Halloween is slowly creeping up on us. There’s that subtle hint of pumpkin spice lingering in the air, costumes filling up all of the party stores and of course, the most quintessential Halloween movie, Hocus Pocus has taken up the number one spot on Netflix. With all of this Halloween fever around us, we simply couldn’t resist adding a little Halloween ‘flair’ to our blog. So – in light of the holiday – we want to emphasize several ways online feedback can prevent your customers from having a ‘scary’ customer experience!
But before we begin, it’s important that you become acquainted with the most common ‘horrors’ (or irritations) that online customers often encounter; horrors that can tarnish the customer experience and ultimately (if not resolved), put these customers off to your brand.
Here are the top 10 website ‘horrors’ that emerged in Mopinion’s most recent study:
- Problems logging in
- Online process doesn’t work well
- Page not found
- Complex questions
- “My Account” cannot be found
- Contact information cannot be found
- Information cannot be found
- Download doesn’t work
- Having to fill information in again
- Bug Reports
Many of your customers have likely encountered these issues on your website too – whether it was once or twice, or even repeatedly (for lack of not knowing that the issue existed or where it was coming from on your website). So let us help you…
Here are three ways online feedback can prevent a ‘scary’ customer experience:
1. Improves website content and page usability
Website content is a critical aspect of your website as it largely defines the success of your business. Does this come as a surprise to you? Think about it: when a visitor enters your website, they are often in search of information – whether that is product information, support (e.g. FAQs) or additional details about your service offerings.
For example, if you have an ecommerce website, a lot of times you’ll have visitors that come to your site solely to learn more about a specific product. However, if the product content or description isn’t clear or can’t be found, or the image of the product isn’t showing up, it’s likely they’ll go looking for it elsewhere. Additionally, if you have some sort of usability issue such as a ‘Buy’ button that doesn’t work or another important page element that isn’t functioning properly, this can be a major problem for your visitors.
This is the start of a scary customer experience…
To gauge how your visitors experience the content on your website, you can collect feedback in a few different ways. Either by adding an embedded feedback form on the page, using a passive feedback form or enabling a proactive trigger when a visitor has scrolled down to the bottom of the page. Read more about collecting feedback on website content here.
For the more usability-related issues, you can also make use of visual feedback. With this technology, visitors can highlight a web page element (which is rendered into a screenshot) and submit feedback on that particular element. Being able to identify these issues allows users to make instant improvements to the usability of their website and thus increase online conversions among customers.
2. Sheds light on why customers do what they do
For example, when a customer exits an online funnel, it could be for a number of different reasons. Either something is not leading up to their expectations, they do not know what to do (or how to move forward) or perhaps they are simply browsing and have no intention of committing to any brand just yet. Despite the reason, it is important that you and your team are aware of these drop offs and why they’re taking place. After all, not knowing where you’re going wrong with your customers will almost certainly lead to a poor customer experience.
There are various techniques that enable businesses to extract deep insights into why customers behave in a certain way. Some examples include text analytics and exit feedback.
Text analytics is essentially the gateway for getting in touch with your customers’ thoughts and feelings in a more intimate manner. This qualitative feedback includes counting the frequency with which a particular word occurs, grouping words together that are commonly used, sentiment analysis, and categorising feedback comments. This makes it much easier to identify any trends along the customer journey that may be negative or positive.
Exit feedback is a great way to stay on top of your visitors and customers. Using forms triggered based on exit intent (e.g. cursor moving towards the close button or URL bar), you can catch your visitors before they leave the website and ask them why they’re leaving or if they’ve achieved their goal. This type of feedback is beneficial in several ways. When you ask customers for feedback on the spot, it will help you track down specific problems on various pages. And not only that, but the response rate tends to be much higher. This is mainly because, unlike surveys which often take a while to fill in due to the long list of questions, feedback forms are much shorter and to the point.
3. Allows you to turn insights into action
Note: Collecting feedback only plays a small role in improving your customer experience. Why? Because customer experience is about resolution and engagement. The end goal here is to improve loyalty among customers and create value. In the event of online feedback, this translates to closing the loop with customers.
A good way to start is by opening up a dialogue with your customers. Some feedback tools enable users to provide customers with an update on their feedback. Based on the type or category of the issue, customers can be emailed or updates can be posted on the blog, newsletters or certain parts of your website. Of course, the best relationships are built on a personal level, but some business margins are too low and volumes are too high to get things off the ground. Either way, this contact allows the business to show what has been done with the customer feedback and that the issue has been resolved.
No more Nightmares on Customer Experience Street…
Did you happen to notice what these all have in common? They help you identify the root cause of an issue and any ongoing trends on your website or mobile app. We cannot stress enough how important this is when trying to improve the customer experience. Especially as we see that so many businesses blindly attempt to improve online funnels or web content, not knowing what’s causing the drop in conversions or level of satisfaction among existing customers.
Look at this way: Your customers are the lifeblood of your business and if your CX is ‘scaring them off’, you won’t stand a chance. Try providing your customers with more treats than tricks this Halloween by collecting, analysing and taking action on feedback with an aim towards improving the CX. Trust me, if you do this, you’re guaranteed a better chance of carrying your business forward into the next Halloween season…
Happy Halloween, everyone!
Ready to see Mopinion in action?
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.
