Organizations that aren’t receiving feedback from their customers are at a disadvantage. Customer feedback management is a significant aspect of growing your business, and a tactic that is often overlooked. We’re going to discuss why feedback is important, and how to implement a strategy for your business that drives feedback.
Customer Feedback Overview
Customer feedback management is the practice of gaining positive responses from your customers, and highlighting those responses so that they can be used as a reference by prospective clients. You probably leverage customer feedback everyday, but don’t even realize it. Here are some examples of where you find it:
- Yelp – prior to going to a restaurant
- Google reviews – prior to working with a business
- Upwork – prior to hiring someone to help with a project
- Zocdoc – right before that dreaded trip to the doctor
- Testimonials on a website – prior to hiring a business
- Airbnb and VRBO – before renting a place to stay for the weekend
And the list goes on.. Regardless of industry, positive customer feedback management enhances your business presence because it enables users to see the value that you’ve already provided to others.
The First Step of Gaining Customer Feedback
Provide value – period. You’ll quickly realize by the ease (or lack thereof) of obtaining customer feedback will directly correlate with the value that you’re providing and the type of experience that customers are having when working with you. Your first and primary goal of being in business, is to provide value to others, if you’re not doing that, then asking for reviews is the least of your worries.
Avenues of Customer Feedback Management
There are many ways of obtaining feedback, but we’re going to focus on 3 ways to start. These 3 different channels can complement each other, so don’t be afraid to use more than one when gaining customer feedback.
1) Reputation Generation Management Software
The software completely automates the process for you. In 2020, taking an ‘automation first’ attitude will help you offload a lot of the mundane/manual tasks.
The software varies depending on your industry and top channels of gaining reviews. For example, the software company, Swell, takes a mobile-first approach. The platform will integrate directly with your CRM and online to gain reviews for your business. This can be done via text-message or a webchat form on your site. Once reviews are received, you can leverage an online dashboard to see your progress and review what customers are saying.
2) Automated emails from your CRM
Based on the CRM you’re using, you can automate pre-templated emails to go out to customers after a successful project is complete. For example, Hubspot does a great job at enabling you to easily create emails that go out to customers. Here’s what an email could look like.
These emails can be a part of your outbound email strategy that seeks to stay engaged with customers. Don’t keep hounding for reviews, but simply give customers the option to leave one if they like. If the value-add was significant for them, they’ll gladly leave a review.
3) Manual, Custom Outreach
This method we find to be the most effective because it adds the ‘relationship’ aspect to asking for a review. Here are some ways that you can ask for feedback.
- Text message
- A phone call
- Over a coffee
Keep in mind that manual outreach should be done when you’ve established a relationship and have provided value. This will reap most results and will help you build on that relationship. In an era of automation, customers still appreciate the relationship aspect of working with people and not just automated technology.
The most impactful way to leverage customer feedback management is a combination of manual outreach, and automation; They complement each other.
Remain Consistent
A trend that should remain with each aspect of your digital marketing strategy is consistency. It’s easy to get a few reviews and then stop thinking about customer feedback management because others tasks are taking up your time.
Customer feedback management is one of the most important trends going into the future; Prospective customers no longer need to call references, they can simply go online and see what others are saying about your organization and the value you provide.
Gary McConnell Co-founded Rubicom Digital in 2019 with a goal of providing digital marketing consulting services in the B2B space.
Gary continues to serve as the Marketing Director of a Data Center-focused IT Provider, VirtuIT Systems.