5 Ways to get more from your website feedback tool

It’s impossible to imagine the online landscape today without feedback ‘buttons’ and ‘forms’. Some organisations have already gained many useful tips from customers using these tools. While others are still experimenting with feedback buttons left or right. Learn more about the different phases of utilising online feedback here. Because many digital marketers struggle with getting true value out of their website feedback tools I wanted to share with you:

Five Ways to get more from your website feedback tool – with learnings from the pro’s at TomTom, Aegon and BMW

Each digital marketer will have to discover for themselves what works well. Unfortunately there’s no best way to collect online feedback as there are so many factors at play.

We can all learn a lot from organisations more advanced in the development of their online feedback programs. I would like to share their experiences, tips and tricks. This way you are able get more from your customer feedback tools.

International A-players

At Mopinion, I had many contacts with smart marketers from companies such as TomTom, Aegon and BMW. It is interesting and instructive to see how they deal with online customer feedback.

Not only did their feedback enable us to optimise our platform, it also provided us with much useful information for our other customers. Below you will find a summary of their learnings. This will enable you to get more from your own online feedback program.

1. Quality

Some companies experience more difficulties than others when starting up an online customer feedback collection process. Some follow a thorough plan, while others simply start with feedback tools offering free trials. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, but the main thing is that there is a need to hear the customer’s online voice.

When the feedback actually starts pouring in, companies often have difficulty drawing concrete insights from it. Having an advanced analysis platform in place does not always help. If the data that goes in is not right, the data that comes out will be wrong too. Asking the right questions is essential.

“Please give us your opinion” or “What do you think of this page?” are very general questions, which will often produce equally general responses. That may be okay on a general page such as a homepage, but do not forget that people visit your website with a specific goal in mind. Achieving that goal will also contribute to the customer’s online experience. Someone may, for example, indicate that they like your webpage very much, but if that webpage doesn’t serve its purpose, you still don’t know what’s important to the customer.

Here’s a useful tip to optimise the quality of your data collection:

Look at things from the customer’s perspective to understand their online goals. Determine which pages and processes correspond with which goals, and formulate your questions accordingly.

You can then perfectly monitor how your customers experience the main processes on your website and which tips they have for improving specific processes.

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2. Reduce the number of questions about customer service

Visitors use not only social media but also online feedback tools to pose customer service-related questions, much to the dismay of marketers who are looking for useful insights. Unfortunately you can’t prevent customers from doing so, because they get so frustrated sometimes that they need to vent their spleen. One might say that, in such a case, the online feedback tool serves as a vehicle for catharsis.

One way to minimise customer service-related questions is to simply include a subtext in the header or footer of the feedback form, in which you refer customers to the page on your website where they can pose their questions. You may also want to provide a link to your service page or FAQ page in this text.

Another option is to provide this information on the “Thank You” page after customers have provided their feedback. Instead of trying to ban service-related questions altogether, which is rather difficult, you might want to opt for managing your customers’ expectations.

Confirmation
By including a text on the “Thank You” page of your feedback form, stating that the form is not meant for posing customer service-related questions and that such questions will therefore not be dealt with, you clearly indicate that there will be no follow-up. Of course, you should not forget to refer your customers to the page where they may pose such questions, as otherwise you’ll get feedback about that!

3. Motivate customers to provide feedback

In fact, the previous learning also relates to motivating customers to provide feedback. A number of organisations adopted a very clever approach and, wherever they could, they informed customers of the possibility to provide feedback. If you go for this approach, you can use newsletters or a separate section on your website to explain things quickly and easily.

Internally focused
When organisations start to collect online feedback, they are primarily internally focused. They want to attract the right kind of people, try to formulate the right kind of questions, and use a well-thought-out feedback form design. However, they hardly take into account the interests of the people they are trying to reach.

Organisations automatically assume that customers will use a feedback tool in the desired manner. If the feedback does not quite meet the organisation’s expectations, they think there must be something wrong with the tool. But it may also be that some customers do not understand the idea behind the feedback tool. The problem can then simply be solved by communicating the underlying idea.

Create a page on your website explaining why your organisation is gathering feedback and what you hope to achieve by doing so. Explain how the process works, what kind of feedback you hope to gain and what you intend to do with it.

More importantly, explain that you are gathering feedback for the benefit of the customers as you would like to use the insights gained to offer them a better online experience.

It is not only an effective way to motivate customers to provide feedback when it really matters, but also a great way to show them that your organisation does listen to what they have to say.

4. Attract leads

One American customer put it quite aptly: “Feedback is money!” This is in fact an accurate observation as insights are used to improve customer experience, which should result in greater satisfaction, loyalty and turnover.

Return-On-Investment
The ultimate goal is, of course, a hard ROI. The difficulty with feedback is that it does not always involve matters leading to a rapid return on investment. Nevertheless there are certain ways to achieve measurable results in the short term.

One way to achieve conversion using direct feedback is to capture leads in the ordering process.

Feedback questions
To do so, it’s important to focus your feedback questions entirely on all that can go wrong in the ordering process. What factors cause some people to get stuck at some point in the ordering process? Make a list and pick three relevant issues, but always make sure to include “something is going wrong”.

Now that you have a list of possible reasons why someone quits, ensure that the feedback form actually pops up when it becomes clear that someone intends to opt out of the process, for example, when they click outside the web canvas or navigate to another part of the site. At that moment the feedback form should be triggered, so that you can find out why the visitor doesn’t continue with the ordering process.

Now it gets interesting, because what if someone says they want to buy something, but can’t do so? In other words, what if something goes wrong?

Normally, you would lose these leads, but feedback enables you to capture them. And do not forget: Research shows that 69% of online visitors are leaving your ordering funnels without completing the order.

Work flow
Smart feedback tools also provide workflow capabilities to instantly forward specific feedback to the right person within the company. Smart routing and follow-up offers you a short-term opportunity to still convert visitors.

5. Share what you do with feedback externally

Feedback questions are still too often seen by some organisations as one-way traffic. Customers are asked whether they have any useful tips for improving the organisation’s online service, but are often not informed about what happens with their feedback. That’s a pity as that would complete the circle.

Get contact details
One argument that I often hear from companies is that they don’t want to ask their customers for their personal email addresses. Sometimes they say that they don’t have the time and resources to keep each individual customer informed about changes.

This is understandable, but also regrettable in a way, because keeping your customers informed is relatively easy and leads to much exposure and many positive responses.

It’s often the online marketing team in an organisation that takes full advantage of customer feedback. New insights are gained from the feedback and discussed internally in order to determine which ones are useful.

Share your improvements
The next step is to gradually introduce changes on the basis of these insights. To involve the customers in these changes, you simply share these changes on your website.
Reserve a webpage on which you post monthly updates on the most essential feedback and the improvements that were made accordingly.

By creating a prominent feedback section on your website, you show customers how important feedback is to the organisation. It ensures that customers feel they have a say in matters and that their voice is being heard. And the customers’ positive responses will have an immediate favourable effect on the quality of new feedback.