Companies that prioritise understanding and meeting customer needs stand poised to thrive in a constantly changing marketplace. Foot Locker stands out as a beacon of innovation and customer-centricity. At the heart of their success lies a robust customer experience (CX) programme, meticulously designed to elevate every touchpoint of the customer journey. In this blog, we dive into the details of how Foot Locker is revolutionising retail through its CX initiatives.
Listening to ALL Customer Signals
Foot Locker’s CX programme, run by InMoment, is fueled by a wide range of customer signals that provide valuable insights into customer behaviour and preferences. These include:
Surveys: Structured feedback mechanisms to gather comprehensive insights into the customer experience.
Customer Pulse Feedback: Real-time feedback channels that capture customer sentiments and preferences.
Non-Buyer Feedback: Insights from customers who visited but did not make a purchase, helping to identify barriers to conversion.
Staff Feedback: Gathering insights from frontline staff to understand customer interactions and pain points.
Contact Centre Feedback: Insights from customer interactions with support teams, providing valuable feedback on pain points and areas for improvement.
Store Purchase Data: Insights from in-store transactions, helping to understand customer preferences and behaviour.
Digital Post Fulfillment and Post-Purchase Data: Analysis of customer interactions and feedback after digital purchases, aiding in refining the online shopping experience.
Competitor Analysis: Monitoring competitor performance and market trends to stay ahead of the curve.
Click and Collect Data: Understanding customer preferences for omnichannel shopping experiences.
Social Media Monitoring: Tracking customer sentiment and engagement on social platforms.
FLX Membership Programme Data: Analysis of member behaviour and preferences to enhance loyalty programme offerings.
Foot Locker’s CX programme is not just about collecting data; it’s about making meaningful connections and driving actionable insights across departments. By leveraging cross-functional omni Voice of the Customer VOC strategies, Foot locker’s integrated data-driven approach allows them to identify trends, pinpoint friction points, and continuously refine their strategies to deliver exceptional experiences. Whether it’s identifying opportunities for improvement, sharing compelling stories backed by data, or aligning with departmental roadmaps, Foot Locker’s CX programme is a testament to their customer-centric, integrated customer experience approach.
Integrating Insights Across Departments
What sets Foot Locker apart is its seamless integration of VOC insights across departments. From sales to digital, every team leverages customer feedback to drive operational improvements. By aligning department-specific KPIs with overall CX goals, Foot Locker ensures a unified approach towards enhancing customer satisfaction and driving business growth.
Elevating Acquisition and Retention
Central to Foot Locker’s CX strategy is its loyalty programme, FLX. By closely monitoring sign-up trends, sales capture rates, and conversion rates of non-members to FLX members, Foot Locker maximises customer retention and lifetime value. Insights derived from VOC data enable them to tailor rewards and incentives, ensuring that every interaction leaves a lasting impression and strengthens customer loyalty.
Measuring ROI
At the heart of Footlocker’s CX programme lies a focus on measuring return on investment (ROI), which includes various analysis of performance and impact. The correlation between NPS scores and operational metrics, demonstrates how improvements in customer satisfaction directly contributes to sales performance. By identifying changes in customer behaviour, driving acquisition and retention through loyalty programmes, and aligning with overarching business objectives, Footlocker exemplifies a commitment to delivering tangible business outcomes through integrated CX initiatives.
Fueling Brand Love
In today’s hypercompetitive market, brand love is the ultimate currency. Foot Locker understands this implicitly, which is why they invest heavily in monitoring brand health and market share. By analysing competitor performance, market trends, and customer sentiment, Foot Locker stays ahead of the curve, continuously innovating and evolving to meet changing consumer demands and building a brand that resonates with customers on a deeper level.
Foot Locker’s CX Journey Continues
As Foot Locker continues its journey towards retail excellence, one thing is clear: they are committed to delivering exceptional retail customer experiences. By harnessing the power of VOC insights, driving operational excellence, nurturing customer loyalty, and fostering brand love, Foot Locker is not just redefining retail; they’re setting the standard for CX excellence in the industry. So, the next time you shop for the latest kicks, remember that behind every purchase lies a meticulously crafted experience, courtesy of Foot Locker’s CX revolution.
Retail reputation management is vital for maintaining a positive image and trust among consumers in the highly competitive retail industry. By consistently monitoring and addressing customer feedback, retailers can enhance customer loyalty, drive sales, and distinguish themselves from competitors.
It can be argued that reputation management for retail companies is more important than it is in any other industry. Whether you are a local shop, regional staple, or nationwide brand, reputation management is one of the most important marketing strategies you need to master to ensure brand success.
In retail, the power of the review is stronger than ever. Almost all consumers, 95% to be exact, will read an online review before purchasing a product. To manage your reputation and actively use customer feedback in your business operations, you need to implement strategies that are efficient, effective, and scalable.
Why Retail Reputation Management Is So Important
Reputation management for retail companies is so important because it can be directly linked to business performance. Not only does your brand’s reputation account for almost two-thirds of its market value, but a negative online reputation can result in a significant loss in revenue.
Your online reputation is also a significant factor in the way your customers perceive and interact with your brand. Almost 70% of consumers trust the opinions of other consumers more than paid advertisements. Furthermore, 85% of customers would be willing to pay more for a product or service from companies with higher ratings and reviews.
With these statistics in mind, it becomes clear that retail reputation management is one of the most important things you can do to improve customer acquisition, retention, and the overall retail customer experience. These statistics are all fine and well, but how do you execute those strategies across your company?
5 Retail Reputation Management Strategies for Business Success
Talking about reputation management for retail companies is one thing, but doing it is another. To properly execute these strategies across your business, you need to have coordinated efforts across your entire organization. While that may seem complicated, it might be easier than you think. Here are four reputation management strategies that you can start initiating today to improve your business.
Claim Your Local Listings
By claiming your local listings and having consistent information such as name, address, and phone number (referred to as NAP) across listings sites, your brand will be easier to find for prospective customers and rank higher in search results. This is also an important first step to take in your reputation management initiatives because it will give you the ability to respond to customer reviews.
If your organization has locations numbering in the hundreds or thousands, it would be worth it to invest in a local listing management solution to remain efficient. This would also help you identify which listing sites and online directories matter the most to your business.
Create Location Pages
There are many advantages to building out location pages on your website. For businesses with multiple locations, these pages can act as micro-sites that contain content specific to that location. This will also aid in running targeted campaigns that may only apply to one location.
With locations pages, you are able to track location-specific metrics such as impressions, website, call, and navigation clicks. These will be useful to show the impact of your reputation management and customer experience initiatives.
Location pages also improve local SEO rankings. Because of the specificity of these pages, they will be more relevant to users in the respective geographic locations.
Ask for Reviews
Asking for reviews is a simple way to grow the visibility and reputation of your company. If you are consistently delivering exceptional customer service and putting your customers first, they will more than likely be happy to let others know about their experience. As a matter of fact, 77% of consumers are willing to leave a review if asked to do so.
If prospective customers go onto review sites and see a healthy amount of recent and positive reviews, it will increase social proof and make them more likely to continue down the funnel with your company.
Respond to Reviews
Asking for reviews is important. But, it is even more important to know how to respond to Google reviews. This is not even considered a luxury in today’s market. Customers expect you to respond to their reviews. Take advantage not just to acknowledge positive reviews, but also to resolve negative feedback and rectify any misconceptions or inaccuracies. Doing so shows them that you care about their feedback, and can also strengthen your relationship with your customers.
Showcase Customer Testimonials
Lastly, another great way to improve social proof and brand reputation is by showcasing customer testimonials on your website or even in your store. This is a great way to continue to build brand credibility and customer trust. Sharing real-life experiences from happy customers fosters a sense of community and belonging, as prospective buyers can relate to the positive experiences of others.
How to Improve Reputation Management in Retail
Your retail reputation management efforts do not stop after one big push, they are an ongoing effort that needs to become part of your regular business operations. The leaders in retail reputation management are always looking for ways to improve. For example, retail leaders respond to reviews in a time that is 10% faster than the industry average. While it may seem like a small difference, it goes a long way in showing customers that their feedback matters.
Monitor Online Reviews from Social Media and Business Listings
Monitoring online reviews from various platforms such as social media and business listings is one of the most important ongoing efforts for any business striving to maintain a positive reputation.
By actively keeping tabs on what customers are saying about your products or services, you gain invaluable insights into areas where improvements may be needed and can swiftly address any issues before they escalate.
Positive reviews also serve as powerful testimonials that can attract new customers and enhance brand credibility. Through vigilant monitoring and timely responses, you can effectively manage your online presence and cultivate lasting relationships with your customers.
Engage with Influencers and Local Guides
Harnessing the influence of social media influencers and local guides presents a dynamic opportunity to amplify your business’s presence and reach. Collaborating with influencers allows you to showcase the best aspects of your offerings to a wider audience by leveraging their credibility and reach to endorse your brand authentically.
Similarly, engaging with local guides who share their firsthand experiences can provide authentic perspectives that resonate with potential customers seeking genuine recommendations. The Google Local Guide program, for instance, empowers individuals to contribute meaningful insights and recommendations that foster a sense of community and trust within local markets.
Transform Online Reviews for Better Customer Experience
Turning online reviews into actionable insights is a proactive approach to enhancing the overall customer experience. By analyzing customer feedback, your business can identify recurring themes, pinpoint areas for improvement, and implement targeted strategies to address customer concerns. This not only demonstrates a commitment to listening to customers but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement within the organization.
By responding promptly and effectively to reviews, you can mitigate negative experiences, bolster customer satisfaction, and ultimately improve your online reputation and star rating.
Utilize Reputation Management Software for Retail Companies
For retail companies with multiple locations, managing reputation across various platforms can be a daunting task. Reputation management software offers a streamlined solution that provides a centralized platform to monitor and respond to reviews efficiently. By leveraging automation and analytics, retail companies can gain actionable insights into customer sentiment across different locations, enabling them to make informed decisions to enhance the customer experience.
Integrating reputation management software into your operations streamlines the process and ensures consistency and effectiveness in managing your online reputation.
What to Look For in Retail Reputation Management Software
When choosing a retail reputation management software, your business will have a lot of options to choose from. It is up to you to choose the software that best fits the goals of your businesses. Regardless, certain features are prevalent in all effective reputation management software.
Review Monitoring: Look for software that can track and monitor reviews across various online platforms, including social media, review sites, and search engines. It should provide real-time alerts for new reviews and mentions.
Sentiment Analysis: The software should offer sentiment analysis capabilities to understand the tone and context of reviews. This helps in prioritizing and addressing negative feedback promptly.
Response Management: Look for features that streamline the process of responding to reviews. This may include templates for common responses, scheduling tools, and the ability to respond directly from the platform.
Analytics and Reporting: Choose software that provides comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities. This should include insights into review trends, customer sentiment, response times, and the impact of reputation management efforts on key metrics such as sales and customer retention.
User-friendly Interface: Opt for software with an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate and use. This ensures that your team can quickly adopt the platform and make the most of its features.
By considering these factors, you can select retail reputation management software that meets the standard for performance while also matching your business’s needs.
REPORT
2024 Retail Online Reputation Benchmarks Report
InMoment’s 2024 Retail Online Reputation Benchmarks Report provides a top-level view of the state of reviews today for the retail industry — and how these reviews reflect the experiences retail consumers want to have. The benchmarks serve as a valuable tool for organizations looking to assess their reputational performance, set goals, make informed decisions, and drive continuous customer experience improvement.
Deciding where to start on your retail reputation management may seem overwhelming, but InMoment has been helping the world’s leading retail brands improve their reputation management and customer experience for years.
We have helped brands like Foot Locker make sense of large amounts of customer data in order to improve business performance. See what we can do for you by scheduling a reputation management demo today!
References
Luisa Zhou. Online Review Statistics: The Definitive List (2024 Data). (https://www.luisazhou.com/blog/online-review-statistics/). Accessed 3/29/2024.Â
fera.ai. 59 Online Review Statistics You Need to Know in 2024. (https://www.fera.ai/blog/posts/online-product-review-statistics-ecommerce-stores-need-them). Accessed 3/29/2024.
You can find a lot of articles, point-of-views, or CX pundits on social media preaching that the survey is dead. Admittedly, we here at InMoment tell our current and prospective clients that they may be focusing too much on surveys and that less than 10% of their customer feedback is likely to come from surveys. An IDG stat says unstructured feedback is growing at 85% year over year which also threatens the value of traditional score-based surveys.
All this being said, the survey is not dead. As a matter of fact, it isn’t going away any time soon. And, I hope it never does! Surveys still present a unique opportunity to have a 1:1 conversation with your customer. And, to illustrate our support for this concept, we’ve developed some ‘Survey Bumpers’—much like the rails in bowling—to help guide you toward crafting a survey that achieves a ‘strike.’ These tips are designed to ensure that your survey stays on track to hit all the right points and maximize its effectiveness in a world where the reality is that surveys may no longer represent the lion’s share of feedback. However, they are still a critical part of what we refer to as an integrated customer experience.
Survey 101
Before we dive into the survey bumpers, let’s recap surveys as a whole. When it comes to surveys, they can all generally fall under two categories: Transactional and Relationship. To be honest, I still talk to prospects (not as many clients) who don’t always understand this difference.
Transactional surveys are typically conducted following a specific transaction or interaction between a customer and a company. The primary goal of transactional surveys is to gather feedback on the customer’s experience during that specific interaction – or as we like to say (tongue in cheek) in the moment. They are often used to assess satisfaction levels, understand the ease of doing business, identify areas for improvement, and address any issues or concerns in real-time.
Relationship surveys, on the other hand, focus on measuring the overall satisfaction and loyalty (to the brand and the products) of customers over a longer period. Rather than targeting a single transaction, relationship surveys aim to understand the broader relationship between the customer and the company. These surveys typically cover various touchpoints and interactions across the customer journey over a longer period, providing insights into overall brand perception, loyalty, and advocacy.
For many companies, relationship surveys rely on the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as the primary metric. This can help them understand several factors including the customer’s likelihood to recommend or repurchase, and overall satisfaction with the brand.
Understanding the basics of surveys is important to know before moving on to survey design. While the designs of surveys may vary from one to the other, the fundamentals of surveys will always remain the same.
What Is Survey Design?
Survey design is the detailed process of creating surveys that optimize the potential results that can be collected from a well-made questionnaire. Decent design takes into account the kind of questions, the quality of questions, the flow and organization of the survey, and the possible biases or conflicts of both questions and participants.
Though creating a questionnaire may seem simple at first, it can be a complicated and tedious process. Questions can be asked in different ways, both in form and language. How much context or detail is provided can sway a participant’s opinion. What questions are presented first will likely influence the questions posed later in the survey, which can impact results.
How to Design A Survey
Outside of the types of surveys, we believe that every survey should have a “North Star Metric” to anchor on. This metric does not have to be the same for every touch point, but it should directly correlate with a business goal. Referencing my bowling metaphor from earlier, a survey with no goal is like bowling into a lane with no pins: pointless.
How Long Should a Survey Be?
When it comes to survey design, shorter is better. Your customers don’t want to take long surveys. Nobody does. Research shows that surveys that take just a few minutes to complete (4-7 questions max) have the highest percentage of completion rates. Not only should your survey be short, it should be targeted. All surveys, regardless of objective or format, should have the same structure of concise language, open-ended questions, and confirmation texts.
Concise, Inviting Language
Surveys should open with a brief introduction that is on brand and invites the users to complete the survey. For example, some common intros include:
We want to hear from you
Tell us how we did
Your feedback is important to us
Regardless of the approach you choose, the user should immediately feel like their feedback is valuable and will be used to direct business decisions, not just improve a score.
Open-Ended Question
One of my biggest survey design peeves is the “conditional” open end that is based on a good score (“Great – tell us what was awesome”) or a bad score (“Sorry we failed you”). We want our clients to get both sides every time they survey. To do that, you need to pose a question that allows the user to explain the good and the bad from their recent experience. An example of this would be:
“Please tell us why you gave that score including what wowed you and where we need to improve.”
Confirmation Text
Whenever a survey has been submitted, make sure you add a step in your workflows that thanks the user for their time. In this step, being short, sweet, and on-brand is key. Just extend a small gesture that shows the user they have completed the survey process. An example might look like this:
“Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We use this feedback to improve our products, service, and experience.”
Survey Design Best Practices
Now that we have the basics covered, let’s dive into a few survey bumpers that will lead you toward gathering insights – not just completion rates. These survey bumpers are aimed at outlining a strategy centered around business improvement. Rather than sending a survey for the sake of sending it, this strategy will help you achieve data that can be used, not just analyzed and archived. We want to pick up the spare – not leave the 7-10 split.
Design with the End in Mind
Before you start this process, you need to establish your objectives, goals, and desired outcomes. This foundational step lays the groundwork for a strategic approach to survey design, ensuring that every question and element serves a purpose in driving toward a measurable business outcome. By clearly identifying measurable outcomes, your survey will have a much better probability of capturing insights that you can turn into actions. By answering these questions, you will have a clear understanding of the goal of your survey:
1. What business problem(s) are you trying to solve?
Understanding the specific business problem(s) or challenge that the survey aims to address is arguably the most important part of this process. It helps define the scope of the survey, frame relevant questions, and ensure that the collected customer feedback directly contributes to solving the problem. Without a clear understanding of the problem, the survey will render itself useless. And, for anyone who works with me or has read my POVs, your business problem must have a financial lens. CX programs sustain and grow if they drive a financial return to the business.
2. Who will be the internal champions of the data?
As part of a program design discussion, the target customer personas will evolve based on what you are measuring and who you can contact based on the availability of data and accessibility to it. But, to me, the more important question to answer is who in the company will be accountable for taking action based on the insights captured by the survey. Another rule I try to follow is that every question needs to have an owner – someone who wants the customer’s voice to take measurable action toward a business. No owner or no goal? Don’t ask the question.
For example, if we offer a closed-loop system, is there a resource aligned to close the loop? Or, if our goal is to understand the ease of completing a purchase on our website, is there an e-commerce team leveraging the customer feedback?
3. What are you doing today? How are you measuring success?
Assessing the current state of the union within your organization provides context for interpreting survey results and evaluating the effectiveness of existing strategies. By understanding what your organization is currently doing, and whether or not it is achieving the desired results, can help identify areas of success and areas for improvement. Related to this, has the program been continuously updated to reflect changing team players and changing business conditions
4. Do people across the organization care about the score or the insights?
If the answer is the score – how do I say this nicely – I would suggest stepping back to see what role scores play in your CX strategy and what role they should play moving forward. If I can offer any wisdom it’s this: score-focused CX programs fail over time. Don’t let score trends paralyze modernization. To truly understand your customers and improve their experience, you need to care about the insights that come from these types of initiatives. And, broken record time, you need to be able to point to financial proof points from the actions taken.
Just to be clear, scores are a critical part of a survey program. Understanding the impact of elements of your product/service delivery as measured by customer scores is important. Culturally, scores can be a rallying cry across the business. Advanced financial models can show how scores impact the bottom line. My “parting shot” for this topic is to just make sure the scores don’t become the program’s primary success metric.
How to Design the Best Survey for Your Business
Now that we have our bumpers in place. Let’s get into the details of how your business can bowl that perfect game. These steps to survey design are designed to get your business the cleanest, most actionable feedback that can be combined with other omnichannel data to round out a complete view of the customer experience so you can start improving it.
1. Ask the Main Metric Question First
Starting with the main metric question allows you to capture the customer’s overall perception without any bias from subsequent questions. This question – and metric – should tie to the business outcome you are trying to achieve.
2. Follow Up with A Non-Conditional Open Ended Question
Following up the main metric question with an open-ended question encourages respondents to elaborate on their initial response. Open-ended questions allow for more conversational and qualitative feedback that provides deeper insights into the reasons behind their initial answer. See the guidance earlier in this article about ensuring this question is unconditional.
3. Identify A Small Group of Business drivers Related to Your Problem
This step involves selecting a focused set of business drivers or factors that are directly relevant to the business outcome you are hoping to achieve. By narrowing down the scope to a small group of key elements, you can ensure that your survey remains concise and targeted, making it easier for respondents to provide meaningful feedback.
4. Offer to Follow Up
A recommended next step in this process is to offer to follow up or close the loop with the customer. Closing the loop is important because it demonstrates to customers that their feedback is valued and taken seriously. Research shows that when a company closes the loop with a customer, the customer is more likely to respond to subsequent surveys. It also allows you to save an at-risk customer if they have an issue you can fix. When customers see that their input leads to tangible changes or improvements in products, services, or processes, they feel heard and appreciated.
However, you should only offer to do this if you have the staff to support it. Otherwise, you are only hurting yourself and negatively impacting the customer experience.
5. Thank the Customer
Always end the survey by expressing gratitude to respondents for taking the time to participate in the survey. This step is important for fostering goodwill and encouraging future engagement. A simple thank-you message at the end of the survey acknowledges the respondents’ contribution and reinforces the idea that their feedback is valuable to the business. Even better, I worked with a client who used their “thank you” page to highlight a couple of changes they made as a direct result of their survey program.
The Future of Surveys with InMoment
To reiterate, surveys need to remain an important element of your customer listening strategy. While it is easy to say they are “dead,” the truth is that their role is simply evolving to fit the modern landscape of customer feedback. Rather than being viewed as the endpoint of customer feedback, we see them as the first rung on the ladder of an integrated customer experience program – the opening frame to go back to our bowling analogy.
For them to continue to be useful surveys need to be integrated into a broader strategy that encompasses various feedback channels such as social media, online reviews, customer service interactions, and more. By building out an integrated customer experience program that brings in a wide variety of data sources, businesses can capture a more comprehensive understanding of the customer journey and tailor their strategies accordingly.
Think of this article as an InMoment PSA: Since surveys are still a vital channel to hear from your customers, you should make them the best they can be.
See how Barry Nash & Company partnered with InMoment to merge traditional survey data with text analytics and market research to develop groundbreaking research and reports for the entertainment industry!
Financial services reputation management is important for institutions looking to build a loyal customer base. Reputation management initiatives can help you earn trust and increase consumer retention.
Did you know that over half of financial services consumers say they have low trust in their provider? And, of those consumers, only 34% of them would recommend their brand to friends and family.
Financial services providers are tasked with a unique challenge. Since finances are such a personal part of our lives, consumers in the industry are the most withholding of their trust. So it is up to the organization to earn that trust and prove to the consumer that they are deserving of their business and can be trusted with their finances.
Why Reputation Management Matters in the Financial Service Industry?
To gain this trust, it is now more important than ever for financial services institutions to implement strong online reputation management initiatives. Online reputation management gives businesses the power to control the narrative surrounding their brand, respond swiftly to feedback, and proactively address any negative publicity, thereby fostering credibility and confidence among current and potential clients. This holds significant importance for every business operating within the financial services sector including:
Retail and commercial banks
Investment banks
Insurance companies
Savings and loans associations
Brokerage firms
Mortgage providers
Credit unions
Given the critical role money plays in people’s lives and its direct impact on their livelihoods, individuals often conduct thorough research, including assessing a financial institution’s online reputation, before making a decision.
Financial services reputation management is not as tricky as it may seem. If you are just beginning your online reputation management journey, your goal should be to monitor, influence, and improve the perception of your company. This can be done in a variety of ways, and you are going to need effective strategies that resonate with your customers. Based on data and market research, we’ve pulled together some reputation management strategies that are most likely to land with your customers and improve your brand reputation.
1. Respond to Reviews
Data shows that in the financial services industry, the average time taken to respond to reviews is 3.44 days. However, the leaders in the industry (10% of organizations) have an average response time of just 1.59 days — a 54% difference.
Not only does responding to reviews in less than two days mark you as a leader in the industry, but it also shows customers that you care about their feedback. With that, it is important to learn how to respond to negative reviews. If and when negative feedback arises, the sooner you take action, the more likely you are to resolve the issue and turn a negative review into a positive one.
2. Create Educational Content
More than anything, your consumers want to feel educated and supported throughout their journey with your brand. Creating educational content shows your customers that you value them and that you want them to succeed. Here are some examples of educational content you could provide:
Online educational resources where they can expand their financial knowledge on their own time
Real-time investment tips and awareness
Personalized suggestions that are tailored to where they are in their financial journey, perhaps through an online portal or virtual advisor meeting
Your customers see you as a partner, and they feel that you should be helping them on their journey to financial freedom. By creating educational content such as the ones listed above, you prove that you are buying into that partnership.
3. Improve the Customer Experience Based on Feedback
While responding to reviews and creating content to support your customers are important, there is only one group that can tell you the changes you need to make: your customers.
Your business needs to set up an integrated customer experience program that combines structured and unstructured data that will give you a holistic view and understanding of your customers. Your customer experience program also needs to utilize predictive customer analytics so that you can fix the problems your customers didn’t realize they were having.
If you are wanting to be proactive about your reputation management initiatives, you can streamline your efforts with reputation management software. Softwares such as these can reduce the hassle of manually managing listings and reputation management for financial services organizations.
Reputation Management Tips for Businesses in Financial Services
Financial services reputation management can look different for organizations depending on which corner of the industry you operate in. Insurance customers have different needs and priorities than mortgage consumers do. It is your job to identify what is most important to your consumers and prioritize your reputation management strategies accordingly.
Retail and Commercial Banks
For retail and commercial banks to realize reputation management success, they should put a focus on improving customer service, convenience and accessibility, seamless digital experiences, and communication strategies.
This is important because it will increase a bank’s reliability, trustworthiness, and overall satisfaction. By prioritizing these aspects, banks can cultivate strong, enduring relationships with their customers, leading to increased loyalty, positive word-of-mouth referrals, and ultimately, sustained growth and profitability
Some other areas for improvement may include fees and charges, security and fraud protection, product offerings, and social responsibility. These improvement will go above and beyond reputation management and affect the overarching customer experience and give retail banks more of a competitive advantage.
Investment Banks
Investment banks can succeed with their reputation management by consistently demonstrating integrity and transparency in their dealings. This will foster trust among clients and stakeholders. This can be done by adhering to ethical standards, providing accurate and timely information, and upholding a commitment to client interests above all else.
Additionally, maintaining open lines of communication, actively addressing concerns, and adapting to evolving regulatory requirements can further bolster a reputation as reliable and reputable financial partners.
To go even further, consider implementing a focus on your expertise and advisory services. Consumers in this space want to feel educated and be a part of the process. In educating and advising them regularly, they feel included and will be more satisfied with their returns than if they were left in the dark.
Insurance Companies
Insurance companies need to put a heavy emphasis on agent training and customer service. In the insurance industry, every customer will have to talk to an agent—whether through online chat, over the phone, or in person—and these are the interactions that matter the most with your brand.
These interactions need to be positive for your insurance reputation management to improve. If a customer is dissatisfied with an interaction, it could cause them to leave a negative review about the entire company. Contrarily, a positive experience will cause them to respond well to post-claim surveys and favorably improve your brand reputation management.
Savings and Loans Associations
Savings and loans associations can succeed with their reputation management initiatives by focusing on providing exceptional customer service, offering personalized financial solutions, and cultivating strong relationships with their members. This involves ensuring that members feel valued, understood, and supported throughout their financial journey.
Secondly, they should emphasize financial stability and security by reassuring customers that their deposits are safe and that the institution is well-managed and financially sound. Transparency regarding their financial health and regulatory compliance is crucial in building trust and confidence among members.
Lastly, they should actively engage with their local communities and demonstrate a commitment to social responsibility and contribute to initiatives that address community needs. By being seen as a trusted and involved community partner, S&Ls can enhance their reputation and foster a positive brand image.
Brokerage Firms
Brokerage firms should focus on operating with the high ethical standards. Firms should prioritize integrity in all interactions with clients, regulators, and the public. This includes transparent fee structures, honest communication about risks, and avoiding conflicts of interest.
Furthermore, implementing up-to-date trading platforms and tools, expanding investment offerings, and effectively securing accounts will build trust with current customers and improve brand reputation.
Mortgage Providers
There are many things mortgage companies can do to improve their brand reputation. Since mortgages commonly represent a large milestone in the consumers’ life, they want to feel educated, reassured, and supported throughout the entire process.
One of the biggest ways mortgage companies can improve their reputation by being transparent in lending practices. Customers want to know specific credit requirements and approval criteria, as well being assured that the company is following ethical lending requirements. Effectively implementing these tactics will make any mortgage company quickly become a trusted partner in the community.
Credit Unions
For credit unions to improve their brand reputation, there needs to be an emphasis on the member experience. When consumers choose credit unions over traditional banks, they are looking for a local partner for their financial journeys.
To capitalize on that, credit unions need to prioritize member feedback. Credit unions are member-operated by definition, and it needs to be clear that every member’s feedback is going to be taken into consideration when making business decisions.
Furthermore, members want access to personalized guidance, and resources, and want to be able to access those resources across different channels. Being able to implement cross-channel experiences that deliver personalized attention will lead credit unions to realize reputation and business success.
Communication and transparency is important across the board for all of these financial businesses, regardless of the niche they operate in. Prioritizing transparent communication and utilizing customer feedback will help any financial institution succeed.
The Benefits of Reputation Management in Financial Services
We’ve covered why consumer trust is so important in financial services, and that you need to implement a reputation management strategy in order to earn that trust, but there are also business benefits that come from those strategies. Here are some of the outcomes you can expect from an effective reputation management strategy.
Increased Trust: Financial services rely heavily on trust. Positive online reputation management helps build and maintain trust with clients, investors, and stakeholders by showcasing reliability, professionalism, and integrity.
Risk Mitigation: Financial institutions are particularly vulnerable to reputational risks due to the sensitive nature of their services. Effective online reputation management helps identify and address potential risks, minimizing the impact of negative events such as data breaches or customer complaints.
Competitive Advantage: A strong online reputation can differentiate a financial institution from its competitors in a crowded market. Positive reviews, testimonials, and a favorable online presence can attract new clients and retain existing ones.
Regulatory Compliance: Compliance with regulatory standards is essential in the financial sector. Online reputation management strategies can ensure that institutions adhere to regulatory requirements regarding transparency, disclosure, and customer protection.
Crisis Management: In the event of a crisis or negative publicity, having robust online reputation management strategies in place enables financial institutions to respond promptly, manage the narrative effectively, and mitigate reputational damage.
These benefits will not only benefit your consumers, but they will also affect your bottom line. Creating a consistent brand image and consistently presenting it across all of your platforms can increase revenue by almost 25%!
InMoment’s 2024 Financial Services Online Reputation Benchmarks Report provides a top-level view of the state of reviews today for the financial service industry — and how these reviews reflect the experiences financial services consumers want to have. The benchmarks serve as a valuable tool for organizations looking to assess their reputational performance, set goals, make informed decisions, and drive continuous customer experience improvement.
Improve Your Financial Services Reputation Management with InMoment
Many of the world’s leading financial institutions already partner with InMoment to help them understand and act on customer feedback. InMoment’s dynamic XI Platform gives brands the ability to engage with their customers across all platforms, make sense of their feedback, and, leverage data to improve their business performance. See for yourself by scheduling a reputation management demo today!
References
Forrester. Financial Services Firms Need To Learn How To Earn Customers’ Trust. (https://www.forrester.com/blogs/financial-services-firms-need-to-learn-how-to-earn-customers-trust/). Accessed. 3/28/2024.Â
Status Labs. 52 Online Reputation Statistics for 2023. (https://statuslabs.com/blog/reputation-management-stats). Accessed 3/28/2024.
Healthcare contact centers play a vital role in ensuring timely access to care, improving patient communication, and enhancing overall healthcare experiences.
In the dynamic landscape of healthcare, where patient care is paramount, the role of healthcare contact centers has emerged as a vital component in ensuring seamless communication and efficient service delivery. From appointment scheduling to medical inquiries, these centers serve as the frontline of patient engagement, offering a myriad of benefits for both healthcare providers and patients alike.
What is a Healthcare Contact Center?
At its core, a healthcare contact center is a centralized hub equipped with trained personnel and technology to manage inbound and outbound communications related to healthcare services. They are more than call centers, in addition to handling incoming and outgoing calls, they often manage SMS, email, live chat, and even social media messaging. These centers typically handle a wide range of tasks, including appointment scheduling, prescription refills, insurance inquiries, and medical advice, among others.
Why are Healthcare Contact Centers Important?
The importance of healthcare contact centers cannot be overstated in today’s healthcare ecosystem. They serve as the primary point of contact for patients seeking assistance, guidance, or information regarding their health needs. By providing round-the-clock support and personalized care, these centers play a crucial role in enhancing patient experience, improving outcomes, and fostering patient satisfaction.
Not only do contact centers act as the first point of communication, but they also adopt an omnichannel approach to ensure messaging and experience are consistent. This allows healthcare centers to enhance patient experience, improve care, enhance operational efficiency, and gain deeper insights into patient behaviors and needs. An omnichannel contact center strategy enables the creation of superior patient care by seamlessly integrating various communication channels.
Why Does Healthcare Need Contact Centers?
In an era marked by digital transformation and evolving patient expectations, healthcare contact centers fill a critical gap by offering accessible, convenient, and efficient communication channels. With the rise of telemedicine and remote care, the demand for remote support services has surged, making healthcare contact centers indispensable for delivering timely and responsive care, irrespective of geographical constraints.
Expand Your Contact Center Strategy
If you operate a contact center, chances are you’re collecting data from various channels like calls, chats, social media, and surveys. However, sorting through this wealth of feedback and analyzing it can be a daunting task, potentially causing you to overlook crucial insights pivotal for business transformation. InMoment’s conversation analytics software offers a solution by expediting the process and delivering enhanced results. From swift resolution of customer issues to optimizing operational efficiency, our software empowers you to achieve better outcomes more efficiently.
What are the Benefits of Contact Centers in Healthcare?
The benefits of healthcare contact centers extend beyond mere convenience. By leveraging advanced technology such as AI-powered chatbots, predictive customer analytics, and telecommunication tools, these centers streamline workflows, reduce wait times, and optimize resource allocation. Moreover, they empower healthcare providers to deliver personalized care, strengthen patient-provider relationships, and drive operational efficiency across the care continuum.
Healthcare contact centers play a crucial role in addressing a variety of challenges and problems within the healthcare industry. Here are some key problems that healthcare contact centers can help solve:
Appointment Scheduling and Coordination: Contact centers streamline the process of scheduling appointments, managing cancellations, and coordinating follow-up visits, reducing wait times and optimizing provider schedules.
Patient Education and Outreach: Contact centers serve as a valuable resource for patient education, providing information on medical conditions, treatment options, preventive care, and wellness initiatives to empower patients to make informed healthcare decisions.
Medical Triage and Advice: Trained professionals in contact centers can conduct medical triage, assess symptoms, and provide timely advice and guidance to patients, helping them determine the appropriate level of care and avoid unnecessary emergency room visits.
Prescription Refills and Medication Management: Contact centers facilitate prescription refills, medication adherence reminders, and medication management services, ensuring that patients have timely access to their medications and understand how to take them properly.
Insurance Navigation and Billing Support: Patients often encounter challenges navigating the complexities of health insurance coverage and understanding medical bills. Contact centers can assist with insurance inquiries, claims processing, and billing support, helping patients resolve issues and maximize their insurance benefits.
Follow-Up Care and Chronic Disease Management: Contact centers play a vital role in facilitating follow-up care for patients with chronic conditions, conducting post-discharge follow-up calls, monitoring patient progress, and providing ongoing support to improve health outcomes and prevent readmissions.
Emergency Response and Crisis Management: During medical emergencies or public health crises, contact centers serve as a central hub for coordinating emergency response efforts, disseminating critical information to the public, and providing reassurance and support to concerned individuals.
Language and Cultural Barriers: Contact centers with multilingual staff and interpretation services help overcome language and cultural barriers, ensuring that patients from diverse backgrounds receive equitable access to healthcare services and information. If you aim to enhance experiences across all interactions, InMoment’s XI Platform offers support for over 41 languages and dialects. This capability empowers you to elevate customer experiences on a global scale.
Remote Monitoring and Telehealth Support: With the rise of telehealth and remote monitoring technologies, contact centers play a key role in facilitating virtual consultations, remote patient monitoring, and telehealth support services, expanding access to care and improving care coordination.
Patient Satisfaction and Experience: By providing responsive, personalized, and compassionate care, contact centers contribute to improved patient satisfaction and experience, fostering trust, loyalty, and positive relationships between patients and healthcare providers.
Overall, healthcare contact centers serve as a critical component of the healthcare ecosystem, addressing a wide range of challenges and enhancing the quality, accessibility, and efficiency of healthcare services for patients and providers alike.
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Common Healthcare Contact Centers Trends
As healthcare continues to evolve, several key trends are shaping the future trajectory of contact center optimization:
Digital Transformation: Contact centers are embracing digital channels such as mobile apps, text messaging, and social media to cater to the preferences of tech-savvy patients and enhance accessibility.
Those aiming to elevate their digital transformation journey are embracing integrated customer experiences. By harnessing unstructured data across every touchpoint of the customer journey, they extract invaluable insights to drive the most informed and strategic decisions.
Telehealth Integration: With the rapid expansion of telehealth services, contact centers are increasingly integrating telecommunication tools to facilitate remote consultations, triage patients, and coordinate virtual care delivery.
Data Analytics and Insights: Leveraging big data analytics, contact centers can derive actionable insights into patient needs, preferences, and behaviors, enabling proactive interventions, targeted outreach, and continuous improvement.
AI and Automation: The integration of contact center AI is revolutionizing contact center operations, enabling predictive analytics, intelligent routing, and virtual assistants to enhance efficiency and personalize patient interactions.
Focus on Patient Experience: In an era of consumer-centric healthcare, contact centers are prioritizing patient experience initiatives, such as patient feedback mechanisms, sentiment analysis, and service excellence training, to drive patient satisfaction and loyalty.
What to Look for in a Healthcare Contact Center Software Solution
Selecting the right software solution is crucial for optimizing the performance and effectiveness of a healthcare contact center. Here are some key factors to consider when evaluating healthcare contact center software:
HIPAA Compliance: Given the sensitive nature of healthcare data, it’s essential to choose a software solution that complies with HIPAA regulations to ensure the confidentiality and security of patient information.
Integration Capabilities: Look for a software solution that seamlessly integrates with existing electronic health record (EHR) systems, telehealth platforms, and other essential healthcare applications to facilitate smooth data exchange and workflow automation. To improve customer satisfaction and experience within your contact centers, look for software that offers CX integrations.
Multichannel Communication: Patients expect flexibility in how they communicate with healthcare providers. Ensure that the software supports multiple communication channels, including voice calls, email, SMS, live chat, and social media, to accommodate diverse patient preferences.
Scalability and Flexibility: As your contact center grows and evolves, the software should be able to scale accordingly to accommodate increasing call volumes, additional features, and expanding service offerings. Choose a flexible solution that can adapt to changing needs and requirements.
Advanced Analytics and Reporting: Comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities are essential for monitoring key performance metrics such as customer experience KPIs, identifying trends, and gaining actionable insights into contact center operations and patient interactions. Look for software that offers robust reporting tools and customizable dashboards.
AI and Automation Features: Leverage the power of artificial intelligence and automation to enhance efficiency and productivity within the contact center. Features such as intelligent call routing, chatbots for initial triage, and predictive analytics can help streamline workflows and improve the overall patient experience.
Comprehensive Training and Support: Choose a software provider that offers comprehensive training resources, ongoing technical support, and dedicated account management to ensure a smooth implementation process and continued success with the software.
Compliance and Security Measures: Beyond HIPAA compliance, consider additional security measures such as data encryption, role-based access controls, and audit trails to safeguard patient information and maintain regulatory compliance.
Customization Options: Every healthcare organization has unique requirements and workflows. Look for a software solution that offers customization options and configurable settings to tailor the platform to your specific needs and preferences.
Vendor Reputation and Reliability: Lastly, evaluate the reputation and track record of the software vendor. Choose a reputable provider with a proven history of delivering reliable, high-quality solutions and excellent customer service.
By carefully considering these factors and conducting thorough research, you can select a healthcare contact center software solution that aligns with your organization’s goals, enhances patient engagement, and improves overall operational efficiency.
Get the Most Out Of Your Healthcare Contact Center Solutions with InMoment
Healthcare contact centers represent a cornerstone of modern healthcare delivery, bridging the gap between patients and providers and driving transformative change in the way healthcare services are accessed and delivered.
Amplify your contact center technology arsenal with InMoment’s conversational analytics software. Our AI-powered technology extracts valuable insights from various channels, such as calls and transcripts, uncovering impactful opportunities and efficiencies. By embracing this innovation, these centers are poised to play an increasingly pivotal role in shaping the future of healthcare.
Learn More
Discover a real-world customer story featuring popular retailer Foot Locker, showcasing how they leveraged InMoment’s conversational analytics software. By tapping into the insights gleaned from call and chat transcripts, Foot Locker identified root causes and issues, gaining a deeper understanding of customer sentiments. The well-known retailer remains No. 4 on Forbes’ most engaged companies list and has an impressive 84.4% OSAT score.
True excellence in customer experience (CX) demands more than just understanding and insights; it requires actionable strategies that drive tangible results. InMoment’s Integrated CX offers a transformative pathway to success, encompassing Strongest Signals, Richer Insights, and Smartest Actions. In this blog post, we’ll explore how your organisation can take the smartest actions, the final piece of the puzzle of our Integrated CX approach.
Understanding the Importance of Smartest Actions
Companies that prioritise CX not only foster customer loyalty but also drive sustainable growth and differentiation. InMoment recognises the critical role of CX and offers a transformative approach through its Integrated CX strategy. One of the three key pillars is is driving Smartest Actions from customer signals and insights that yield tangible results. Without actionable steps, even the most insightful data falls short.
Unlocking the Power of AI in CX
At the heart of InMoment’s Smartest Actions lies the integration of AI in customer experience technologies. By leveraging AI, businesses can automate processes, optimise interactions, and deliver exceptional experiences that resonate with customers. AI-driven solutions streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and empower employees with data-driven insights, enabling them to focus on high-value activities that drive meaningful outcomes.
InMoment specialises in making sense of the unstructured data. The qualitative feedback contains the why and the how. We do this using our award-winning NLP engine to break down every comment, every conversation, and summarise it for your teams to know where to focus and how to drive change. Uniquely, InMoment also has in-house experts (practitioners and data scientists) to complement the technology and programme investment and help you design, implement and action the highest impact programmes. Which brings us to the smartest actions. We have purpose built solutions to help every role, from the frontline to the C-suite, to take action on the CX data in a coordinated and data-backed way. And by doing so, you’ll see rapid, proven ROI across your programme from retention, to customer acquisition, from share of wallet growth, to cost to serve reduction.
Drive Smarter Actions with:
Automation of Repetitive Tasks
Smartest Actions aim to free up employees from repetitive tasks by automating routine processes such as responding to feedback and data analysis. This enables businesses to allocate resources more efficiently and focus on initiatives that drive meaningful outcomes. A feedback type that’s grown in the last few years is social media. Using reputation management tools, you can bring together all your data in one place, combining your data. AI will help generate a response which is inline with your corporate strategy and answer your customer in an appropriate way.
Insights-Driven Actions
InMoment’s AI-driven solutions go beyond traditional decision-making by harnessing the power of data analytics. By analysing customer feedback and social media data, businesses can uncover valuable insights that inform strategic actions to enhance the overall customer experience.
By leveraging advanced sentiment analysis, the platform sifts through vast volumes of social media data combined with customer feedback to identify key themes and trends, triggering automated actions based on predefined criteria. This enables businesses to personalise customer engagement strategies, continuously improve their offerings.
Targeted Audience Engagement
Smarter actions enable businesses to target specific audiences with tailored insights to optimise your customer interactions. InMoment’s AI-powered solutions ensure that the right actions are delivered to the right people at the right time.
AI-driven solutions revolutionise competitive analysis by providing a comprehensive overview of your positioning within the broader competitive landscape on a brand level. However, it goes beyond surface-level insights by recognising the nuanced variations that exist across different locations. Each geographical area presents its unique competitive dynamics, influenced by factors such as local preferences, demographics, and economic conditions.
Coaching of Frontline Employees
It’s always been hard to get insights out of call centre data however with InMoment’s Cutting-edge NLP models, we can look beyond scores to extract nuanced insights from call centre data – including transcripts and voice recordings – to detect emotions and key phrases, transcending traditional scoring systems. These models can uncover metrics such as churn likelihood and quality assurance which allows AI to do all the hard work with efficient AI algorithms, optimising operational efficiency without exhaustive manual reviews so your supervisors don’t have to waste time manually reviewing agent calls.
This transformative approach not only enhances the quality of customer service but also empowers frontline employees with actionable insights to improve performance. With continuous feedback loops driven by AI, businesses can iteratively refine coaching strategies, ensuring consistent excellence in customer interactions.
How InMoment Can Help
Driving Business Results through Smartest Actions
The ultimate goal is to deliver tangible outcomes for both businesses and customers. By integrating AI seamlessly into the customer journey, businesses can drive measurable improvements in key CX metrics such as customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. InMoment’s approach ensures that clients receive the expertise and technology needed to achieve their CX objectives effectively.
By harnessing the power of AI-driven insights and automation, businesses can deliver exceptional experiences that drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth. Don’t settle for fragmented CX tactics; embrace a holistic strategy that puts action at its core. Take the first step towards CX excellence and unlock the full potential of your customer experience strategy with InMoment.
To learn more about InMoment’s Integrated CX approach and Smartest Actions, watch the webinar recording here!
A customer satisfaction survey can help you understand how your clients feel about the products or services that you offer. Customer satisfaction is a great indicator of the state of your customer experience, and should be continuously monitored.
It’s every company’s dream to have loyal, lifelong customers. To get this, you need to understand what your customers want, how they view your brand, and how they feel about your products and/or services. To put it simply, you need to understand their entire customer experience, from beginning to end.
One way to do this is through customer satisfaction surveys. Let’s dive into what they are, why they are important, and the different variants of them that you can use.
What Is a Customer Satisfaction Survey?
Customer satisfaction surveys enable you to measure your customer’s satisfaction with any aspect of your business, whether it be:
Products
Services
Experiences
Staff
These customer satisfaction surveys, also referred to as CSAT for short, offer a holistic view of different aspects of your customers’ experiences. They can use a rating system that can be tracked over time, offer specific insights into your customers’ pain points, and help you work to continue to meet your customer’s needs.
Why Are Customer Satisfaction Surveys Important?
Customer satisfaction surveys are important because they are a direct insight into the customer experience. They help you understand how your business is viewed, and what you can do to improve that. Having high satisfaction rates is important to your brand for many reasons. Satisfied customers spread the word through word-of-mouth marketing. Satisfaction is a great indicator of retention, customer loyalty, and new customer acquisition through referrals.
Customer Retention
Knowing your customers is beneficial from a financial standpoint. Most customers feel that companies should make more of an effort to cater to their feelings and walk out if those needs aren’t met. Maintaining customers is much cheaper than gaining new ones, so ensuring they are satisfied with the service or product, ensures customer retention.
Happy Customers Stay Loyal and Spend More
Research shows that if customers are treated well, they will purchase more. Your returning customers will spend around 67% more than first-time customers. Measuring which interactions your customers value will help you evaluate what they are willing to pay more for.
Satisfied Customers Spread the Word
If customers have a good experience they are more likely to tell a friend or recommend a service. This can have a knock-on effect on the reputation of your company. Most Americans think word of mouth is the most trustworthy form of recommendation. This can however go the other way, in that unsatisfied customers can also tarnish a company’s reputation. Monitoring how your customers feel with a customer satisfaction survey is essential.
What is the Purpose of Customer Satisfaction Surveys?
Customer satisfaction surveys are used for several different purposes, each of which is important to the company that wishes to continuously monitor and improve the customer experience they provide. Top objectives include:
Fix any meaningful problems that have occurred for customers with the company’s products or services.
Assess the performance of its customer-facing units (retail locations, call centers, digital care teams, etc.) and staff (salespeople, call center reps, etc.).
Improve its processes and standards for delivery.
Understand customers’ needs as they use the company’s products or services so the company can help them have a better overall experience.
An effective customer experience program will address all four of these objectives. To do this, a company may need several different but integrated components. Effective measurement of processes and performance of people requires a focus on transactions and traditional measurement that uses a consistent and robust methodology, whereas a focus on customers as individuals requires a unique and individualized approach that follows a customer periodically throughout his or her tenure as a customer.
Do Customer Satisfaction Surveys Work?
The effectiveness of customer satisfaction surveys is a topic that is often debated. However, it should be clear that customer satisfaction surveys work. Working to improve the customer experience is always a good thing. If you successfully improve the customer experience, you will almost certainly realize improved business results. For example, boosting customer retention by just 5% can improve your profits by anywhere from 25-95%.
The caveat to this statement is that customer satisfaction surveys only work under alignment and the direction of a similar goal. If you send out customer satisfaction surveys just to check a box, the likelihood of you seeing ROI from those efforts is slim to none. For you to get the most out of your CSAT surveys, you need to align with the other stakeholders in your organization.
How to Create a Customer Satisfaction Survey
Creating a survey that yields responses can be a tricky situation. You want to get in-depth feedback but don’t want to overwhelm your customers to the point of them exiting the survey without completing it. To create an effective customer satisfaction survey, you need to keep these tips in mind:
Define Your Objectives: Determine what you want to achieve with the survey. Are you looking to measure overall satisfaction, identify areas for improvement, gather feedback on a specific product or service, or assess customer loyalty?
Select Survey Type: Choose the type of survey that best suits your aforementioned objectives. Some common types of surveys include Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction Score, and Customer Effort Score.
Consider Survey Length: Keep the survey short and relevant to prevent survey fatigue and increase response rates. Aim for no more than 10-15 questions, and prioritize the most important ones.
Design a Welcoming Survey Layout: Choose a clean and user-friendly layout for your survey. Use a mix of text, visuals, and white space to enhance readability. Ensure that the survey is accessible across different devices (desktop, mobile, tablet).
Test the Survey: Before launching the survey, conduct a pilot test with a small group of respondents to identify any issues with clarity, flow, or functionality.
InMoment’s dynamic XI Platform gives you the ability to create your surveys or choose from prebuilt templates. These templates enable you to customize branding, question types, logic, design, and other features seamlessly within a single user-friendly interface.
How to Start a Customer Satisfaction Survey
When designing a survey, sometimes starting the survey can be the most difficult problem. If you are wondering what the best way to start a survey is, you aren’t alone. While it may seem like there are a lot of ways to go about asking the first question, you should keep one thing in mind. Your first question should always be associated with the metric or business goal you are trying to achieve.
This question is the most important one in the survey, and should always be answered first. The questions that follow this one are where you can get a bit more creative. You can ask follow-up questions to the first question that allow the respondent to provide more information about their first answer, or you can ask a question about a secondary metric or topic that you may be tracking.
How to Measure Customer Satisfaction
If you want to know just how satisfied your customers are, you need to go directly to the source and ask them. Customer satisfaction surveys are the best way to identify the highlights and the pinch points of your product or services. You need a metric to help quantify the experience your customers have, which all starts by establishing a framework for their feedback.
Three Crucial Customer Satisfaction Metrics
There are many ways to measure customer satisfaction, but there are a few that are more prominent, popular, and productive than their counterparts. Here are three of the most common types of customer satisfaction surveys or measurements:
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction scores are an attempt to capture how satisfied customers are with a company’s goods and services. A survey asks a customer to rate their satisfaction, typically on a scale from 1 to 5.
Net Promoter Score (NPS®)
Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is a trademarked metric between -100 and 100 that captures in aggregate the propensity of a company’s customers to attract and refer new business or/and repeat business.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
The Customer Effort Score is an index from 1 to 7 that measures how easy a company makes it for customers to deal with its products and services. A company that provides effortless service gets a 7 while a company that makes it difficult gets a 1. In other words, the higher the CES, the better.
For example, your customer satisfaction survey could instruct your customers to rate their satisfaction with a service or product on a scale of 1-5. If you want to get an idea of how your customers view your brand, you can use the Net Promoter Score (NPS) that asks how likely a customer is to recommend your company to a friend using a scale of 0-10.
Deciding on the rate metric and the best response type will depend on what you want to know. What drives the experience of your customers? What causes them to feel the way they do about your brand or business offering? As you hone your feedback survey questions and the type of metrics that benefit your business most, you can collect data over time and gain greater insights.
Question Types to Include in Your Customer Satisfaction Survey
Embarking on the journey of creating a customer satisfaction survey is akin to crafting a conversation with your customer base—each question type serves as a different form of dialogue, each with its own strengths and considerations. Here are some core question types that you should consider including in your customer satisfaction surveys:
Likert-Scale Questions
Likert-scale questions are the bread and butter of nuanced feedback. They invite respondents to indicate their level of agreement or satisfaction across a symmetrical, often five or seven-point scale. When you’re seeking to grasp not just the “what,” but the “how much,” Likert scales are invaluable. These are particularly effective when you aim to measure various dimensions of the customer experience, such as ease of use, quality, or responsiveness. They are straightforward for customers to understand and quick to complete, boosting completion rates and, by extension, the richness of your customer satisfaction survey data.
Multiple Choice Questions
The jack-of-all-trades in the survey world, multiple-choice questions, offer pre-set answers that make it easier to standardize responses. Ideal for quantitative analysis, these questions help to streamline the data collection process. Want to know which features are most useful to your customer base? Or maybe you’re curious about how often respondents use your service? A well-crafted multiple-choice question can provide that clarity. Importantly, keep the options mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive to avoid ambiguity—a cornerstone principle of customer satisfaction survey best practices.
Open-Text Questions
If Likert-scale questions give you the “how much,” open-text questions deliver the “why.” They are your gateway to the qualitative nuances that multiple-choice or Likert-scale questions can’t capture. They provide the space for customers to articulate their thoughts, emotions, and suggestions freely. While they may be more time-consuming to analyze, the richness of the insights gained can be deeply revealing. Open-text questions are especially useful when you’re searching for constructive criticism, in-depth product feedback, or new ideas for improvement. It’s like having a one-on-one conversation with your customer, but at scale.
Binary Questions
Binary questions cut to the chase. They are a straightforward yes-or-no format that is quick to answer and easy to analyze. These are your go-to when you need a clear-cut view of a situation. Did the customer find what they were looking for? Was the check-out process smooth? The simplicity of binary questions makes them highly effective for issues that are black and white. However, their simplicity also means they lack the depth of insight gained from other question types, so use them judiciously within your customer satisfaction survey.
Follow Up Questions
The follow-up question is where the art of survey design truly comes to life. After capturing the core data, use follow-up questions to drill down into specifics. Was a customer dissatisfied with their purchase? A well-placed follow-up can reveal whether it was due to product quality, delivery time, or perhaps customer service. Follow-ups are instrumental in adding layers of understanding to your basic findings, allowing you to formulate more precise and impactful action plans. They’re the epitome of turning data into dialogue, contributing to a customer-centric culture that values feedback at every turn.
20 Customer Satisfaction Survey Question Examples
There are a wide variety of questions you can ask across multiple types of surveys, it just depends on what you are looking to get insight on. Here are examples of categories of questions and example questions.
Product Usage
How long have you been using the product?
How often do you use the product or service?
Does the product help you achieve your goals?
What is your favorite tool or portion of the product or service?
Demographics
Where are you located?
What is your level of education?
Where do you work and what’s your job title?
What industry are you in?
Satisfaction Scale
On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your experience today?
Did you feel that our team answered your inquiry promptly?
Do you agree or disagree that your issue was effectively resolved?
How likely are you to return to our website?
Open-Text
How can we improve your experience with the company?
What can our employees do better?
How can our employees better support your business’s/your goals?
Why did you choose our product over a competitor’s?
Longevity
May we contact you to follow up on these responses?
Can we connect you with a customer success manager via chat?
Would you be open to discussing upgrade options for your product?
Can we send you a list of useful resources for getting the most out of your product?
Customer Satisfaction Survey Design Best Practices
One of the most important things to remember when designing customer acquisition surveys is that if your survey is too long, or too tedious, you will not get responses. Timing your surveys right, and designing them effectively will help you get all the information you need to keep your customers happy and satisfied with your products. To get the most out of your customer satisfaction survey efforts, here are some of the dos and don’ts of the process.
Do
Ask for the overall company rating first. Starting with someone’s overall impression of your company can help you compare your business to your competitors and your industry’s market, which is important for creating internal benchmarks.
Allow for open-text feedback. There are pros and cons to both free-response questions and more limited-response questions. In some aspects, it’s easier to gather hard and definitive data with limited-response questions, but you also need to understand the motives and concerns behind someone’s feedback by learning details you may not have otherwise anticipated.
Always A/B Test Your Surveys. You wouldn’t put a new product into the market without first testing it with your target audience, right? The same principle applies to your customer satisfaction surveys. A/B testing—comparing two versions of your survey to determine which performs better—can radically improve the quality of the feedback you receive.
Optimize for mobile. Mobile apps and devices are growing in popularity and not as many people are using a desktop computer to complete their customer satisfaction survey. If your survey process is clunky on mobile or takes too long, customers are less likely to finish or even start the survey to begin with.
Don’t
Ask double-barrel questions. Your question needs to focus on one aspect or issue—a double-barrel question covers more than one issue but only allows for one response. To reduce confusion or gathering inaccurate data, simplify your questions.
Make the survey too long. If you lose your respondent’s interest with a huge customer satisfaction survey, you’ll miss out on helpful information and make customers feel like they wasted their time. Satisfaction surveys don’t often need to exceed 10 questions.
Use internal or industry jargon. The language you use will not only leave a certain impression on your customers, but if respondents can’t understand what you’re really asking them, they may not respond accurately or even finish the survey.
How to Distribute Your Customer Satisfaction Survey for Optimal Data
Navigating the intricate landscape of customer satisfaction surveys requires a thoughtful approach, from choosing the right platform to identifying the optimal timing and debating the merits of incentives. In the upcoming sections, we’ll demystify these key considerations. We’ll explore how the medium of your survey can shape its effectiveness, why timing matters in capturing the most accurate customer sentiments, and the pros and cons of incentivizing your respondents. Get ready to elevate your customer satisfaction survey strategy with these essential insights.
Choosing the Right Platform for Your Customer Satisfaction Survey
Online Platforms: In today’s digital age, online platforms such as social media channels, your company’s website, and dedicated survey platforms are powerful tools. They offer the convenience of anytime, anywhere access and provide immediate feedback. Online surveys can be designed to be visually appealing, easily shareable, and interactive.
Emails: Still an effective method, emails allow for a direct reach to your customer’s inbox. With a compelling subject line and a personalized touch, it can drive higher response rates. Plus, the convenience of answering when it suits them makes emails a preferred method for many.
In-app Prompts: For businesses with mobile or desktop applications, in-app prompts can be a seamless way to gather feedback. As users interact with your app, strategically timed prompts can ask about their immediate experience. It’s timely and directly related to the user’s current action, ensuring relevant feedback.
When to Send a Customer Satisfaction Survey
Ideally, you want to avoid asking for feedback during a purchase or experience. Doing this can interrupt the process and worsen the customer experience. Here are some examples of acceptable times to ask for customer feedback:
Post-purchase: Once a customer completes a purchase, their experience with your product or service is fresh in their mind. A short, focused customer satisfaction survey can help gauge their immediate reactions.
After-Service Experiences: If a customer has interacted with your customer service team, for a query, complaint, or any other reason, it’s essential to know how they felt about the interaction. Sending a survey shortly after can provide insights into your team’s performance and areas for improvement.
How Often Should You Conduct a Customer Satisfaction Survey
The frequency with which you conduct a customer satisfaction survey depends on various factors such as the nature of your business, the industry standards, and the pace of change within your organization.
That being said, it is important to conduct these surveys at regular intervals. Having a regular cadence for your customer satisfaction surveys helps you track overall changes in performance over time. Some common frequencies include quarterly or semi-annually.
If your business undergoes significant changes like launching a new product or service, implementing a major policy change, or experiencing a merger, it might be wise to survey to gauge how these changes are perceived by your customers.
In industries influenced by seasonal trends, such as retail or hospitality, it might be beneficial to conduct surveys during peak seasons or before major holidays when customer engagement is high.
Ultimately, the key is to strike a balance between gathering sufficient feedback to make informed decisions and not overwhelming customers with too many surveys.
How to Improve Customer Satisfaction Surveys
In order to get the best data that gives you the most actionable information, you will need to constantly work to improve your surveys. This can be done through a various number of ways. Trial and error can be an effective method to improve your surveys. If you have one goal in mind for your survey, you can ask one question that relates to that question, and then change the follow-up question over time. This follow-up question can act as an independent variable that you can measure against. While there are other ways to improve your survey over time, here are some ways to improve them right out of the gate:
Ask specific questions: Ask specific questions that relate to your business goal. Whether it is product quality, customer service, or ease of use, these questions will get you closer to data that you can use.
Test the survey: Before deploying the survey widely, test it with a small sample of customers to identify any potential issues or areas for improvement. Gather feedback on the survey itself and use this input to refine the questions and format.
Ensure accessibility: Make sure the survey is accessible to all customers, regardless of their preferred communication channels or accessibility needs. Offer multiple ways for customers to access the survey, such as email, website links, or mobile apps, and ensure that it’s compatible with screen readers and other assistive technologies.
To Incentivize Responses or Not to Incentive Responses?
Pros of Offering Rewards:
Higher Response Rates: A small token of appreciation can motivate customers to take a few minutes out of their day to provide feedback.
Positive Sentiment: Offering rewards can leave a positive impression, showcasing your brand’s appreciation for their time and effort.
Cons of Offering Rewards:
Quality of Responses: Some customers might rush through the survey or provide inauthentic responses just to claim the reward.
Cost Implications: Depending on the incentive, it might increase the cost of conducting the survey, which businesses need to factor into their budget.
How to Turn Customer Feedback Into Action
Once you have gathered useful and relevant data from your client satisfaction survey, it falls back on your business to make that data impactful and lucrative. If you want to improve the customer experience, here are some core principles to keep in mind.
Close the loop:
Negative feedback is always going to exist, and to show that a customer’s response matters, respond quickly after receiving that feedback from customer satisfaction surveys. A customer feedback loop boosts customer loyalty, even for those who didn’t have a great initial experience.
Analyze for trends:
Dig into your metrics and data to see if you can identify any patterns or commonalities. If more than half of your respondents struggled to navigate the online store on your website, then it may be time to revamp or redesign your website interface.
Company-wide effort:
Make sure you align your improvement efforts at every level of your organization. From product development to customer service, everyone needs the same expectations and strategy, which often means greater communication and collaboration. Feedback from customer satisfaction surveys can help different teams and departments come together to improve and prioritize the right elements of their projects.
How to Present Customer Satisfaction Survey Results
The data you get from surveys is important, but it is only as great as your ability to make sense of it and report on your findings. In order to make sure the right insights are shared with key stakeholders, you need a repeatable and scalable way to report on your survey data.
With InMoment’s dynamic reporting capabilities, you have the ability to make sense of large amounts of data in seconds. You can see what is impacting your metrics, filter out data you don’t want to see, and share these reports across your organization.
Other Ways to Understand Customers
Using customer satisfaction surveys is a key component of improving your business and understanding what your customers need. When it comes to marketing, there are even more things you can do outside of CSATs and surveys. It’s best to approach customer needs from several angles, including customer satisfaction surveys and the following strategies.
Personas:
User personas are detailed portfolios of your target customers that highlight a made-up customer that emulates the primary motives, needs, and concerns of specific users. This helps you group certain users that you can better serve and address their pain points.
Market research:
Customer satisfaction surveys are part of your research, but you can go deeper by learning about your market customers. Gathering this kind of data helps you identify customer fears, drives, frustrations, and preferences, which can be used to bolster both products and the customer experience.
Heatmaps:
A heatmap is a visual depiction of user behavior that documents where users click, tap, and scroll—essentially identifying how users interact with your website. What pages are performing well and what elements are being ignored? This makes it much easier to discover what is working well and what is distracting on your website.
Customer Satisfaction with InMoment
InMoment’s dynamic customer experience platform has everything you need to help you collect, measure, and act on your customer satisfaction data. Check it out today!
References
business.com. Returning Customers Spend 67 Percent More Than New Customers – Keep Your Customers Coming Back With a Recurring Revenue Sales Model. (https://www.business.com/articles/returning-customers-spend-67-more-than-new-customers-keep-your-customers-coming-back-with-a-recurring-revenue-sales-model/). Accessed 3/18/2024.Â
Retail Customer Experience. Uniting transactional and relationship surveys to capture the entire experience. (https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/blogs/uniting-transactional-and-relationship-surveys-to-capture-the-entire-experience/). Accessed. 3/18/2024.Â
Zippia. 28 CRITICAL CUSTOMER RETENTION STATISTICS [2023]: AVERAGE CUSTOMER RETENTION RATE BY INDUSTRY. (https://www.zippia.com/advice/customer-retention-statistics/). Accessed 4/1/2024.Â
Facebook is one of the most widely used social media marketing tools today. However, there may be instances where your business must learn how to delete a Facebook Page in order to protect your brand reputation.
Here are some of the common reasons why a business might want to delete their Facebook Page:
Rebranding: Your company is undergoing a rebranding process and you’d like to start fresh with a brand new Facebook Business Page.
Negative reviews and feedback: Your Facebook Page has received overwhelmingly negative feedback or reviews. Given the importance of social media marketing, this can hurt your business reputation and drive potential customers away.
Legal issues: Legal complications or disputes may suddenly arise and you have to learn how to delete a Business Page on Facebook as a precautionary measure.
Change in ownership: A change in ownership or management might prompt the decision to delete the Facebook Page and start fresh under new leadership.
Privacy concerns: Your company may need to learn how to delete a Facebook Page in order to protect sensitive information or data.
Inactivity: The business is no longer active or operational, and maintaining the Facebook Page is unnecessary.
How to Delete a Facebook Business Page
To delete your Facebook Business Page the traditional way — that is, using a desktop computer and logging into Facebook using your personal account — follow these steps:
Ensure you are an admin of the Facebook Business Page you are trying to delete. Note: If it’s a duplicate Page that you don’t have access to, you may need to claim the Facebook Business Page first.
Navigate to: https://business.facebook.com/. This will take you to your Meta Business Account, sometimes called a Business Manager account. It is also sometimes called Meta Business Portfolio.
Go to Settings. In the Business Assets tab, select Pages. Then select the Facebook Business Page you’d like to delete.
Click the 3 horizontal dots icon and select Remove from Business Portfolio.
Click Remove Page.
There are other ways that a Page may be removed from your Facebook or Meta Business Portfolio. For example, someone on your team with full control of your Business Page can request to have the Page deleted. If you receive a Page removal request, you will have 30 days to respond with a Yes or No.
Using your Meta Business Account, go to Settings or Business Settings.
Select the Requests tab and locate the removal request.
Select Approve or Decline.
FAQs on How to Delete a Facebook Page
Before you click that button that permanently deletes your brand presence on Facebook, here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about how to delete a Page on Facebook.
Why Can’t I Delete My Facebook Business Page?
The most common reason for not being able to delete a Page is because the user is not an admin of the Page. If you are an admin and you still can’t delete your Page, it’s possible that there may be another admin who may have canceled the Page deletion or declined your Page removal request.
What Happens When I Delete My Facebook Page?
Deleting your Business Page means nobody will be able to see or find it on Facebook. Once a Page has been removed, you will have 14 days to restore it in case you change your mind.
After that, you’ll be asked to confirm if you’d like to delete the Facebook Business Page permanently. Keep in mind that if you delete the Page permanently, you will lose its content and data forever. This includes your Page likes, comments, interactions, and Facebook reviews and recommendations.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that if your company has run ads using this Page, deleting it may affect your ad account’s performance or history. Moreover, if your Business Page was connected to Messenger for business communication, this connection will be severed and any existing conversations will be lost.
Should I Delete My Facebook Page?
The question of whether or not you should delete your Facebook Business Page depends on the situation and what your strategic goals are. For example, you may be assuming ownership of a business that you recently acquired, and you are wondering whether you should update the existing Page and rebrand — or delete the Page altogether.
Here are some considerations to help you make an informed decision:
Brand reputation. Assess the reputation and brand equity associated with the Facebook Page in question. If the Page has a positive reputation (with plenty of 5-star reviews and ratings), active engagement, and a substantial following, it may be valuable to retain it so that your team can leverage existing customer relationships and support your brand reputation management strategy.
Integration with your brand. Consider whether the existing Page aligns with your brand identity. If you can integrate the Page, maintain continuity, and facilitate the transition for existing customers, there is no need to learn how to delete the existing Business Page on Facebook.
Audience and reach. Evaluate the audience demographics and reach of the Facebook Page before trying to delete it. If the audience aligns with your target market and provides access to potential customers, keeping the Page can be advantageous for marketing and promotional purposes.
Rebranding or consolidation. If rebranding or consolidating operations is part of your strategy, deleting the Facebook Page may be necessary to streamline your brand presence and avoid confusion. Consider communicating the changes transparently to customers and redirecting them to your primary brand channels.
If you’re planning to delete your Facebook business page due to negative or misleading online reviews, consider how you can enhance your online reputation instead. Rely on existing customers to share their own positive experiences by leveraging InMoment’s reputation management software. It empowers you to collect feedback from current customers, not only improving your online reviews but also offering valuable insights for areas of enhancement.
Ultimately, the decision to delete, unpublish, or keep the Facebook page of a business you’re managing should be based on a thorough assessment of its value, alignment with your strategic objectives, and considerations of brand, audience, and resources.
How Do I Remove the Owner of a Facebook Business Page?
If you no longer want someone to have access to a Page that’s part of a Business Account, you can remove their access.
Using your Meta Business Account, go to Business settings.
Below Accounts, click Pages and select the Page from which you’d like to remove the person’s Page ownership and access.
Hover over the person’s name and click the trash can icon. Click Confirm.
Removing a user from a Page does not remove them from your Business Portfolio. For security reasons, it’s recommended that you remove inactive people from your Business Portfolio who no longer need access to any of your business assets or other Pages.
Only admins have the ability to manage roles on a Facebook Page. If you don’t have admin access, you won’t be able to remove an owner. Also, be sure to communicate with the person being removed from the owner role to avoid any misunderstandings.
What’s the Difference Between Publishing and Deleting a Page?
Unpublishing a Facebook Business Page hides it from public view temporarily, while deleting a Facebook Page permanently removes it from the platform along with all associated content.
If you’re unsure about losing all the data from your Page, you may choose to simply “unpublish” the Page instead of learning how to delete the Facebook Business Page. This hides it from the public, including the people who like your Page. Unpublishing is a reversible action, allowing businesses to temporarily hide their Page without permanently deleting it. This might be useful during periods of maintenance, rebranding, or when the business is not actively engaging on Facebook.
If you’re an admin, you can unpublish your Page at any time. Unpublished Pages are only visible to the people who manage the Page. It won’t be visible to the public until it’s published again.
Connect Data and Feedback from Social with InMoment
Learning how to delete a Facebook Page is just one of the steps your team can take to protect brand reputation and improve social media marketing performance. With InMoment, you can elevate your review management strategy and integrate social media data with your customer relationship management system to achieve a comprehensive view of customer interactions across various channels, enabling your team to deliver more personalized and cohesive experiences.
Creating and executing the perfect survey that avoids obtaining misleading feedback can be tricky business. To be successful, you’ve got to watch out for inaccurate data such as sampling bias, framing bias, and most importantly, response bias.
What is Response Bias?
Response bias is our human tendency to self-report inaccurate (or even false) answers to survey questions. For example, if someone asks you how much you exercise, you might be inclined to say four times a week, even if the answer is two.
It doesn’t matter if it’s intentional or accidental—if humans are inaccurately reporting on their experiences, this false information can negatively affect the data gathered from your survey. Unfortunately, if you aren’t getting accurate data from your surveys because of response bias, you can’t rely on it to improve experiences for your customers and employees.
How Common Is Response Bias?
Response bias can occur to varying degrees in almost any survey or study involving human participants. Its occurrence depends on several factors, including the nature of the questions asked, the survey methodology used, the characteristics of the sample population, and the efforts made to minimize bias.
In some cases, response bias may be minimal, especially if researchers take proactive steps to mitigate it, such as ensuring anonymity, using randomized sampling, and designing neutral survey questions. However, in other cases, response bias can be more pronounced, particularly if the survey topic is sensitive or if participants have strong opinions or motivations that influence their responses.
It’s essential to recognize that while response bias can never be eliminated, but researchers can take steps to minimize its impact. By employing best practices in survey design, sampling, and data analysis, researchers can reduce the likelihood of response bias and improve the accuracy and reliability of their findings.
Can A High Response Rate Decrease Response Bias?
A high response rate doesn’t necessarily guarantee a decrease in response bias, although it can help mitigate certain types of bias.
When a survey achieves a high response rate, it generally means that a larger proportion of the target population has participated. This can reduce voluntary bias, as a more representative sample of the population is likely to have been captured. However, even with a high response rate, other forms of response bias, such as social desirability bias or acquiescence bias, may still be present if respondents provide inaccurate or misleading answers.
To reduce response bias effectively, researchers should focus on employing strategies aimed specifically at minimizing bias. While a high response rate can be an indicator of a more representative sample, it’s not a standalone solution for addressing response bias.
What Causes Response Bias?
Response bias can stem from several sources. Respondents may alter their responses to present themselves in a more favorable light or conform to social norms. Similarly, some individuals tend to agree with statements regardless of their content. Both of these things can skew results from a questionnaire.
Can the Wording of A Question Create Response Bias?
Yes, the wording of a question can create response bias. The way a question is phrased can influence how respondents interpret it and, consequently, how they choose to answer.
For example, leading questions that suggest a particular answer or contain biased language can lead respondents to answer in a way that aligns with the wording of the question. An example of this would be the question “Don’t you agree that product X is better than product Y?” This question implies that one product is better than the other, which may lead the respondent to agree.
What Are the Different Types of Response Biases?
According to the experts, there are lots of response biases. Here is an overview of the seven major types of response biases and an example of each.
Social response bias: This happens when survey respondents overreport on good behaviors and under-report on bad behaviors. Think about it this way—few people will admit they eat 5-6 bars of chocolate per week, so respondents will tend to under-report their chocolate consumption, skewing the data in the process.
Non-response bias: This happens when a survey sample isn’t representative of the target population. Imagine you’re trying to survey customers who attended a grand opening via email. However, half of the surveys went to the attendees’ spam folder. So, the responses you receive only represent half of the attendees.
Hostility bias: When you ask survey respondents about unpleasant memories or negative experiences, the responses might become hostile. An example of this is asking emergency room hospital patients how their experience was—they might only remember their pain and suffering.
Satisficing: Respondents who display this form of response bias are likely to leave questions unanswered or to answer dishonestly. These types of customers are trying to satisfy the task of completing the survey, and typically rushing through questions, instead of carefully reflecting on their experiences and providing valuable feedback.
Recency bias: This is a psychological phenomenon of simply picking the answer the respondent reads—one of the reasons why it’s so important to randomize choices.
Wording bias: When it comes to surveys, wording matters. Even something as simple as greeting a customer by name can psychologically influence their responses—they might assume someone is personally reading the survey, and be less likely to provide honest feedback
Voluntary Bias:Voluntary response bias occurs when individuals choose whether or not to participate in a survey or study, and their decision to participate is influenced by factors related to the topic being studied or their own characteristics.
How to Check for Response Bias
To identify response bias, you will need to cross-reference survey responses with other data. For example, comparing self-reported behaviors with objective measures or official records can reveal inconsistencies.
Another way to identify response bias is by examining response patterns within the survey data that can uncover indications of bias. Trends such as consistently high or low ratings, excessive agreement or disagreement with statements, or patterns related to question order.
How Can CX Leaders Reduce Response Bias?
Now, let’s take a break down some ideas for reducing response bias. Here are some tips from our InMoment experts:
Understand Your Demographic. This should be the first exercise your brand takes on when designing a survey. Ask yourself who are you surveying, what kind of information are you looking for, and what might be some of the obstacles in the way of an accurate data set. Of course, we recommend running this workshop with an expert in human behavior to make sure you have all your bases covered!
Diversify Questions. No one likes to fill out a repetitive survey— change up the questions and the formats to keep your respondents engaged. You can swap between a mix of binary response questions (yes or no) with those that offer a range of responses with checkboxes, which will keep the participants’ brains focused on the task at hand instead of zoning out.
Allow Participants to Say “No.” This is a simple, yet powerful solution to ensure you’re getting accurate data. Allowing participants the power to say “no” or “I’m not sure,” will help you avoid those respondents who don’t have insightful commentary on this particular question.
Avoid Question-Wording Bias. The best way to avoid this type of bias is to balance the response options between an equal amount of positive and negative options. If you ask a survey respondent a question like, “It’s ok to eat ice cream once a week, right?” This will surely solicit a skewed and biased response.
Avoid Emotionally Charged Terms. Ideally, surveys are designed with neutral language wherever possible. Adding in active verbs like “smash” or “brutalized” are sure to elicit an emotional response from a participant.
Why You Want to Avoid Response Bias
Avoiding response bias is crucial because it compromises the validity and reliability of survey data, which leads to inaccurate conclusions and potentially misleading insights. Response bias distorts the true representation of the population being studied, as it skews the distribution of responses away from what would be expected in the absence of bias. This undermines the integrity of the research findings and can have serious implications for decision-making based on the survey results.
Is Response Bias a Sampling Error?
Response bias is not classified as a sampling error per se. Sampling error refers to the variability that occurs when a sample is selected from a population rather than surveying the entire population. It is inherent in any sampling process and can be quantified using statistical methods.
Response bias, on the other hand, occurs when the responses from the selected sample do not accurately reflect the true characteristics or opinions of the population due to systematic errors in the data collection process. While both sampling error and response bias can affect the accuracy of survey results, they arise from different sources and may require distinct strategies for mitigation.
How to Minimize Response Bias
Eliminating response bias can be almost impossible. However, some measures can be taken to minimize response bias and ensure that the data you are collecting is as accurate as it can be. Here are some steps you can take to minimize response bias:
Use randomized sampling techniques: Employing sampling methods such as systematic sampling helps ensure that every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected for the survey. This reduces the likelihood of voluntary bias and ensures that the sample is representative of the population.
Guarantee anonymity and confidentiality: Assure respondents that their responses will remain confidential and anonymous. This can encourage honesty and reduce social desirability bias, as respondents feel more comfortable providing truthful answers without fear of judgment.
Use multiple response formats: Incorporate a variety of response formats, such as multiple-choice, open-ended, and Likert scales. Offering different response options allows respondents to choose the format that best reflects their opinions or experiences, reducing the likelihood of response bias.
By implementing these strategies, researchers can help mitigate response bias and improve the quality and reliability of survey data.
Let InMoment Reduce Response for You
At InMoment, we believe the best experience programs are a combination of best-in-class technology + human expertise. And at InMoment, we’ve got both of these covered:
Solution #1: Take Advantage of InMoment’s Best-In-Class Tech
InMoment’s Experience Improvement (XI) Platform is made up of a series of applications to help you design the perfect survey and come up with results that help your business actually improve experiences for customers and employees.
Specifically, InMoment’s patented, AI-powered Active Listening Studio is used to, well, actively listen to survey respondents when they are filling in their answers. The application is designed to encourage rich conversations by listening and responding to customers in real-time, eliciting not only more, but more valuable responses. One example of this is prompting the respondent to “share more.” For instance, if the question is, “Tell me about your experience in-store today,” you can set up parameters and triggers in the Active Listening Studio to ensure the customer provides feedback of 200+ characters.
Wondering what kind of results InMoment clients have seen? Using the Active Listening Studio to revamp its listening, a leading global retailer increased survey response rates by 37% and response length by 38%. This meant more and better customer-sourced guidance for every department across the organization.
Solution #2: Leverage InMoment’s Human Expertise
At this stage in the customer experience landscape, we can’t solve problems using technology alone. True innovation often requires a human touch.
InMoment is made up of lots of people, and some of those are data science experts. Yes, we’re experts in CX, EX, and MX, but more importantly—we’re experts in human behavior. Our data scientist- and PhD-led Strategic Insights team are the best in the business when it comes to helping our clients design and execute surveys without response bias. Don’t take our word for it though! In a recent Forrester Wave report, InMoment was classified as a leader!
Response Bias: A Recap
When it comes to surveys, customer experience practitioners should avoid response bias at all costs. And there are so many types to look out for! Whether it’s hostility bias, recency bias, or non-response bias, all types of bias can skew your data set and affect your overall experience improvement goals. The end result of a survey without response bias is cleaner data, more accurate insights, and a clearer picture of how to improve experiences for customers and employees.
InMoment is here to help you every step of the way with our award-winning customer experience platform that combines best-in-class technology and experts in data science and human behavior.
For as long as there has been business, there have been customers. And for as long as there have been customers, businesses have had to prioritize creating a positive customer experience. The customer experience—how buyers feel about their collective interactions with a brand—defines and motivates customer action. It sets the tone for the entire company/consumer relationship. But with the advent of the information age and the communication technologies that support it, a new facet of customer experience has emerged: digital experience.Â
What Is Digital Experience?
Digital experience (also called digital customer experience or abbreviated as DX) is an extension of traditional customer experience. But where customer experience takes every interaction into account, the digital experience focuses more specifically on those interactions that occur with digital touchpoints. This includes communicating with a brand via social media, making a purchase online, receiving an email or text confirming an order, providing user feedback on online channels, using a company app, operating a digital kiosk or point-of-sale terminal, or even simply visiting an organization’s webpage.
In other words, these touchpoints include a broad range of interactions and are constantly growing to encompass an ever-greater portion of the customer journey. As such, a digital experience is a powerful tool for shaping essential interactions.
Why is Digital Customer Experience Important?
The digital customer experience has become an essential part of the way that consumers navigate the marketplace. It is common for consumers to switch channels multiple times throughout the course of an interaction. They don’t view a transaction as an online experience, a mobile app experience, or a customer service experience, they view it as one continuous experience that they had. Your brand needs to deliver on all fronts in order to create a memorable experience for these customers. Not only will it make your business better, but in the coming years, it will be the only way your business can survive. Let’s get into the details.
Customer Expectations
First of all, customers want and are coming to rely on the digital experience. They have high expectations for a brand’s online experience and use your online presence and quality to gauge how trustworthy your brand is. They need and want websites that are easy to navigate, have quick load times, and offer a personalized experience.
Competitive Advantage
Creating a unique and positive digital experience helps brands set themselves apart from competitors, too. When people start shopping for something, like say a new pair of headphones, they are going to first go online to see what is available to them, research pricing, and compare brands. Your brand has to have an online presence to be a competitor, and if you want customers to actually choose your product or service, you need to have a robust and thoughtful digital customer experience.
Being online with your business evens the playing field; having a great digital customer experience puts your brand on top. Customers will go with well-designed websites, brands that pay to be more visible through SEO efforts, companies with helpful and high-ranking content, and services with plenty of customer reviews and other types of social proof. If you want your company’s services to rise to the top, then you need to provide a seamless, engaging, and robust digital customer experience that will make consumers choose you over other competitors that are just one click away.
Brand Reputation
A good digital customer experience is critical to a brand’s reputation. Word spreads fast in the age of social media and a bad digital experience can hurt a brand’s reputation. The better customer experiences your consumers have, the more you can fortify your brand reputation. This means prioritizing positive interactions with products and services, engaging with people online, implementing customer feedback, and more. From the first ad or social media content a customer engages with to the checkout button on your website, the digital customer experience is what shapes your presence online and ensures that your brand reputation is protected.
A well-designed digital experience can increase customer engagement and interaction with a brand. Interactive features, personalized content, and social media integration can foster meaningful connections and encourage customers to actively participate and share their experiences with others.
InMoment’s digital experience software can help lay out a well-designed online experience that increases site conversions, identifies web experiences that impede user interactions, and ultimately creates a higher customer lifetime value.
Factors that Impact Digital Experience
Because digital experience is an extension of customer experience, it is shaped by many of the same factors. These include the following:
Usability How much effort does the interaction demand on the part of the user? Is the digital interface intuitive, or are there areas where a user might become confused or frustrated?
Availability Does the touchpoint conform to user time demands? Is it accessible when the user needs it?
Performance What kind of time commitment does the touchpoint represent? Does it load quickly? Is it responsive to user commands?
Achievement How well does the touchpoint help the user achieve their goals? Do they come away from the experience feeling as though it was successful?
Pain Points Are there any errors, non-functioning components, frustrating interactions, or other hurdles standing in the users’ way as they attempt to interact with the touchpoint?
Emotion How did the customer feel about the interaction overall? Would they consider it positive, or was it a negative experience?
Taken together, each of these factors points toward a single element vital to digital experience: seamlessness.
Why Is It Important to Offer a Seamless Digital Experience?
As previously addressed, the number of digital touchpoints a customer may choose to interact with is constantly growing. And as digital communications channels continue to supplant traditional ones, even the most basic of interactions will soon depend at least partially on digital technologies. Perhaps even more relevant is the fluidity with which customers now transition between channels. The customer journey is no longer a single, straight path; it’s a complex web that must coalesce every digital channel into a unified experience.
But as intricate as these new journeys may be, it is essential that this increased complexity not get in the way of the customer’s ability to accomplish their goals. Users aren’t interested in the differences between channels or the specific challenges associated with digital interactions — they simply want to make a purchase or investigate a solution, and they will use whatever channels are most convenient to them at that moment.
With this in mind, the importance of offering a seamless digital experience becomes much clearer. Customers don’t want to restart (or even slow down) their journey simply because they decided to jump on their smart device or transition to a social platform. They crave consistency, efficiency, and flow, and any interruption is an unwanted intrusion.
What does this mean for businesses? It means that no matter how or where a customer decides to make contact, they should ultimately encounter the same, seamless experience where they can resume their journey without having to reconstruct the path.
Of course, while meeting customer goals and fulfilling their expectations is a worthy objective in and of itself, the right approach to digital experience also carries with it a number of business advantages:
A seamless digital experience provides increased opportunities for gathering customer data and user feedback. By expanding on digital touchpoints and incorporating online channels smoothly into the customer journey, you not only give a voice to those who might otherwise go unheard, but you also exponentially increase the amount of user data available to apply toward marketing, sales, and overall company strategy.
Digital interactions are more than just another way to connect with a business — they’re the most popular way. Unmatched in terms of convenience and capability, digital channels are the preferred method, a position that has only become more stable following the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Today, 8 in 10 consumers (or 81%) plan to increase or maintain their online usage even after COVID restrictions have been fully lifted. Improving the digital experience, therefore, is more important than ever for companies that want to meet customers on their terms.
You might not suspect this from the flood of advertisements that clog news feeds and interrupt television programs, but traditional advertising is not as effective as it once was. In fact, Forbes reports that a staggering 96% of people are distrustful of ads. A positive digital experience, on the other hand, gives companies a more direct and less suspect avenue for engaging potential buyers. Instead of telling customers what they should do, the organization becomes a trusted partner working with the consumer to reach a satisfactory solution.
The days when customers would accept subpar digital experiences are long gone. Today’s buyers expect seamlessness, consistency, and personalization when they interact with businesses online. Simply put, the bar has been raised, and those businesses that fall short in the digital experience department are likely to be left behind. Brands with higher user satisfaction rankings for at least three years grow revenues 2.5 times faster and deliver up to 500% more shareholder returns over the following decade.
Each of these advantages leads to and reinforces the same outcome: Increased revenue and improved ROI on customer-facing initiatives.
What Factors Make a Good Digital Experience?
Most businesses agree that a positive digital experience is essential. Still, there’s a big difference between recognizing the importance of a good digital experience and knowing how to provide one. Here, we highlight several elements intrinsic to meeting and surpassing customer expectations online:
Making Omnichannel Your Top Priority
Creating an omnichannel customer experience may be the biggest factor determining the success of any modern digital experience plan. But effective omnichannel doesn’t happen on its own; it takes dedicated planning and constant refinement to ensure that every channel is connected, consistent, and capable of providing a seamless user experience. Standardize your brand presence and pick up the thread of the customer journey regardless of when, where, or how your customers reach out.
Following Up on Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is essential to improving the digital experience — if something is failing to meet expectations or if a change significantly improves the experience, the customers are the ones who can give you the most objective reports. So, when they come to you to discuss the situation, don’t let it hang in the air. Follow up on every piece of customer feedback. This may be particularly important when addressing negative issues; working together to resolve concerns and then reaching out afterward to make sure that the customer is satisfied can help turn a potentially bad experience into a good one.
With InMoment, getting and analyzing customer feedback has never been easier. Our customer experience platform gives you the ability to collect the strongest signals, generate the richest insights, and drive the smartest actions.
Investing in Long-Term Success
Digital experience is big. The touchpoints it includes are many. The possible ramifications are extensive. On the other hand, this means that seeing the results of any changes to or investments in your digital experience strategy can take time. Make sure that you and any stakeholders within the company are aware of this fact, and that everyone involved has the correct long-term mindset.
Being Transparent with Customers
Business earnings aside, those who benefit most directly from improved digital experience are the customers. As you invest in smoothing out their journey, don’t be shy about sharing. Tell your customers what you’re doing and why. Communicate with them and let them know how a feedback loop is helping optimize their experience. Above all, treat your audience as a partnership; when customers feel like they have a more active role in the business, they become invested in the success of the brand.
Breaking Down Silos
Providing a good digital experience demands buy-in and coordination throughout your entire organization. This requires unrestricted access to relevant information, which simply is not possible when departments and tools are siloed. Data and communication silos are the natural enemies of centralizing and optimizing the customer digital experience—if you’re going to work toward omnichannel, those silos will have to go.
Improving Constantly
The digital landscape is constantly evolving—your strategy needs to evolve along with it. Always be on the lookout for areas where you could be improving. This means collecting customer feedback and analyzing customer experience metrics, but it also means trying new layouts and approaches and charting their effectiveness in terms of helping the buyer achieve their goals. This will give you the insights you need to keep your strategy moving forward.
Features to Improve Your Digital Customer Experience
While it is important to invest in long-term success, be transparent with customers, and break down silos, there are also some technical aspects that need to be addressed to ensure that you are actively working to improve your digital customer experience.
Intuitive Interface
A user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate and understand can significantly enhance the digital experience. Make it easy for customers to find what they are looking for and answer their questions with little effort. If your website looks, feels, or moves in a clunky or confusing manner, people won’t even become frustrated—they will simply leave and head to a website that is easier to navigate. Clear navigation, consistent design elements, and logical layouts contribute to ease of use.
Tip: Try providing a searchable database for FAQs and helpful resources and make sure your navigation bar offers the right shortcuts and links that will address your consumer’s pain points. Make sure checking out is easy and logical and that consumers know exactly what they are getting by engaging with your brand.
Responsive Design
Ensuring that the digital platform works seamlessly across various devices and screen sizes improves accessibility and usability. Responsive design adapts the layout and functionality to provide an optimal experience on smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
Fast Loading Times
Slow loading speeds can frustrate users and lead to abandonment. Optimizing performance through efficient coding, content delivery networks (CDNs), and image compression can improve loading times and overall user satisfaction.
Accessibility Features
Making the digital experience accessible to users with disabilities is essential for inclusivity. Features such as screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and alt text for images enable individuals with diverse needs to access and interact with the platform.
What Factors Get in the Way of a Good Digital Experience?
Unfortunately, there are a lot of hurdles that can trip up an otherwise positive digital experience. Here’s a list of some of the most common that you will need to watch out for:
Confusing user interface (UI)
Content not optimized for mobile screens
Difficult or non-intuitive navigation
Difficulty resolving support requests
Distracting pop-up messages or advertisements
Hidden fees or other unexpected costs
Illegal or secretive data collection practices
Improperly coded input fields
Inconsistent brand voice between channels
Delayed responses to queries
Lack of payment options
Language barriers
Lost or delayed orders
Poor web performance
Scrolling issues on mobile devices
Touchpoint outages
Unfriendly or unhelpful brand representatives
Unwanted or overly frequent email or text messages
Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list, which is why it’s so important to be open and responsive to customer feedback. Your customers will tell you where the journey runs into problems. Then it’s simply a matter of revising the digital experience to meet the users’ expectations.
How to Measure Digital Customer Experience
In order to measure the success of your digital customer experience, you first need to decide on the metrics that matter the most to your business. By aligning digital customer experience metrics with overarching business strategies, your organization can ensure that your measurement efforts are not only meaningful but also actionable. For example, if you are prioritizing customer retention, you may focus on metrics such as customer lifetime value, repeat purchase rate, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge the effectiveness of your digital interactions in fostering long-term loyalty and advocacy.
Moreover, as digital customer experience continues to evolve, you must remain agile in your approach to measurement, regularly reassessing and refining your chosen metrics to adapt to changing market dynamics and consumer preferences. By adopting a data-driven mindset and leveraging insights gleaned from these key performance indicators, organizations can iteratively enhance their digital strategies and deliver exceptional experiences that resonate with customers and drive sustainable growth.
What A Great Digital Customer Experience Looks Like in Action
A great digital customer experience seamlessly blends various elements to create a harmonious interaction. In a perfect world, the customer accesses a digital platform that has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, the experience feels tailored to them, and their experience is consistent across channels.
To exemplify what a great digital customer experience looks like, let’s look at a guest’s experience with a hospitality brand. The guest visits the hotel’s mobile website or app to book a room. The interface is user-friendly, with clear descriptions, images, and pricing. The guest receives personalized recommendations based on their preferences, such as room type, amenities, and location.
After booking, the guest receives a confirmation email or message with all the details of their reservation. They also receive a pre-arrival guide with information about the hotel, local attractions, and transportation options.
Upon arrival, the guest can choose between traditional check-in at the front desk or using a mobile check-in feature on the hotel’s app. If they opt for mobile check-in, they receive a digital room key on their smartphone, allowing them to bypass the front desk and go straight to their room.
In their room, the guest finds a personalized welcome message on the TV screen or a digital tablet. If the guest needs assistance or recommendations during their stay, they can easily reach out to the hotel’s virtual concierge through the app or website.
This experience represents an experience where the business met the customer where they were and did everything to accommodate their various needs and travel references. When creating a digital experience for your brand, keep in mind the different ways in which customers may want to engage with you, and be sure to set up your customer experience program to account for that.
Why Do You Need A Digital Customer Experience Strategy?
A digital customer experience strategy is a must-have for organizations that are looking to increase customer acquisition and retention. Customers increasingly prefer to interact with businesses digitally, whether it’s through websites, mobile apps, social media, or other online channels. As a matter of fact, 74% of customers expect any service that would be available in person or over the phone to be available online.
A well-executed digital customer experience strategy can differentiate a business from its competitors by delivering exceptional experiences that delight customers and keep them coming back. Furthermore, The quality of a business’s digital customer experience directly impacts its image and brand reputation. A positive experience can enhance brand perception, increase customer trust, and generate positive word-of-mouth referrals.
A digital customer experience strategy also offers businesses the flexibility to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, customer preferences, and emerging technologies. This enables businesses to stay agile and responsive, ensuring that they can pivot and evolve to meet evolving customer needs.
How to Improve Your Digital Customer Experience Strategy
If you already have a digital experience strategy, then you are on the right track. However, these strategies are not a one-and-done thing. They need to be continuously monitored and improved in order to realize the best results for your business. Here are some things you can do to improve your digital customer experience strategy:
Data-driven Insights: Leverage data and predictive customer analytics to gain insights into customer behavior, interactions, and engagement across your digital touchpoints. You can use these insights to identify and prioritize areas of improvement.
Optimize the User Experience (UX): No matter your product or service, you will not succeed. You can optimize the user experience of your digital platforms by conducting usability tests, A/B testing, and user research.
Create Personalized Experiences: By leveraging customer data and insights, businesses can deliver tailored content, recommendations, and offers that resonate with individual customers. This can be achieved through techniques such as dynamic website content, personalized emails, targeted advertising, and product recommendations based on past behavior. The goal is to make customers feel understood and valued, leading to increased engagement and satisfaction.
Employee Training and Engagement: It is important to invest in training and empowering employees to deliver results. Ensure that frontline employees are knowledgeable about digital platforms and best practices for engaging and assisting customers across digital channels.
By following these steps and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, your business can enhance the existing digital customer experience strategy to deliver exceptional experiences that drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth.
Make Every Customer Experience an Omnichannel Experience
Digital devices, channels, and expectations are growing, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. As such, the line that once separated customer experience from digital experience no longer exists. Instead, the modern customer journey is all-encompassing — an omnichannel experience to help ensure a streamlined and supportive customer journey for every buyer. By optimizing the digital experience, you’ll be setting the groundwork for satisfied customers and improved returns for your business.
Want to learn more about digital experience transformation and how your organization can develop a successful digital strategy? Access Your Digital Experience Transformation Roadmap ebook and if you’re ready to take the digital experience further than ever before, book a demo with InMoment today!
References
Fullstory. Investing in your digital experience matters: 3 takeaways from our consumer survey. (https://www.fullstory.com/blog/digital-experience-consumer-survey/). Access 3/12/2024. Â
Forbes. 7 Reasons People Hate Your Ads And What Do About It. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/avidan/2022/06/27/7-reasons-people-hate-your-ads-and-what-do-about-it/?sh=6110612a4eaa). Access 3/12/2024.Â
Harvard Business Review. Are You Undervaluing Your Customers? (https://hbr.org/2020/01/are-you-undervaluing-your-customers). Access 3/12/2024.Â
Salesforce. State of the Connected Customer Report. (https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-the-connected-customer/). Accessed 3/21/2024.
A well-crafted automotive reputation management strategy is essential for any auto brand looking to build trust, foster customer loyalty, and thrive in a competitive market environment.
With online reviews, social media comments, and public customer feedback making a major impact on the reputation of automotive businesses — car dealerships, auto repair shops, service centers, parts retailers, etc. — brands must recognize that the ability to manage their digital channels and digital reputation is a crucial success factor. Online reviews, a platform for consumers to discover and assess auto services brands, can particularly influence consumer decisions from the start of their customer journey.
According to research:
95% of automotive shoppers rely on online resources to gather information, bypassing dealerships as their starting point.
67% of consumers see reviews as influential when choosing a new auto service.
91% use reviews to find a car dealer and find vehicle maintenance.
Automotive consumers visit an average of 4.2 websites in their purchasing process. Oftentimes, they will use multiple devices throughout this process: the average automotive shopper spends 33% of their research time on a mobile device.
54% of car buyers would pay more for a better buying experience. On the other hand, 76% of consumers will stop doing business with you after just one bad experience.
Given these stats, it’s no surprise that sales-oriented corporations are taking a backseat to tech innovators, customer experience leaders, and automotive brands with a strong digital presence and great online reputation. To get ahead, your organization must commit to delivering seamless digital experiences, build a strong foundation for automotive reputation management, and invest in technology that will better engage consumers and make every part of the customer journey pain-free, even long before they set foot in your physical locations.
The Importance of Reputation Management for Automotive Businesses
By managing your brand reputation and establishing a strong digital presence, your company can get ahead of the competition and drive customer acquisition.
Improved brand perception. The automotive industry relies heavily on brand perception. Positive perceptions lead to increased sales and customer loyalty, while negative perceptions can harm sales and brand value. Automotive online reputation management helps shape and maintain a positive image, ensuring that consumers view your brand favorably across all the digital channels that they use.
Increased trust and reliability. Trust is a significant factor in the automotive sector, as consumers make significant investments in vehicles. A strong reputation for reliability and quality builds trust with customers, leading to repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth referrals.
Better protection against reputational threats. With the rise of online review platforms and social media, consumers have more power than ever to share their experiences and opinions. An effective automotive reputation management strategy involves monitoring and responding to reviews and customer feedback on platforms like Google (via Google reviews), Yelp, Edmunds, Cars.com, and DealerRater. Addressing negative feedback promptly and professionally can mitigate damage to the brand’s reputation.
Proactive crisis management. The automotive industry is susceptible to various crises, such as recalls, safety issues, or environmental controversies. Effective reputation management involves having a crisis communication plan in place to address these issues transparently and efficiently, minimizing the impact on the brand’s reputation.
Customer experience improvement. Managing your brand reputation involves listening to and acting on the Voice of the Customer. This is a valuable source of insight into how your company can deliver experiences that reflect the lives of their customers. With these insights in place, your organization can make the transition from digital strategy guesswork to streamlined research processes and personalized, customer-centric marketing.
Automotive Online Reputation Management: Best Practices
By implementing the following best practices, automotive businesses can effectively manage their online reputation, build trust with customers, and maintain a positive brand image in the digital age.
Proactively Manage Your Digital Presence
As part of your automotive reputation management strategy, regularly monitor review websites, social media platforms, automotive-related forums, and automotive-specific websites for mentions of your brand, products, and services. Use tools like Google Alerts or specialized reputation management software to stay informed about what customers are saying about your business.
It’s also crucial to claim and manage your brand’s local business listings: think of this as a way of planting your brand’s flag across all the digital properties where potential customers are looking for you.
Local listings serve as powerful marketing assets that can do wonders for your brand. They can do the same job as traditional advertising and marketing, but where offline or print efforts may fall short — specifically: getting your automotive business found online — a sound local listing management strategy can make the most impact. On the other end of the spectrum, incomplete and inconsistent listings, as well as listings with bad or outdated data, can confuse and misdirect consumers and impact your traffic and revenue performance.
By creating and claiming your listings, you gain a greater level of control over what’s being said about your brand — and therefore how it’s being perceived by searchers.
Respond to Online Reviews and Customer Feedback
Success in managing your automotive company’s reviews starts with the commitment to becoming a responsive brand. According to InMoment’s 2024 Automotive Reputation Benchmarks Report:
Close to 50% of customers will visit a business location again when they see the company responding to negative reviews.
The highest-performing brands in auto respond to reviews within 1.21 days, while the median group responds to reviews within 3.25 days.
Your team must know how to respond to negative reviews as well as positive feedback. The sooner you can get back to your customer, the greater your chances of improving the situation. Avoid getting defensive or confrontational, and instead, offer genuine apologies, explanations, and solutions to rectify the situation. Demonstrating a willingness to listen and improve can turn dissatisfied customers into brand advocates.
For brands with multiple locations represented by multiple business listings and profiles across multiple directories and review websites, responding to reviews presents a challenge — especially without an effective automotive review management program in place.
Online reputation management software can solve this problem and help your organization stay on top of what car buyers are saying. With the right solution, you can aggregate all of your locations’ reviews within one dashboard, streamline your review management workflow, and send personalized, even automated responses to reviews across your locations.
Add Reviews to Your Marketing Infrastructure
Incorporating reviews into your external communications and brand messaging — whether it’s on your website, social media profiles, online listings, dealership pages, or search and display advertising — can boost the performance of your marketing campaigns and automotive reputation management strategy. Adding reviews on your own brand website can even improve your conversation rates, decrease bounce rates, and improve your ad quality scores.
Another way to leverage customer feedback is to highlight positive customer testimonials, case studies, and success stories on your website, social media channels, and marketing materials. Positive endorsements from satisfied customers can help build credibility and trust with potential buyers.
Generate Car Buyer Feedback by Asking for Reviews
In today’s multichannel world, car shoppers and owners actively seek information from all types of sources to guide their purchase decisions. Organizations that are highly visible in search results and on social media enjoy a natural advantage. However, just because your auto brand ranks number one on Google or has 1,000 more Facebook likes and Twitter followers than your competitors does not necessarily mean it has gained the trust of consumers.
One of the key factors to successful reputation management for automotive is your ability to have a steady stream of reviews. You won’t always generate reviews organically over time, so it’s crucial to have a strategy in place for proactively asking for reviews from customers.
Point of sale: Dealerships and service centers can see the most success in generating more reviews when doing so at the point of sale. Asking for a review right after the sale is finalized ensures that the reviewer’s experience is fresh on their minds, and leads to an increase in review velocity.
Email, SMS: Automated review requests via email or SMS after the service is complete should give the customer time to reflect on their experience before leaving valuable feedback. A trigger can be built into an existing workflow to automatically send the review request post-service to thank the customer for their business. This can serve as a valuable customer service touchpoint in the buyer’s journey.
Landing page: Create a page on your business’s website specifically for gathering reviews. Reviews on this landing page are considered first-party reviews, which can help boost conversion rates while also improving your search engine performance.
Act on Insights to Improve Customer Experience
Structured feedback and rating scores can be great indicators for reputational performance, but the game-changing insights are those hidden in your unstructured feedback.
Analyzing unstructured data contained in reviews should help your brand understand what you’re doing well and what areas need improvement. To truly understand customer needs and desires, consider investing in predictive customer analytics that can facilitate the discovery of real-time insights from unstructured feedback.
By capitalizing on major pain points and proactively improving customer experiences, your business can easily get ahead of the competition.
How to Positively Impact Your Automotive Brand Reputation
At a time of disruption and changing consumer preferences, organizations that strategically allocate their resources to strengthen their customer experience focus enjoy a better reputation and stand to gain an edge over the competition.
The path to successful reputation management for automotive therefore begins with an organizational commitment to customer experience.
Car Dealership Reputation Management
The key is to make experience — not sales — the priority. The sales process no longer begins when a potential buyer arrives at the dealership. This means that you must deliver seamless, persuasive experiences that deliver on their brand promise and go beyond simply selling cars.
Invest in tools that simplify and streamline the entire buying process — from research and planning, through dealership engagement, to the post-sales phase. Improve personalization in all your marketing communications with potential customers so that you can stand out. Commit to becoming a responsive brand on online review websites: today’s consumers identify the best deals before ever stepping foot in a dealership, with 91% relying on reviews before making a dealer selection.
Auto Repair Reputation Management
Auto repair shops should strive to create memorable customer experiences that set them apart from the competition and keep customers returning.
Negative reviews and feedback often stem from not having clear communication. To protect your brand reputation, make sure you establish transparent communication channels with customers. Explain repairs in understandable terms, provide updates throughout the process, and be available to answer any questions or concerns. Implement digital tools such as online appointment scheduling, text message reminders, and digital invoices to streamline the customer experience and keep them informed.
You can even provide educational resources such as blog posts, videos, or workshops to help customers understand basic car maintenance and make informed decisions about their vehicles. This helps establish your thought leadership and industry authority: by providing relevant content to car owners, you can build a brand reputation that inspires consumer trust and confidence.
Reputation Management for Auto Parts Retailers
Just like with automakers and suppliers, a reputation management strategy for auto body and paint services should also bring careful thought into ways companies can simplify and streamline the consumer’s decision-making process.
This means investing in a user-friendly website and mobile app where customers can easily browse products, check availability, and place orders. Provide detailed product descriptions, specifications, and compatibility information to assist customers in making informed purchases.
The development of staff and support resources is also paramount. Train staff members to provide expert advice and assistance to customers, and equip them with in-depth product knowledge and troubleshooting skills to help customers find the right parts for their vehicles. Apart from promptly addressing customer inquiries, concerns, and issues to ensure a positive shopping experience, it’s also a good idea to offer responsive customer support through multiple channels, including phone, email, and live chat.
Car Rental Services Reputation Management
Great customer experiences lead to a stronger brand reputation. This holds true for car rental companies and service providers, too.
Regardless of the types of cars in your fleet, quality fleet maintenance is a must: ensure that rental vehicles are well-maintained and regularly serviced to minimize breakdowns and provide a safe and reliable driving experience. Maintain high cleanliness standards for all rental vehicles, both inside and out. Regularly clean and sanitize vehicles between rentals to provide a hygienic environment for customers.
To avoid negative reviews and feedback, implement all the steps that make the entire process of renting a car as easy and pain-free as possible for your customers. Be transparent about pricing, including rental rates, additional fees, and insurance costs. Avoid hidden charges and surprise fees to build trust with customers. Also, if possible, provide flexible pickup and drop-off locations, including airport terminals, hotels, and designated rental offices. Offer extended operating hours to accommodate customers’ schedules.
Report
Automotive Online Reputation Benchmark Report for 2024
InMoment’s 2024 Automotive Reputation Benchmarks Report examines in great detail the reviews and ratings data of today’s top automotive brands. Download the report to benchmark your performance against industry leaders and discover strategic approaches to managing your online reputation and delivering improved customer experiences.Â
Power Your Automotive Reputation Management Strategy with InMoment
Many of the world’s leading automotive brands and suppliers leverage InMoment to effectively manage their online reputation in ways that attract customers and drive business growth. The heart of your company’s reputation management strategy should lie in your ability to engage with customers, listen to what they’re saying online, and show appreciation for their feedback. With the right approach and with InMoment as your technology partner, your brand can leverage reviews and feedback to grow a strong online reputation, outperform your competitors, and make a positive impact on the bottom line.
References
Invoca. “44 Statistics Automotive Marketers Need to Know in 2024” (https://www.invoca.com/blog/automotive-marketing-statistics) Access 03/19/2024.
Learning how to ask for a review can do wonders for your brand. Reviews help build your online reputation, bring added credibility to your company, amplify your search presence, and provide the kind of social proof that’s essential to influencing purchase decisions.
Reviews are also an important source of valuable feedback about your products, services, and overall customer experience. Positive reviews highlight what you’re doing well while negative reviews help pinpoint areas that need improvement. By learning how to ask for reviews, organizations can actively contribute to a feedback loop that should help teams identify strengths and weaknesses and make necessary adjustments to enhance their offerings.
Why Ask Customers for Reviews?
When you deliver experiences that customers love, they won’t hesitate to vouch for you. All you have to do is ask.
It’s important to ask for reviews because they’re essential to your audience’s purchase decisions. This isn’t to mention the wide range of benefits that a steady flow of reviews brings to your business.
Reviews support your brand reputation management strategy. A stream of 5-star reviews from customers helps showcase the best that your brand has to offer. It also creates powerful social proof for inspiring shopper confidence and driving sales.
Asking for reviews often leads to high ratings. According to research by InMoment, reviews generated by review requests produce higher ratings (average of 4.34 stars) than unprompted reviews (3.89 stars).
Reviews are one of the most important factors that determine your search performance. Reviews improve your brand’s search visibility. Most review websites and search engines prioritize businesses with a high volume of positive reviews, which can lead to better rankings and increased exposure to potential customers. In particular, your review signals — such as review count, ratings, review text, and review responses — are factored into organic and local search rankings.
Learning how to request a review is a great way to perform customer outreach. It encourages customer engagement and fosters a sense of community around your brand. When your customers feel that their opinions are valued, they are more likely to engage with your company and become loyal advocates.
Review requests can activate your brand promoters. By encouraging your customers to write reviews, you can convert the happiest, most satisfied ones into vocal promoters and word-of-mouth catalysts who’ll put in a good word about your brand.
How to Ask for a Review: Best Practices and Examples
Your customers are often just a few clicks away from writing a great review of your business. Let’s explore some of the most effective ways to ask customers for reviews.
Ask for Reviews via Email
A great way to get more reviews is by sending review request emails. These emails can be in the form of customer feedback surveys or just a simple message with a link where customers can leave a review.
If you’re just getting started with how to ask customers for reviews, email should be at the top of your list of channels. According to InMoment research, as much as 70% of reviews come from post-transactional review request emails. Using this method also means you can tie your reviews to transactions that actually happened (transactions through which you were able to collect customer email addresses) — lending valuable authenticity to your reviews.
Here’s an example of how to ask clients for reviews via email:
Always remember to keep your message short and simple. Avoid unnecessary questions or phrases that your customers are unlikely to understand. If you would like them to review your company on a specific review website, say so explicitly and provide clear instructions on how to do it.
How to Ask for Reviews: Examples of Subject Lines
We’d Love Your Feedback!
Got a Minute to Share Your Experience with Us?
Help Us Improve. Leave a Review Today.
How Did We Do? Leave a Review.
Your Opinion Matters. Review Us Here.
Tell Us What You Think!
Share Your Thoughts and Leave a Review.
Review Request: Your Feedback Counts.
We Want to Hear from You! Review Your Experience with Us.
How to Ask for Reviews: Examples of Email Message Content
“Hi (customer’s name), We hope you enjoyed your recent experience with us. Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us. Would you mind taking a moment to share your thoughts by leaving a review? Just click the link: (review link). Thank you for your support!”
“Dear (customer’s name), Thank you for choosing us! We strive to provide the best service possible, and your feedback helps us achieve that goal. Could you please take a moment to share your experience by leaving a review? Your input means a lot to us. Leave a review here: (review link). We appreciate your help!”
“Hi (customer’s name), We’re thrilled to hear that you’re enjoying our product/service! Your satisfaction is our top priority, and we’d love to hear more about your experience. Would you be willing to share your success story with others by leaving a review? Share your experience here: (review link). Thank you for being a part of our journey!”
“Hi (customer’s name)! Thank you again for choosing our company. It’s our priority to continue providing top-notch service to customers like you. Please leave us a review on our profile on (review site, with a link to your review website profile). It will only take a minute, but your valuable feedback will help us improve and make a huge difference to our company. Thank you!”
Feel free to customize these examples to fit your brand’s tone and style, and remember to keep the message clear, concise, and respectful of your customers’ time.
Request a Review Using SMS Messaging
Did you know that more than half of reviews are written or posted from mobile devices? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the age of voice dictation typing and tweet-sized reviews has also ushered in the growing trend of consumers engaging with brands and writing reviews straight from their phone or tablet.
This means that SMS messaging is also a powerful channel for companies looking to learn how to request a review. SMS open rates hover between 95% to 99%, with an average of about 98%. Additionally, research indicates that an impressive 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes.
To help optimize your response rates and gather valuable feedback from customers, here are some examples of how to ask for reviews via SMS messaging:
“Hello (customer’s name), your recent experience matters to us. Share your feedback by clicking the link below: (review link). Thank you for choosing us!”
“Hi (customer’s name), thank you for your recent visit to our business location. We want to provide you with the best experience possible! To help us, please take a moment to leave your feedback. Click here (review link) to review. Thank you.”
“Hi (customer’s name), we value your opinion. Let us know how we’re doing by leaving a review here: (review link). Your feedback drives our continuous improvement efforts.”
Hello (customer’s name), your opinion matters to us. Could you take 1 minute to leave us feedback on your visit to our (business location)? This (review link) will take you to a quick survey with 3 questions. We appreciate your help!”
These review request templates can encourage customer engagement and enhance the quality of feedback you receive through SMS messaging. Feel free to customize the templates so that they align with your branding and communication style. By leveraging the immediacy and accessibility of mobile platforms and text messaging, your company can foster stronger connections with customers and accelerate experience improvement.
Create Website Landing Pages for Review Requests
To generate and collect valuable review and customer feedback data, a growing number of companies are creating their dedicated landing pages for reviews.
It’s a great way to encourage customers to be more vocal about their experiences. These landing pages can be facilitated through the use of reputation management software, survey forms, or embeddable review widgets on your brand or company website; your developer team can also build a custom page to suit your needs.
When using landing pages, clearly communicate the value of customer reviews and how they contribute to improving your products or services. Use persuasive language to encourage website visitors to leave their feedback. Also, make it simple for customers to submit reviews directly on the landing page. This could be in the form of a rating system, a text box for written feedback, or a combination of both.
Once the review landing pages have been set up, you should identify key touch points at which you can most effectively drive customers to the page. You can even share the link to the page across your social media profiles or give customers a friendly reminder to rate their experience in post-transactional situations.
Ask for Reviews at the Point of Sale
A straightforward way to ask for reviews from customers is by making the request right when they’re completing a purchase or finishing their visit.
Imagine a front-facing staff member wrapping up their interaction with a customer. The staff member hands the customer a device like an iPad or tablet and asks them to fill out a quick review request form.
Asking for reviews at the point of sale is a great way to capture actionable reviews and customer insights just moments after the crucial sales or care experience. It’s also a valuable opportunity for your business to strengthen your customer relationships. Not to mention, it’s a useful review request tactic in situations where you don’t yet have your customer’s contact information.
If a customer has had a negative experience, learning how to ask for a review at the point of sale gives you the opportunity to address their concerns immediately and potentially turn their experience around before it causes damage to your reputation.
It’s essential to approach the request for reviews at the point of sale tactfully. Here are some tips to consider:
Be mindful of timing and the customer’s mood.
Keep the request brief and non-intrusive.
Provide options for leaving feedback (e.g., online form, QR code, paper feedback form).
Ensure compliance with all privacy and security requirements to protect consumer data from unauthorized access and misuse.
Respect the customer’s decision if they choose not to leave a review.
Also, when using a device to request feedback at the point of sale, avoid asking customers to log into their personal review website accounts and getting them to write their reviews on the spot. Instead, stick to a simple form with only a few blank fields to fill, or use a “kiosk mode” program that lets you send the actual review request later, through SMS or email.
This strategy minimizes privacy and security concerns, while also preventing reviews from being generated using the same IP address as your business location. It also lets customers act on the request at their convenience, using their own devices.
Use a Google Reviews Link
According to InMoment research, 64% of consumers say they are likely to check Google reviews (through Google Maps and Search) before visiting a business location — more than any other review site.If you’re looking to enhance your visibility and brand presence with an optimized Google Business Profile, learning how to ask for a Google review with a Google reviews link is a tactic you can employ. A Google reviews link is a direct URL that leads your customers to a specific page on Google Maps where they can read and write reviews of your business locations.
Use this link to encourage customers to leave reviews directly on your Google Business Profile (without them having to search for your business manually). Creating and sharing a review link for Google also gives your company more control over the review process. By providing a direct link, you can guide customers directly to your Business Profile, ensuring they are leaving feedback on the correct listing and minimizing the chance of them getting sidetracked or leaving reviews on the wrong page.
Deploy Review Management Software
For larger organizations with hundreds or thousands of business locations, leveraging an online review management software solution can be key to successful review generation.
InMoment, for example, allows brands to set up automated review request campaigns, and then schedule these requests to be sent out at specific times, such as after a purchase or service interaction. It also allows teams to tailor their messaging and templates to match the brand voice, as well as include personalized elements like the customer’s name or details of their recent interaction with your business. View our automation in action with a live reputation demo.
Review management software can also integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM) system or other databases to pull in customer information automatically. This makes it easy to target the right customers with review requests.
You may also be able to access tools for monitoring and tracking reviews across various platforms, allowing your team to stay on top of what customers are saying and know when and how to respond to negative reviews as well as positive feedback.
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How to Ask Customers for Reviews: Important Things to Consider
There are a few considerations you have to make when learning how to ask for reviews from customers. Just as in other forms of communication with customers, timing is crucial. Other factors to keep in mind include: what to do after successfully generating reviews from requests, ensuring compliance with the terms of use and content guidelines of individual review websites, and whether or not it’s a good idea to incentivize review requests.
When to Ask for Reviews
If you’re trying to get more reviews, you’ll want to optimize exactly when you ask your customers. Based on InMoment research, the best times to ask for reviews are between 2 to 3 PM and 6 to 7 PM.
These are the times consumers are most likely to rate a business on Google. People are often visiting businesses during their lunch break or after work, so it may be the case that these hours are the time that consumers choose to reflect on their experiences.
As far as when not to ask for reviews, the dead hours are from 2 AM to 3 AM. Interestingly enough, from the time people wake up (say, 6 AM to 7 AM) until lunchtime (anywhere between 12 NN to 1 PM), review-writing activity is generally slow, at least relative to the activity that occurs after lunch.
We at InMoment recommend that when asking for reviews, it’s best to send review requests in the afternoon. As mentioned above, another ideal time is to ask customers for reviews shortly after a sales or service transaction.
Personalize Your Review Request
Use the customer’s name and personalize your message based on their recent interaction with your business. A personalized review request feels more genuine and is more likely to resonate with the customer.
Also, be as transparent as possible and let customers know why reviews are important to your company. Explain how their feedback helps improve your products or services and assists other potential customers in making informed decisions.
How to Ensure Compliance with Review Website Guidelines
Your team should identify review websites where your company is allowed to encourage customers to post reviews. Yelp, for example, frowns upon businesses asking customers for reviews; it may hurt your Yelp rating because the website’s automated software may not recommend reviews that seem to be prompted or encouraged by the business.
On the other hand, websites like Tripadvisor and Google welcome review requests from businesses, and even provide free tools for those looking to reach out proactively to customers for reviews.
What to Do After Successfully Getting a Review
When customers submit a review, the most important next step is to respond promptly. Acknowledge and thank the reviewer for their feedback, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative. Make your response personal and specific to the customer’s feedback. Address them by name if possible and reference specific aspects of their review.
If the review reflects a negative customer experience, be sure to act quickly and respond to let the customer know you are working on the issues they pointed out. If the review is positive, your team can still learn from it and gain insights into what people love about your brand. Take note of any common themes or patterns mentioned in reviews and use these to improve your products or services.
Should I Buy or Incentivize Reviews?
While it sounds like a quick and cost-effective solution to grow your online reputation and propel your brand to the top of search results, buying reviews will almost certainly do your company more harm than good. It’s a practice that leads to deceptively biased content, which most review platforms are trained to detect and penalize.
As far as incentivized reviews, asking customers to review your company doesn’t mean you should reward those who do. It’s a practice that regulators caution against. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for example, considers positive third-party reviews as endorsements, and according to the agency, if there is any form of incentive or compensation or close relationship between an individual giving an endorsement and a business receiving it, this should be made explicit. Keep in mind that the FTC also considers it illegal to incentivize reviews even if there’s no requirement that the sentiment of the review should be positive.
Get Results with InMoment’s Review Management Software
The best way to get great reviews is to consistently deliver great customer experiences. Unlock the power of reviews for your brand with InMoment’s review management software. The world’s top brands partner with InMoment to transform their online reputation management strategy — with technology and tools that simply teams’ review request workflow. Start building a community of brand advocates and harness the benefits of asking for reviews today.
