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Customer feedback is very valuable for business improvement. It highlights the things your company does very well, and areas where it could focus on improvement. This insight is even more important because it comes from the very people that spend money with you and therefore are key to the success of the business.
Asking for customer feedback can be problematic for some businesses. Not only do you have to balance the right questions with the right timing but you don’t want to annoy your customers by asking too many times. To combat this, we recommend that you try a number of different ways of asking. Just because you’ve tried one and it hasn’t worked doesn’t mean your customers are resistant to giving feedback. It may just mean you asked at the wrong time using the wrong medium.
In this article, we’ll explore a few different ways you can ask for customer feedback and give you a few ideas on new ways you can connect with customers. Let’s explore our 10 suggestions for how you can ask for customer feedback. Here are the 10 options we're going to cover:
- Feedback links on receipts/invoices
- Post ownership of goods/services
- QR code on the packaging
- Social media
- Automation at opportunity close
- Posters and stickers
- Phone call
- Face-to-face
- Text
- Website chat
Let's go through each in more detail.
Customer feedback links on receipts and invoices
When a sale is complete you’ll either send the customer a digital invoice or a receipt. Digital receipts are becoming more popular as businesses look to reduce their carbon footprint, and customers look to reduce wallet clutter! If you send a digital proof of purchase then you can easily hyperlink to an online survey (like your Review Tui survey). Platforms like Review Tui will even enable you to track how many survey responses have come from that link.
If you still offer printed receipts or invoices then you can print the URL that the user would need to type into their browser on the receipt. This is a little more work than a link people can tap on so we have an alternative idea later on but this is still an option. It’s best to use shortened URLs if you’re going to ask for the user to manually type this in. It’s why all Review Tui links have a shortened version that look like this: app.reviewtui.com/redir/X
Email a few months after the customer has received their item
You can do this through email automation if you use a platform like HubSpot or you can manually send this out if you only have a few sales a week or month but either way it’s a good way to ask for feedback. The timing of this lends itself toward you asking about their life with your product or service and seeing if it met their expectations.
A few months after the sale you want to avoid asking about interactions that happened several months ago so try and keep the topic to things they’ll have at the front of their mind. This is a valuable stage to get feedback because the after-sale glow has likely faded and reality has set in. If the customer is still recommending you to friends and family this far into ownership then you have an excellent customer experience in your business!
QR code on printed receipt or packaging
We promised a better idea for offering customer feedback on printed items was coming, and here it is. While many businesses are moving to digitised receipts and customer communications there are still several applications where print is simply better. Whether it be a printed receipt, beautiful packaging, or instructions on how to get the most out of the new purchase the physical marketing assets rule in this regard.
Luckily, Review Tui makes it very easy to connect customers to your feedback surveys. Create QR code links to any of your surveys with ease. And while QR codes haven’t always been the most popular marketing tool over the years their extensive use during covid-19 for quick sign-in has made many people familiar with their use.
On social media
This is another one where the nature of the survey would need to fit the medium to be successful. Some of your followers might not be customers so if you only want to hear from people that have actually bought from you then this might not be the best channel at all.
However, if you’re interested in asking the general public what their perception of your business is, or for ideas on new products and services then this might be the perfect avenue for your feedback survey.
Automated email when the opportunity closes
Many marketing platforms link in with sales platforms to keep data correct and centralised. HubSpot, for example, has both a sales pipeline and marketing automation. This makes it the perfect tool to align the two in asking customers for feedback at the perfect time.
For example, you can have a customer service email that is sent as soon as a deal opportunity moves to closed. You can even do this for both closed ‘won’ and closed ‘lost’ opportunities. One survey could go to the people that successfully bought from you and ask why they chose you and what you were like to work with. The survey going to ‘lost’ customers could find out more about why they didn’t choose you, and why they went with someone else. These people may feel bad enough about rejecting you to give you something in return, even if it’s just a little bit of feedback.
QR code on a sticker in the store or poster
If you haven’t really used QR codes before it can be tricky to imagine the dozens of ways they’re useful. Think of any situation where a customer has their phone to hand and you want to give them more information than you can realistically print on paper. You might even want to give them an experience paper simply can’t match - like watching a video or seeing information that changes frequently.
This versatility is exactly why QR codes are excellent for customer feedback surveys. You can print them on a menu, a poster, or even have a sticker on someone’s table or any point of sale marketing and any customer can interact with them. Review Tui QR codes have been designed so you can use the same QR code but change the survey they point to, without reprinting all of your POS marketing material.
Phone call
Telephone interviews used to be incredibly popular but have gone out of fashion with the invention of caller ID and customers becoming irritated by cold calls and scammers. However, calling a customer for feedback can still work very well, especially if the customer is uncomfortable using digital channels to leave feedback. It’s better if the call comes from someone the customer is familiar with, like a sales rep or service agent they’ve spoken to before. In these instances, customers can be quite willing to answer a few questions.
The downside of a telephone feedback system is that the customer might feel awkward about giving negative feedback about the company, for fear of being confrontational.
Face-to-face
This may have the same barriers as a phone call in that a customer might be averse to giving negative feedback to someone’s face but it can also work very well. Asking in an interview style the employee can ask a few questions and input the responses into a feedback gathering platform like Review Tui.
Text
Sending a customer feedback survey via text/SMS can work very well, especially if you don’t have access to the contact’s email address. You can use a platform like Twilio to send marketing SMS/text messages to customers and including a Review Tui campaign link will enable them to click through and take your customer feedback survey with a single click.
Through website chat
Finally, one of the most popular methods for getting customer feedback is after they speak with you through your website chat. There are a number of low-cost or free website chat platforms including Zendesk, HubSpot, and Tawk.
Whether you’re answering a customer question about your pricing or resolving an issue they’re having with your product the website chat is a great place to connect and direct people to take an online survey of the experience they had with you. The Review Tui short links make it very easy to include a link in the chat before it ends.
There you have it, 10 ways you can gather customer feedback. Whether you look to implement one or all of them Review Tui could be the perfect platform to collect, review, and analyse customer feedback. To register your interest and get updates on the platform’s development simply click on the button below.
