Tolu Alabi
Publication date: December 12, 2023
What are Customer Feedbacks?
Customer feedbacks are inputs, ideas, comments, and opinions provided by users of a product or service.
This type of customer feedback is extremely valuable because it allows the company to move beyond assumptions and guesses. Instead, it provides a direct window into customer experiences and replacements.
This means that the data from these interactions can be analyzed and leveraged to identify actual customer pain points, anticipate and mitigate churn, identify and solve problems, pinpoint opportunities for improvement, and develop product offerings in the right direction.
10 Types of Customer Feedback
1. Customer Survey Responses
Surveys are one of the most common tools for collecting customer feedback as they are cost-effective, scalable, and easy to set up. Surveys are incredibly versatile, ranging from understanding customer feelings at a high level to gathering detailed individual responses.
For example, Hubspot’s customer feedback program allows users to conduct surveys to measure the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), which are typically used to measure customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The program also allows for conducting Customer Effort Score (CES) surveys, which are typically used to measure the efforts customers expend to use a product or feature.
However, surveys face some limitations.
First, they provide limited context about the data they collect, making it difficult to understand the underlying motivations or specific pain points behind customer responses. This data can be inaccurate or unrepresentative due to various factors, such as how questions are phrased, differences in each respondent’s understanding of the questions, and response bias.
Important Tip: A great way to overcome the limitations of “context” is to define the scope of your survey. Start with a broad “hypothetical question,” such as “How happy are you with your experience,” then follow it up with “context questions” that gradually explore respondents’ answers.
2. Customer Reviews
Reviews are a “natural” form of customer feedback. Whether or not the company actively encourages them, some portion of the product user base will naturally share their opinions and experiences.
These responses are important because they provide direct perspectives from the customer’s point of view, which can help identify pain points and improve the customer experience, creating a better product overall.
What makes reviews an interesting form of customer feedback is that they are often shared publicly, enhancing their significance among the current user community and influencing potential customers who often rely on this information to make purchasing decisions.
For these reasons, it is essential for companies to monitor and respond to concerns raised by customers in reviews. Here are some places where customers may leave reviews:
- Social media platforms
- Review aggregation sites (like Yelp and TripAdvisor)
- Discussion forums (like Reddit and private communities)
- Vendors (online retail stores, mobile app stores, etc.)
- Google reviews
- Company websites
Important Tip: While having many five-star reviews is excellent, how you handle negative customer feedback is equally important. Here are some best practices to consider:
- Acknowledge feedback publicly.
- Don’t defend or respond emotionally.
- If the mistake is on your part, take responsibility for it – if not, provide a clear and empathetic explanation.
- Offer a solution or resolution.
- Follow up if necessary.
3. Bug or Error Reports
Even the best products may sometimes encounter problems or bugs. By allowing users to report bugs to your team either automatically or manually, companies can take proactive steps to discover and fix these issues before they escalate into bigger problems.
Customer feedback from these reports is used to identify and prioritize bugs, resolve user issues more efficiently, and inform future development decisions.
But
Aside from the technical benefits of error reports, allowing users to share their feedback in these cases is important. It gives them a sense of control when dealing with a frustrating situation overall. Additionally, it shows them that their experiences matter and that their concerns will be taken seriously.
Key advice: Do not dismiss this type of customer feedback as merely “technical.” There can be a human experience aspect to it by creating an empathetic process for reporting and following up on the matter afterward.
4. Feature Requests
As the name suggests, a feature request is when users ask for a new feature to be added to the product.
This type of customer feedback is particularly useful for product teams because it helps them understand user needs and preferences, validate ideas, and identify gaps in the current product offering. Ultimately, this feedback guides product development and shapes the product roadmap.
Feature requests are also beneficial for other teams because they provide insight into customer preferences and pain points, which guide or inform strategic decisions. Creating opportunities for users to submit and discuss feature requests is non-negotiable for any customer-focused business. This not only shows that the company values user input and is committed to improving its products but is also a powerful tool for building community among users.
Key advice: Make it easy for users to communicate about feature requests. Some simpler ways to do this are by setting up community forums, creating custom forms for feature requests, and sending surveys.
5. Product Reviews
Product reviews evaluate user satisfaction with a product or experience. This can be considered a simplified type of customer feedback because it measures satisfaction without adding context to the information provided. Although users may be encouraged to explain their rating, it is rarely mandatory.
It’s important to mention that product reviews usually occur at the point of service or purchase. For instance, users may be asked to rate the product quality from one to five stars after the product is delivered. Similarly, after a service interaction, the customer may be prompted to rate their experience with the sales representative on a scale from one to five.
This type of customer feedback can be extremely valuable for several reasons:
- Collecting feedback immediately after a sale or service experience is the closest approximation to obtaining instant feedback.
- Average ratings can measure the current performance of the product and even predict future performance.
- Similar to reviews, product ratings are public, meaning positive ratings can significantly enhance the overall perception and credibility of the product.
Key advice: Actively encourage users to leave reviews with their ratings. Avoid making it mandatory to maintain engagement, but explore creative options to encourage customers to share feedback. Consider offering incentives like discounts or redeemable points.
6. Customer Support Interactions
Customer support interactions are challenging to manage because they typically occur after a user has encountered a hurdle with the product and is understandably frustrated. However, these interactions are gold mines for gathering customer feedback and valuable insights.
Unlike surveys, reviews, and the like, customer support interactions provide a rare opportunity to gather real-time customer feedback. Some examples of these interactions include phone calls, live chat, email correspondence, social media interactions, and webinars.
Support calls allow agents to gain context about the customer feedback they receive while the customer is more likely to provide unfiltered and honest responses. This presents an ideal opportunity to gain deep insights into the customer experience, validate feedback from other channels, and uncover patterns that highlight issues affecting multiple users.
Key advice: Focus on creating a supportive environment during these interactions to collect candid feedback and enhance overall customer experience.
Task: I am considering using a customer support tool to help you capture and analyze support interactions. For example, Hubspot’s AI tool is used to analyze customer interactions and identify trends across tracked calls.
7. In-App Customer Feedback
There should be several ways for users to provide their feedback without leaving or closing the app. These methods include those mentioned earlier in previous sections, such as surveys, ratings, and support interactions.
However, in-app customer feedback provides unique opportunities that cannot be replicated outside the app environment. For instance, in-app support interactions allow users to provide immediate context for their feedback, such as sharing screen recordings and highlighting specific items or features.
Similarly, the company can customize feedback methods for specific features, functionalities, and experiences within the app. For example, users can be asked to rate the design of a page they are currently browsing or fill out a request form for a specific product that is part of a larger product lineup.
In-app customer feedback enables companies to gather targeted and detailed feedback that may not be possible through other methods.
Important Tip: Remember not to hinder the user experience when integrating in-app customer feedback. Finding the right moments is crucial, such as after a user completes a specific task or has a positive interaction. The experience should be seamless and user-friendly as your top priority.
8. Customer Interviews
Like customer support interactions, customer interviews provide an opportunity to explore customer feedback, uncover context, and gain deeper insights into the customer’s perspective. However, the company must proactively initiate these interactions.
The key difference is that customer interviews allow the company to uncover targeted insights about specific issues, unlike support interactions that simply arise organically. Rather than allowing the customer to lead the conversation, talking points are strategically directed according to pre-defined objectives, and the host leads the conversation toward specific topics.
As you might expect, this approach is more interactive compared to other methods covered in this post. It also requires a more organized and planned approach due to the logistical aspects of setting up these interviews.
However, since these interviews allow for more directed and focused feedback collection, they reveal insights that may not surface through more passive channels.
Important Tip: Aim for a variety of questions when preparing your interview guide. Some should be open-ended to encourage deep discussion, while others can be more focused on specific areas based on your objectives.
9. Social Media Mentions
In 2021, a survey conducted by Statista showed that the three most popular social media platforms (at that time), YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, were used by 81%, 69%, and 40% of adults in the United States, respectively.
Your customers are on social media; there is no doubt about that. But more importantly, your customers are continually sharing valuable feedback on these platforms.
There are generally two types of customer feedback that can be gathered on social media:
- Feedback about the brand or company.
- Feedback about topics related to the brand or company (competitors, niche, industry, etc.).
The easiest way to find this feedback is simply by typing a search query (your business name, industry, etc.) into the search bar of any social media platform. However, you will soon find that this becomes significantly ineffective when done at a large scale and for a long period.
The second option is to use a tool or service to monitor social media. For example, HubSpot offers a social media monitoring tool that allows users to keep track of mentions and activate email alerts for specific keywords.
But
In addition to merely monitoring conversation, social media can also be a useful tool for soliciting customer feedback from your audience. One easy way to do this is simply by asking for feedback in a post or using one of the built-in instant response tools such as polls and community posts.
Alternatively, you can promote other ways to gather customer feedback such as surveys on your social media platforms and encourage your customers to participate.
Important tip: Monitoring social media is not limited to mentions relating to your product or brand. Most organic mentions of the product in natural conversations do not involve tagging the companies or brands. However, these untagged mentions are hidden gems for understanding true user sentiments and how your product is perceived in the real world.
10. Customer Behavior Data Feedback
Customer behavior data is often overlooked as a source of customer feedback because it does not involve active customer participation.
Unlike other methods, which gather customer feedback through what they say, behavior data allows for gathering customer feedback by analyzing what they do.
This means that companies analyze and derive meanings from the actions, interactions, and patterns that users or customers display when interacting with a product or platform.
For example, if an online retailer notices that many users do not complete their orders when shopping on mobile devices, this data serves as feedback indicating that there is an issue with the mobile shopping experience. The retailer could even delve deeper into the data to see where users drop off and identify pain points.
This is one of the key advantages of this method of gathering customer feedback.
Behavioral insights rely on data, allowing companies to eliminate many of the biases present in other forms of feedback and significantly increase the accuracy of their results. For example, instead of asking survey respondents to indicate whether certain elements on a webpage are helpful, heatmaps and click-tracking tools can simply show you whether they are clicking on those elements or not.
Similarly, instead of organizing a user interview panel to gather customer feedback about your website experience, a session recording tool can capture actual user sessions and allow you to filter these sessions by user traits and behaviors, etc.
Important tip: Before investing in major changes to your site or product, use behavioral analysis tools to test your ideas on a smaller scale. For example, create a landing page instead of the actual source to see if anyone clicks on it. As a general rule, consider every idea to be a hypothesis subject to proper analysis and testing.
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/service/types-of-customer-feedback-examples
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