Overcoming resistance to asking for feedback

We’re guessing that before you made your last purchase, or visited a restaurant you checked the online reviews…Are we right? It’s common practice to browse the web and read a product or service review before you go and spend your hard-earned money.

This can mean looking through images of cafe food to see if it matches up with what’s carefully displayed on the menu, or if you wanted to see if other people feel like the value they received from a product was equal to what was promised by the company selling it.

The need for others to confirm that our purchase will not be a mistake leads back to the term social proof. This is essentially when people from outside of an organisation provide some form of unbiased confirmation that a product is worthwhile. This can come in the form of reviews, photos, social media posts, and more. It validates a business, its products, and its services in the eyes of the general public. It relies on real-life customers to honestly review a company and its offerings to create a positive image for prospective customers.

For a business looking to harness the power of reviews, the most effective way to generate social proof is by getting customers to review your products/services. All in all, customer feedback is now a pertinent part of the customer decision-making process. For many businesses, this means that the more reviews they receive, the better. And it’s not just public reviews, even internal feedback is incredibly beneficial to a business improving and growing. So, how exactly do you get a good portion of your customers to give feedback and/or leave your business a review? Fear not, we’re here to help with our 6 ways to overcome resistance to asking for feedback.

1. Make the feedback process quick, easy, and convenient

The fewer obstacles there are placed in front of a customer, the more likely they are to leave feedback. When you remove any aspect of the feedback process that could be viewed as lengthy, boring, or simply too much admin, there is almost nothing to stop a customer from leaving feedback. Every step in the purchasing process should be short and simple, including sharing their experiences and insights.

This could look like creating a very brief (1-3 question) survey that takes under 1 minute to complete and ensuring this low maintenance task is easily accessible. The survey interface should show how many steps are left, and you should build them to have fewer than 5 to reduce feedback fatigue. Feedback surveys can be made convenient and accessible through the likes of automated post-purchase emails or even QR codes on tags, shop doors, or menus, or even as links in social media. There is a wide range of easy and convenient methods of gaining customer feedback at your disposal, so try a few!

2. Incentivise customers to leave feedback

Offering some sort of incentive in exchange for a customer’s valuable feedback can help overcome any resistance to your feedback request. This could look like a discount on future purchases, free shipping, a free sample, or anything else applicable to your business. The only catch is to make sure that the incentive doesn’t come across as a bribe, so it’s imperative to make it clear that both positive and negative feedback is welcomed. This demonstrates to customers that you’re gathering this feedback in an effort to genuinely improve your business, and you’re not trying to sway results.

3. Use social media to gain feedback

Not every customer utilises or is familiar with every channel your business uses. That’s why a helpful tool to overcome resistance when asking for feedback can be to use social media. This can help you open up a dialogue with a different segment of your customers who may not feel comfortable with in-person feedback or email surveys, etcetera. A simple brand-related post on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter feed linking to a survey or asking your audience a feedback-based question can work wonders. It will often result in an array of responses or comments you can then use as insights on how to improve your product/service or even your brand perception.

4. Ask for feedback at important stages of the customer’s journey

Timing is everything - especially when asking for customer feedback. Throughout the customer’s journey with your business, there are specific points where they’re most likely to leave valuable feedback. Some of these ideal points include; directly after their onboarding experience, after the customer support team has helped them, or just after they’ve finished their meal. In times like these, asking satisfaction-related questions can be very helpful as the experience is fresh in their minds and you’re likely to garner an accurate review.

Ensuring you request feedback at a convenient time for the customer while ensuring it aligns with a certain point in the customer journey will enable you to gain reliable reviews and overcome resistance to asking for them. For example, you can ask for feedback at any stage of the customer’s journey but you can only really ask for a review once they’ve experienced what you offer.

5. Say “thank you” and engage with the feedback you receive

The two simple words “thank you” can go a long way in the realm of customer feedback.

Regardless of whether the feedback you receive is positive or negative, it’s crucial to thank the customer for taking the time to share their thoughts. While this is vital for any feedback you receive, it’s especially important for negative public reviews. A confident and empathetic response can show the world that your company cares about all of its customers and is willing to do everything in its power to right any wrongs. We think this is so crucial that we’ve even dedicated an entire blog to how to respond to negative reviews.

Thanking your customers for their feedback has a positive reflection on your company and relays that you value and appreciate their praise or criticism. In turn, this makes others more inclined to leave feedback.

6. Offer a variety of feedback options

The more feedback options you offer, the more likely you are to appeal to different customers to give their feedback and leave a review. For example, not every single one of your customers will have or use their email regularly. Therefore, if your only method of gathering feedback is via email, you could be missing out on a tonne of valuable feedback. For this reason, offering a diverse range of feedback methods will help you gain higher volumes of feedback. There’s an array of options out there, including:

• Online surveys
• Email
• Social media
• QR codes
• In-person interviews
• Phone calls
• Text messages
• Print surveys,
• and more…

So long as you pick the methods that you know your customers are frequently using, you won’t lose out on feedback, or any reviews.

While customers can be a little hesitant when it comes to leaving feedback, this is often due to the approach used not being suitable or convenient for the customer. If you’ve been facing resistance to asking for feedback, simply employ our 6 methods above to see if they help to overcome it. After all, gaining customer feedback is one of the most critical tasks your business can do to improve business processes and overall customer experience.

Do you think your business could be in need of a tool to assist in gaining customer feedback? Review Tui is here to do exactly that. We reimagine customer feedback by making it easier to gather and measure it while encouraging public reviews at the same time. Discover more about how we can help your business gain more customer reviews by exploring our website below.