How to Manage Customer Feedback in 3 Easy Steps - with Examples! (Bonus) ???
Gozde Gorce
CS @Apollo.io - We are Hiring! | Current HBS Online Member | Your coach to transition to tech | CS Leader by day | Yoga Instructor by evening ????♀?
As customer success managers, we hear different feedback daily from our customers. But what do we do with it? What is our role in receiving this feedback?
My goal with this blog post is to provide insights into how to capture, analyze and take action from the feedback.
Benefits of Feedback
In general, the feedback you receive from your customers represents the collective sentiment of how your customers perceive your company's brand and solutions.
As Customer Success Managers, we analyze the feedback, filter through the noise, and amplify it internally to make it actionable.
But why? There are four main tangible benefits of having a solid customer feedback process. It is called the "Voice of the Customer" strategy.
According to Esteban Kolsky, 26 others do not share feedback for every customer who complains. So feedback is precious! Knowing how to manage it for a better customer experience is even more :)
Step 1 - Capture
There are two methods of obtaining customer feedback.
Make sure you regularly check on the NPS scores and survey results or consult with internal teams on your book of business to see if there have been any feedback submissions from your customers.
For formal submissions, feel free to be proactive and reach back to your customers to get more intel on the feedback if it is unclear.?
Step 2 - Analyze
Your role is to share the feedback with the internal stakeholders in a digestible way.
What is the feedback? Why does this matter for the customer? What is the customer trying to solve that they couldn't? It can be feedback about the product, a process, engaging with different teams, or an enhancement on the items.
When your customers share their voice with you, they expect you to listen, act and report back to them. There might be times when you already know the answer and feel free to share the common sentiment on the feedback but make sure that you acknowledge the feedback and thank your customers for taking the time to share this feedback with you. Mention that you will try and advocate for your customer internally with this feedback and report back on what you hear.
Your customers know that most of the time, you are the messenger and the customer's advocate with your company. You are, in many ways, not the decision-maker as you rally on the other teams to deliver value through the products and services. That said, you have control over the experience of how this feedback journey feels for the customer.
Make sure you create a positive feedback loop that drives future feedback from your customers by encouraging and acknowledging input and taking action, so your customers feel heard and understood.
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Let's go through a few examples that show how to share a response to feedback.
Feedback on existing product feature
The customer: "Hey G?zde, I know your product supports XYZ, but my team also needs to use YZX. It looks like currently, this is not something your product provides. How do we go about this? Is there a workaround? I know this is a simple solution, and our engineers should be able to build something within a week, so I think your product managers should implement this in a short time."
CSM: "First of all, thanks for sharing this feedback with me. Let me make sure I understand it correctly.?You repeat back what you hear in your own words to make sure you know the feedback. Next, understand what your customer is trying to achieve.?Also, our product feedback cycles run every XYZ months/quarters. I'm happy to take this to our product team/submit a Feature/Product Request. To be transparent for this quarter, our team has already allocated resources and features on the roadmap for next quarter, so even though this request makes it to the product roadmap, it might take?[XYZ/give an estimated timeline]. So I hope you don't mind if I reach back out once I have more updates.
Feedback on the existing process
The customer: "Hey G?zde, we have had an open ticket with your support team for more than a week now, and it looks like your internal teams are not aligned on the root cause of the issue we inquired about. A response shouldn't take that long. Not having a timely response impacts our response time back to our customers and is not the best experience we have had with your team."
CSM:?"Thanks for sharing this feedback. Let me repeat what you just shared with me to ensure I understand your feedback correctly. It sounds like our support team has taken ZYZ days to respond, and the ticket is still open without any concrete root causes of the issue being communicated to you? Is that right? If that's the case, I will follow up with our support team and escalate the investigation for this ticket so we can get to a solution. For future instances, I will work with our team to make sure they hear this feedback so we can look into areas for improvement to streamline this process for a faster resolution time. Would that work for you?"
Step 3 - Take action!
Taking action is the most critical part after successfully capturing the feedback.?
Here are a few other helpful resources on how to manage customer feedback
Here is a list of customer feedback management platforms:
Books
Do you have questions and want to learn more on how to break into customer success?
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