Are you getting as much as you can out of customer feedback? If you are making any of the mistakes below, you could be hurting the number and quality of the reviews you receive.
Asking The Incorrect Questions
If you run a product survey with NPS software, do not merely ask, ‘why did you provide the score you did?’ You might get unhelpful comments, such as ‘great product’ or ‘great business.’
Instead, ask your customers what they think you can improve. This type of question will give you helpful information about how to obtain higher customer satisfaction.
Do Not Ask Them To Rate Specific Attributes
You should not ask customers to rate or comment on various parts of your company. Some companies ask things such as ‘Please rate our sales department.’ This might give you some useful information about the sales department, but it won’t give you actionable feedback about what works and what does not work in the sales department.
Do Not Be Vague
It is always a mistake to have an ‘Any comments’ field. Customers are confused about what to write there. You should always be specific about what you want. If you wish to have suggestions for improvement, ask them. You also can ask what your company can do differently in the future.
Never Be Impersonal
When you are asking for customer reviews, try to be as personal as you can. Write them a personal note with their name about why they should give you a review. Also, mention their last purchase with your company.
Do Not Send Overly Long Surveys
Keep your surveys short. Each survey should not be longer than two or three minutes. But if a customer wants to go into more depth, provide a way to contact you.
Not Mentioning That You Value Their Feeback
If you do not tell the customer that you value their time and feedback, they will not feel like their feedback matters. Be sure to say to them in the invitation or thank you email that their feedback matters.
Do Not Focus On Just The Negative Reviews
As you analyze your survey results, you should not just look at your detractors. You can get excellent feedback from people who offer average to outstanding reviews. Get a strategic view of what is going well and what is not. All of your customer reviews should be analyzed over time.
Don’t Keyword Spot
Keyword spotting means your data is not going to be thoroughly analyzed. No matter how clever you are, it is hard to guess how people may refer to the same thing. Even a linguist will struggle to list all the ways someone can say ‘the product is too expensive.’
A keyword spotting approach can miss many synonyms, so do not use this method to analyze your data.
Don’t Focus On Known Problems
There was a time when Facebook had only a 2.5-star average review in the App Store. The Facebook product team brainstormed all possible things that could go wrong, but they missed some essential things. There was a particular app that was widely used, that caused crashes for millions of Facebook users.
It’s About More Than Volume
It is essential to look at the impact, as well. Some companies look at the most common themes but do not consider the scores related to those themes. For instance, if many passive customers say it is easy to work with you, but promoters do not mention this, working with you efficiently isn’t as big a driver as you think.
Avoiding these errors will help you to ramp up your customer feedback and design better products and services.
