Modernizing Your Customer Feedback Strategy Part 2: Modern Listening Methods
Customer journeys are increasingly complex. And each customer’s brand perception is informed by an accumulation of many experiences across multiple channels. To understand this perception, it’s no longer sufficient to collect feedback on a single experience or at a single point in time via traditional methods such as long-form surveys.
Customer journeys are increasingly complex. And each customer’s brand perception is informed by an accumulation of many experiences across multiple channels. To understand this perception, it’s no longer sufficient to collect feedback on a single experience or at a single point in time via traditional methods such as long-form surveys.
As highlighted in Part 1 of the Modernizing Your Customer Feedback Strategy blog series, brands must adopt a modern approach to customer listening that examines the customer journey across all its touchpoints. This approach leverages both solicited and unsolicited feedback as well as other data sources and optimized survey practices to collect more useful data and paint a more complete picture of the customer experience (CX).
3 Ways to Start Modernizing Your Customer Listening Strategy
Fully modernizing customer listening methods may seem like a large undertaking, but every journey starts with a single step. Many organizations will find they can make significant progress by modifying their existing processes to reflect the new approach. Below are three steps organizations can take to orient their customer listening strategy toward a more holistic vision.
#1: Target Digital Intercepts
Digital intercepts are specific points in the online experience where feedback could be collected about a key point in the customer journey. Looking at intercepts helps brands collect the data they need to gain a view of the entire customer journey. Remember that feedback from non-purchasers can be just as relevant as feedback from customers who completed transactions: Organizations should identify digital intercepts that are relevant to each group.
#2: Make Opting in Easy
Too often, brands solicit feedback by mailing surveys days after a transaction or providing customers with a code that must be input into a survey website. These unnecessary steps add friction and make it less likely that customers will offer feedback. Instead, brands should meet customers where they are by sending SMS and/or email survey invites that can be accessed in the moment, on their phones. QR codes printed on product packaging or displayed in brick-and-mortar stores are another easy way to direct customers to a feedback form.
#3: Offer Multimedia Feedback Options
When customers engage with other people online, they use a variety of media, including voice, images, and video. By incorporating these options into feedback mechanisms, brands can meet customers where they’re at and solicit more detailed, meaningful information. They may also see participation rise. For example, one national pizza chain saw a 6% year-over-year increase in survey response volume after implementing image uploads.
Next Steps for Modernizing Feedback Strategy
Exclusive reliance on traditional customer listening methods holds many brands back from gaining a deep understanding of their customers’ journeys. The above modifications can shake up existing processes in the name of gaining a fuller, richer picture of the customer experience.
As an organization continues to modernize its customer listening strategy, additional capabilities can give that picture even more texture and depth.
- Social listening enables an organization to collect unsolicited feedback from social media channels that may offer new perspectives on customer experience.
- CRM or call center data can add context to customer feedback.
- A/B testing and survey optimization tools help organizations further sharpen their data collection with ongoing optimization of feedback mechanisms.
Beyond collecting feedback, brands need tools to turn data into insights and action. While it’s possible to comb through CX data manually, a robust CX intelligence platform offers more efficient analysis and a swifter path to business impact. Organizations can use the resulting insights to fuel more intelligent predictive analytics that show how to capitalize on successes and avoid losses. Ultimately, investing in CX intelligence yields better performance and gives organizations an edge over the competition.
To learn more tactics for collecting holistic customer feedback, read our eBook, “How You Listen Matters: Modernizing Your Methods & Approach to Collecting Customer Feedback,” here.
