Customer Feedback Wanted! Addressing 7 Core Questions in Establishing Customer Listening Program

Companies that are more customer input-led (rather than only internal knowledge-led) are always rewarded with higher customer satisfaction, repeat sales, and more new customers (through referrals).

In my role as a Customer Experience (CX) practitioner and consultant, I've encountered NO company that would debate the importance of customer experience for their business success. Everyone wants more customer input to feed business decisions which would lead to better experience for their customers.

However, not every company, especially those in the SMB market, has the means to invest in dedicated CX resources for guidance in establishing an effective customer feedback program.

So, in this article, I'll try to address fundamental questions and provide practical tips that any company, regardless of size, can implement to enhance their customer listening activities. Let’s get started.

Practical Solutions for 7 Core Questions in Customer Listening Programs

1. Where to start with? 3 basic layers of customer feedback

Let’s say you are starting from a blank page or already gather some random feedback from your customers but you want to do this in a more structured way, across your entire customer base to drive relevant improvements.

You can always start small, at a pace that your people could easily adapt and adopt, not overwhelming them (and your customers) with super complex feedback programs. Many companies combine the following three layers of feedback activities as a starting point:

• Relationship feedback: It shows a temperature, the overall health of your relationship with your customers. Periodic online CSAT (customer satisfaction) surveys are an effective tool for this. Few well-constructed questions sent to your entire customer base or some sample could help you understand the overall sentiment of what your customers think & feel about a collaboration with you. While it might not answer all your questions in very detail, it serves as a diagnostic tool, highlighting areas that may need improvement in your customer experience.When constructing such surveys, think from a customer perspective – how they interact with your business. For instance, ask customers about their experience with key touchpoints in their journey - purchasing, onboarding, getting support, etc., rather than about performance of your specific departments.
• Transactional feedback: This is more granular, more specific feedback that you could gather while attaching simple feedback form straight after your customer completes an important touchpoint with you. In a business applications market, typically such touchpoints are about onboarding (from the first experience, customers often judge what their further experience will be), go-live, customer support (the way how you deal with customer issues is one of those critical moments influencing customers’ decisions to stay with you or leave).
• Deep-dive feedback: If you really want to understand your customers' deep needs, thoughts & feelings while interacting with your business, the qualitative interviews where you dive deeper into a subject and have an honest conversation with your customers are the most powerful tool.

2. In what format to ask for a customer feedback?

How to get customer feedback the right way? Not what's convenient for you, but what works best for your customers.

• Go In-App: Liberate the inbox, whenever you can – people are tired of online surveys. Customers might be more likely to respond to in-app surveys than to take their concentration away from what they’re doing that moment to answer an email. Plus, your responses may be more relevant and accurate since your customers don't have to remember what they were doing in your app few days ago. In addition, in-app surveys often get higher response than email surveys nowadays.
• Stick to Email: This works well if important decision-makers of your customers are rarely online using your product. If they might miss an in-app message, sending them an email is still your best choice.
• Try Face-to-Face: In-depth interviews are the best choice for more extensive feedback, though this activity is typically more resource-consuming.

3. How often to collect feedback?

How frequently should we conduct customer surveys? In my view, the rhythm of your surveys should align with your ability to act on feedback and implement tangible enhancements to your customer experience. For instance, if your product undergoes rapid evolution with improvements every two months, a quarterly feedback cycle might be fine. However, if addressing more complex issues and implementing changes takes you around nine months (consider also the additional time for customers to recognize the change), an annual survey might be more suitable.

On the other hand, survey your customers at the right time. For example, send their first survey after they’ve had enough time to experience and understand your product or service. If you want to evaluate specific transactions, like onboarding, ask for a feedback straight after a customer completes this step until their insights are still fresh.

4. How to learn & improve using NPS data?

Net Promoter Score (NPS), along with other metrics such as Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and Customer Effort Score (CES), has become a must-have metric for businesses to drive improvements in customer experience, higher customer retention, and business growth. But how could we learn something and drive decisions from a simple score like NPS?

Quick explanation on NPS model first:

• Promoters are customers who love your brand, products or services, are willing to come back for more and recommend you to others.
• Passives (or Neutrals) are customers who feel quite OK with the experience they received, but they are far less excited compared to Promoters. They might not be loyal assets with lasting value.
• Detractors are customers who are disappointed with their experience. They feel like they got less than they paid for. They might be at the risk to churn or could spread a negative word of mouth to a market.

So, what actions can be taken from NPS measurement to become a better business for your customers?

Firstly, the value of NPS model lies not in the number itself, but rather in insights you gather through the NPS framework. The first thing I would recommend doing is to focus on detractors. Their experience with you was broken, they are unhappy, they might leave you or negatively impact your brand reputation. Reach them out, acknowledge issues and fix it, this way turning them into satisfied customers. I might sound na?ve, but even a disappointed customer can be saved and turned into a loyal customer. Fixing problematic situations can even open you an opportunity to build a stronger relationship.

Secondly, benefit from a positive word-of-mouth from your Promoters. They simply love you, so why not use their enthusiasm to help you create new customers. Engage them in all kinds of advocacy activities you might think of, like asking to:

• Speak with your new prospect and share a reference
• Work together with you on a reference story
• Write a review for your solution on AppSource
• Speak with you on stage in your customer events
• And so on…

Not to forget, though Promoters are super happy with their experience with your product or service, they still can have good ideas for innovations. So, why not use their brainpower for this purpose!

5. What is a good NPS?

The fair answer is - better than you had in your latest evaluation. Don’t compare yourself to your competitors, compare with your own NPS data from previous periods. In the NPS game, the only competitor is you. Monitor your own NPS progress as it shows how consistently you are moving in fixing issues for your customers and better meeting their needs.

6. How to communicate customer feedback with your team

First and foremost, prior to initiating customer feedback and satisfaction measurement initiatives, invest time in educating your team. Clearly articulate the purpose of gathering feedback, where it will be used, and position it as a learning & improving process. Don’t inject fear into this process. To encourage your team to embrace feedback and change their behaviors, they must feel that giving and receiving feedback is a safe and constructive process. If they start feeling some hidden things, they may shift their focus from learning to blame-shifting, excuse-making, or even the worst – to chasing customers and begging them for the best score (which is, in itself, a negative customer experience).

Share feedback privately to allow employees spend time to review evaluations and customer comments - acknowledging successes and analyzing failures. This preparation sets the stage for subsequent feedback discussions with managers or colleagues.

7. Why bother customers with asking for feedback? Why not use customer data instead?

Yes and no. On one hand, yes, definitely customer data can tell you a lot today. Take a look at opportunities that Telemetry alone provides – we don’t need to ask business apps customers anymore what features they use and to what extent. We can also witness many good examples of companies utilizing the data of customer online behaviors to improve their experience straightforward. For instance, some package delivery companies enable their customers to check on the status of their delivery. When the system detects that a customer has checked a delivery status multiple times, the company prioritizes that delivery without asking a customer how urgent it is for them.

Well, we all shall augment our customer feedback programs by incorporating the signals from digital customer data to build a better understanding of our customers. However, we should not pretend that digital observations, customer click patterns can tell us why customers behave the way they do, and what do they think & feel on this way. For this purpose, it’s always beneficial to incorporate into your Voice of Customer program regular traditional deep-dive conversations with your customers to gather more extensive insights.

This was a quick intro into helping you set up a customer listening program. If you still need an advice, more tailored to your specific business, let’s connect for a conversation.

Never stop listening to your customers and improving. Even the best companies have a room for that.