So you’re on the hunt for a customer feedback tool? Congrats! You’re one step closer to delivering consistently awesome customer experiences. The fact is, trying to deliver superior customer experiences without a customer feedback tool is almost impossible. You need to know what matters most to your customers in order to deliver experiences that truly resonate and create brand advocates. But not all feedback tools will move the needle. Whether you’re just starting out on your search for a customer feedback tool, or you’re just about ready to lock one in, be sure to consider the following must-have capabilities.
Your feedback tool must be able to collect and deliver customer feedback in real-time. That is, feedback collected from customers and delivered to customer-facing teams as soon as a service is complete. Oftentimes, brands collect and analyze feedback infrequently or at best every quarter. The main problem with this is that by the time you’ve gathered and analyzed your feedback, it’s often no longer relevant. Customer’s needs and expectations change, trends evolve and priorities shift – all of which isn’t captured.
Plus, if it’s negative feedback that’s given, it’s likely that Dissatisfied David has already roasted your service at three dinner parties and damaged your brand through a rippling effect of negative word of mouth, without you ever having the chance to make things right.
On the other hand, real-time feedback allows you to capture feedback, as it happens. This means you can stay on top of customer expectations, address issues promptly and make timely improvements to your service and offerings.
If your feedback tool doesn’t make feedback both accessible and actionable, you may as well not be collecting feedback at all.
Accessibility: Your customer-facing teams should have instant access to customer feedback as soon as customers provide it. As many frontline employees work out on the field, (think home service providers, healthcare workers, and real estate agents) make sure your teams can see the feedback on their mobile devices. Feedback should also be accessible on their desktops, TVs in the office, Slack channels, and meeting presentations.
Actionability: Feedback should come in the form of small, actionable doses that customer-facing teams can act on in the moment. Each frontline employee should be able to see at a glance what they need to work on, whether it be timeliness, communication or responsiveness, and what they’re doing well at. This empowers teams to take action, that day, to improve the customer experience.
Your customer feedback tool should have built and creatable rule-based automations that do the work for you. For example, if a customer drops some positive feedback, a trigger can be set up to follow up with a thank you message and a request for a referral or Google review. If Dissatisfied David strikes again and negative feedback is dropped, you need to be able to set up automatic emails and push notifications to alert the right person to take action. In other words, your feedback tool shouldn’t just collect the feedback, but create automated workflows that follow up on that feedback, and ensure the right actions are taken, without even having to think about it.
You shouldn’t have to go digging for key trends and insights. At a glance, managers and high level executives should be able to see which branches, locations and employees are nailing the customer experience, and which need more support and coaching to deliver on your service standards. Using a standardized customer experience metric like NPS, CSAT or 5-Star help create clear comparisons and surface trends. For example, you should be able to see which branch is performing best (and why), and which is performing worst (and why). You should also be able to see which individual employees are receiving the best feedback from customers, and which are receiving the worst.
A user-friendly interface and easy-to-use features are critical here. The tool should be intuitive, with simple navigation, and provide easy ways to create, manage, and analyze feedback.
Finally, your feedback tool needs to be able to slot right in with all the other tools and technology you have set up in your business. Ideally, it can link up directly with your CRM platform, communications tools and sales platforms. Integration with CRMs or other business systems allows you to correlate customer feedback with other customer data, such as purchase history, customer demographics, and support interactions, which helps you gain a holistic view of their customers and make informed decisions based on feedback data.
A robust customer feedback tool is essential for businesses seeking to enhance their customer experience. The five must-have capabilities of a customer feedback tool, including real-time, accessible and actionable feedback, rule based automations, insights & trends at a glance and integrations are not nice-to-have, but are must-have if you want to use feedback to make a genuine impact on your customer experience and bottom line.
