3 Easy Ways of Gathering Customer Feedback Online

As your business starts to expand, it becomes a growing challenge to stay in tune with what the customers think and want. Collecting customer feedback is essential to the company and its customer service department in order to measure customer satisfaction. Not only does feedback allow you to make improved decisions, it abolishes the gap between you and your customers, hence allowing them to convey their concerns to you.

With the increasingly tech savvy customers of this age, I have listed a few of the most effective ways to collect feedback on the internet.

Online Surveys

When it comes to gathering feedback, nothing beats a survey. There are numerous ways of conducting surveys, and either one can be chosen depending on the amount of resources you are willing to invest. Online surveys are easier and cheaper to conduct, while conducting on ground surveys cost more and require more effort to engage people.

Make sure your survey is detailed enough to gather all the essential information and yet concise enough to ensure customer focus and attention. Customers usually lose interest quickly if the surveys are too lengthy, and especially if there are no incentives given, such as a free device or even a dinner voucher. Do not be hesitant about spending some money, authentic feedback can go a long way in helping you improve your service and product.

Get in touch with all the departments in your company, collect data on common customer complaints, and survey your customers on whether they are still facing those problems or are satisfied with the service.

Forum Postings

Google has made our life easier. Just go on to google, type in the relevant keywords, and press enter. You can then choose from the hundreds of online forums available, and after signing up on them, start a new post in order to collect feedback from customers.

If you are willing to invest time and money, you can buy your own domain and launch your own forum where you can engage with customers and gather their opinion.

Write statements or questions which are conversation starters, urge the customers to contribute to the forum. Ask them to comment on their experience of using the product or service, keeping both positive and negative aspects in perspective. This information should be evaluated by customer service managers to find loopholes and work on fixing the problem.

Polls

Polls are an instant, simple and easy way of quickly generating information about customer satisfaction and even preferences. Polls can be conducted on social media websites where customers are asked a question and given a few choices to pick from, which reveals their preference.

These can range from which brand of chips the customers prefer to their favorite flavors. Polls can also help collect straightforward data on which companies the customers prefer and why. The concept of ignorance is bliss does not apply in customer service, where every speck of detail and information is important and should be valued by the company.

Gathering feedback is vital, but remember that you must never start badgering your customers into leaving feedback. You never know if this will frustrate them, causing them to give negative feedback even if you were able to provide a satisfying customer experience.