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How to manage customer feedback overwhelm

If you’ve got an onslaught of customer feedback coming in, it can be a challenge to get on top of it all. Whether it’s good or bad, feedback needs to be managed effectively, so here are a few practical tips to help you get back in control of yours. 

Managing large volumes of customer feedback can be made easier by:

  • Integrating systems and processes
  • Utilising metrics and scoring
  • Aggregating data to assess insights
  • Conforming feedback management
  • Centralising platforms

Analyse feedback with metrics

It’s common for customer feedback to be subjective, making it difficult to measure and track. For example, you might have customers telling a customer service representative that they struggled to navigate the brand’s website. While that feedback is valuable, it’s difficult to keep a record of, to assess exactly how unhappy the customer is, and how any changes affect it. So to make that information actionable, you need to use quantitative metrics to track changes and analyse customer sentiment. When choosing which metrics to implement, you need to make sure they’re data-driven, specific, and meaningful to ensure the results can drive tangible change in your Customer Experience. 

The benefit of using metrics and recognised scoring systems is you can quickly process large amounts of data into measurable numbers. This speeds up the decision-making from feedback and enables you to benchmark your performance over time. Example scoring systems include:

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

One of the best metrics to start with is Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) because it helps brands to understand how their customers feel. Using CSAT surveys, brands can easily spot when something is wrong, when things are going well, and what changes influence Customer Experience the most. 

A CSAT question will usually ask the customer to rank on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 how they feel about a particular aspect of their experience. The higher the ranking, the more satisfied they are. 

Customer Effort Scores (CES)  

A Customer Effort Score (CES) quantifies the level of effort it takes customers to interact with a business. These surveys are great at identifying areas of concern so that companies can make improvements quickly. Using CES surveys ensures your brand is aware of problems sooner and able to resolve them before they drive your valued customers away. 

With CES surveys, you can use a range of answer types including draggable options to rank in priority order, a sliding scale, a drop-down menu of possible options, or free text.

Net Promoter Scores (NPS) 

Another popular metric for customer feedback is called a Net Promoter Score which asks customers how likely they are to recommend the business based on their experience. NPS has been a popular option for over 20 years because of its simplicity but many brands have found it isn’t as specific or actionable as the alternatives. If you want to use feedback for tangible change rather than a simple box-ticking exercise, NPS may not be the best choice.  

Address common customer complaints first

If you’re getting hundreds of complaints about the same issue, the best way to get on top of them is to address that issue first Customers are likely to let you know about issues so by listening to them early on, you can ensure fewer customers experience the problem and add to the feedback stream. 

When you’re using feedback metrics like CES and CSAT, you can quickly spot these trends and then track the increase in Customer Satisfaction after you’ve made improvements. Once you’ve resolved the common issue, you’ll notice the amount of feedback about it is dramatically reduced. 

A centralised feedback system can help you spot patterns and address them quickly. If your feedback system uses customised links you can even drill down into where the common issues are coming from. You may find a particular store is consistently receiving feedback about slow service, or that a customer service representative garners comments that they didn’t understand the problem. With aggregated data you can hone in on these patterns more rapidly.

Streamline processes with automation

With large amounts of any type of data, automation is your best friend. In terms of customer feedback, this can include setting up instant workflows for appropriate team members, analysing the feedback quickly, and responding to customers sooner. When you’re receiving a large volume of feedback, this can save you from having to organise it all or combing through to find what you need. 

Automation also limits the risk of human error or bias, which preserves consistency. For example, with Review Tui’s HubSpot integration, it’s simple to send emails in HubSpot and create follow-up tasks, or workflows based on feedback activity, to ensure no customer slips through the cracks. 

Examples of feedback automation include: 

  • Updating a contact’s HubSpot Score based on their star rating. 
  • Triggering an email to thank customers or ask for more information. 
  • Creating customer service tickets to notify team members of any issues. 
  • Adding contacts to categorised lists. 
  • Assigning workflows or tasks to relevant people.

Implement a customer feedback strategy

As with any part of business, it’s important to have a strategy in place for your customer feedback. Fortunately for you, you don’t have to do it alone because we have a free guide to take you through it step by step. 

An effective strategy will include the following: 

Setting goals 

When you use quantifiable metrics and analytics with your customer feedback, you can start to set goals around it. Some great targets to strive for could be to get higher CSAT scores or have an increase in positive online reviews. The key to setting goals is ensuring they’re realistic, measurable, specific, and have a deadline. For example, if your company is receiving average CSAT scores of 2/10 regarding the purchasing experience, your goal could be to raise those scores to 7/10 by the end of the year. 

Closing the customer feedback loop 

When customers give feedback, you must listen to them, follow up on their input, and evaluate the results. This is known as the customer feedback loop and, when done well, it should be a constant cycle of asking, acting, and assessing. 

Use a Customer Feedback Management tool

The most impactful thing you can do for your customer feedback management is adopt a specialised tool to do all the hard work for you. Customer Feedback Management (CFM) can be a lot to handle but a purpose-built platform will take all the hassle out of it and help to streamline the entire process. You can manage your feedback without one, but the time and effort that goes into it would be better spent on improving your business’s processes. A good Customer Feedback Management software will give you everything you need all in one convenient place including built-in metrics, real-time analytics, automation, and survey creation so that you can leverage feedback for positive growth. 

At Review Tui, our goal is to make customer feedback as accessible and actionable as possible. Our software is designed to turn feedback into practical workflows, real-world change, and better customer experiences. 

The Review Tui software features: 

  • A customised survey-creator
  • Real-time reporting
  • Trackable campaign links
  • Hubspot CRM integration
  • PNGs for using feedback marketing 
  • A user-friendly interface 

For invite-only access to the software and more helpful tips, you can register your interest in Review Tui by clicking here. But before we launch, why don't you work on developing a customer feedback strategy that will stick by downloading our free guide?

Download our free customer feedback strategy guide