld devices for just about everything these days.  SMS has to be the most important channel.

Going forward, social media feedback would appear to be used when customers have had a bad experience – for example to vent views.

Thanks to Hugh

15.    Use a Voice of Customer committee

We are in the process of introducing a Voice of Customer Committee.  This means that we can get the feedback from advisors on what customers are telling them throughout their calls.

This will then be used in conjunction with any other feedback received and the advisor community really feels involved in any decision making.

Thanks to Kerry

16.    Don’t use an IVR score of 10

We find that customers struggle with 0-10 scales and often leave 0’s when their verbatim suggests their score should be a 10.   We suggest using a 0-9 scale on a call IVR to avoid this complication.

Thanks to Amy

17.    Use customer feedback in your brochures

We’re currently using some of our positive feedback from customers in a new call centre brochure we are producing.

Thanks to Cathy

Find out why collecting customer feedback is so vital in our article: 19 Reasons Why Collecting Customer Feedback Is Important for Your Organization

Author: Jo Robinson