The 5Ws of Customer Feedback That Can Boost Your CX

We all know that there’s a direct correlation between customer experience and business success. It is a customer experience that influences the success of your brand and business. The more refined your customer experience is, the higher will be the success rate of the business. Over the years, customer feedback has gained momentous significance in the business & marketing domain.

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According to American Express, 90% of Americans consider customer service as an imperative factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company.

Understanding the magnitude of the business success achieved from boosting CX,  tonnes of businesses have started focusing on augmenting the customer journey. It is completely in the hands of your customers, whether they tout you as a leading brand or leave you with negative feedback.

So, if you want your customers to promote your brand and spread a positive word of mouth for your business, then you need to stand out by delivering incredible customer experience. The most reliable way to enhance your customer experience is to retain the current customers and expand the existing customer base.

This is where customer feedback comes into the game. Customer feedback is considered to be the initial point for meeting the customer’s expectations.

As per the survey conducted by Gartner,companies that implement customer experience projects begin by focusing on the ways they collect and analyze customer feedback.

To improve your CX, you need to develop the practice of collecting regular customer feedback. Therefore, the record of healthy & positive feedback can help you improve your customer retention rate.    

In this post, we will enlighten you with the 5 Ws Rule of Customer Feedback that can help you to enhance your customer journey.

5 Ws of Customer Feedback

These 5Ws provide you with a clear insight into why to collect customer feedback, what to collect, how to collect and many more things. It cannot only facilitate you to collect and manage customer’s feedback, but also provide you with the platform where you can enhance your customer experience and grow expeditiously.

1. WHY – To Collect Actionable Insights from Customer Feedback

Customer is an imperative element of the business; you are ultimately creating a product/service for your customers only. It is important to understand the preference of your customers. Collecting customer feedback can help you to gain a better understanding of your customers’ tastes and preferences. The practice of collecting customer feedback enables you to track and analyze how your product/service is performing in terms of customer expectations. A high-level automated feedback app/software provides you with in-depth data that helps you to identify your SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Once you acquired the actionable insights from customer feedback app, you can easily implement to your business to improve the customer experience.

Some Prime Benefits of Taking Customer’s Feedback:

• Ensures healthy and long-term customer relationships.
• Helps you to maintain your Online Reputation Management (ORM)
• Provides detailed insights about your competitors

Therefore, Customer Feedback provides you with a competitive edge that can help you to deliver out-of-the-box CX.

2. WHO – Consider Both Positive & Negative Feedback Providers

A higher level of customer satisfaction determines your business success. If you want to boost your sustainable business growth, then give equal importance to both positive & negative feedback. It’s good that your happy customers provide you with a high score and positive feedback, but try to delve into the reasons for the negative feedback as well/ take a deep dive into the reasons for the negative feedback as well. Focus on the feedback given by unhappy customers and strategize your actions to retain your customers because higher the customer retention rate more will be the profit.

According to Frederick Reichheld (inventor of NPS),a 5% rise in customer retention rate increases by 25% to 95% profits.

So, if you want to increase your profit, then you need to focus on improving your customer retention rate. To deal with your happy & unhappy customers, you need to customize your approach according to their preferences.

Some Important Questions with Which You Can Approach Your Happy Customers

• What did you like most about our product/service?
• Is our product/service meeting your expectations?
• How else we can enhance our service for delivering excellent CX? 

Some Important Questions with Which You Can Approach Your Happy Customers

• Where our product/service failed to meet your expectations.
• What did other competitors offer them?
• How we can improve services for delivering excellent CX?

Always follow-up with your detractors (who give negative feedback) through emails and personal calls. This can help you to retain your customers and improve your brand image.

According to the Study by Microsoft,68% of consumers say it increases their perception of a brand when companies send them proactive customer service email notifications.

3. WHAT – Metrics for Actionable Customer Feedback

You cannot ascertain the level of CX until and unless you measure your customer feedback. Now the question is what is the reliable way to calculate the customer feedback? Automated Customer Feedback Management apps/software provides you with multiple metrics to measure customer feedback.

3 Leading Metrics to Measure Customer Feedback:

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS) - Net Promoter Score is the proven metrics that determine the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships. NPS Survey templates measure how likely your customers are to recommend your product/service to others. In this, your customers will vote on a pre-defined scale from 1 to 10. Based on the rating given, customers are categorized into 3 broad categories – Detractors, Passives, and Promoters.

• Promoters – These customers are categorized as happy and satisfied customers who give a score of 9 or 10. They are happy to recommend your service/product and actively promoting and advocating on your behalf.
• Detractors – These customers are unhappy and unsatisfied customers who give a score of 6 or below. They are likely to spread bad word of mouth about your service/product.
• Passives – These customers are satisfied customers who give a score of 7 or 8, but they don’t need to be likely to recommend your service/product. 

2. Customer Effort Score (CES) - CES is another leading benchmark to measure customer satisfaction. This metric used to augment customer loyalty by minimizing customer efforts. In this, your customers will rate the ease of using the product/service on the parameter of “very difficult” or “very easy”.

3. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) - CSAT is considered to be the most simplified and straightforward methodology to gauge customer satisfaction. In this, your customers will rate the product/service based on satisfaction achieved after using the product. Your customers will rate your product/service on a scale of 1 – 3, 1 – 5, or 1 – 10.

4. WHEN – Identify the Right Time to Collect Customer Feedback

There are various crucial factors that determine the success of your customer feedback campaign, one among them is the time of seeking feedback. Getting feedback from customers is a daunting task because there is a specific period of time when they are open to give feedback. So, plan cautiously about the time factor while collecting feedback. There are various time cases that you’ve to check while sending feedback emails.

3 Result-Driven Rules for Taking Customer Feedback:

• Rule 1 – First let your customers buy your products or hire your services then ask them to give feedback.
• Rule 2 – According to the Study, there will be a 5% gain in response rates if the messages reach the right time. So, send your feedback request in the morning.
• Rule 3 – It is being suggested that if you send the feedback request email in the middle of the week then there will be a 10% rise in the response rate.

Thus, by using the capabilities of automated customer feedback software/app you can easily understand the psychology and preferences of your customers. Gaining an in-depth understanding of the customer experience through customer feedback can help you to reach your customers at the right time.

5. WHERE – Choose the Right Communication Channels

Communication Channel is another factor that determines the success of your customer feedback. There are various communication channels available in today’s digital space on social networking sites. For instance, if a large section of your customer engagement through social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, then choose them as a channel of communication. Thus, before approaching your customers for feedback, do a little research to identify the most used channels by your targeted customers. If you choose the communication channel as per user-behavior, this can help you to get the maximum response And don't forget about the best time to post on Instagram, Facebook and other channels.

Learn to capture result-driven customer feedback here.

6. HOW – Employ Best Customer Feedback Collection Method

Now that you’ve chosen the communication channel to approach, now focus on the method of collecting feedback. You need to plan carefully what all elements you are going to put in your feedback type. There could be tonnes of reasons for not getting feedback from your customers. Usually, customers avoid giving feedback as they are not appreciated for it.

According to a Rockefeller Corporation study, 68% of customers turn their backs on companies because they feel unappreciated.

If your customers are investing their time in giving reviews & feedback, then you should appreciate them.

4 Result-Driven Methods to Collect Customer Feedback:

There are various proven methods that can help you to get actionable Customer Feedback. Some of them are as follows:

1. Feedback Form – In this type of feedback, a printed Form comprising a structured questionnaire is circulated along with the bill to the guest. The advanced Survey & Feedback Reports provide actionable insights to understand the customer experience.
2. Email Survey – Nowadays, there are various Customer Feedback Software/Apps that enable you to send email survey invitations to customers automatically. Such highly-automated software can customize your email surveys, send the embedded questions in email surveys and lots more.
3. SMS Survey – You can also send survey invitations through text messages to get feedback on-the-go.
4. Kiosk Survey – With the inception of smart devices, Kiosk Survey has gained immense popularity in the customer feedback domain. Kiosk surveys through iPad and Android tablets enable the customers to give instant feedback with no time.

In any business, considering and paying attention to the customer’s opinion is a crucial step that cannot only improve CX but also help you to solidify your customer base. So, the above 4 methods can help you to acquire actionable customer feedback quickly.

Also Read: How to Create a Killer CX Strategy for your Business

Final Thought

While collecting Customer Feedback from your customers always include those points or questions that encourage a free-flowing response. If you want to get quick and actionable feedback, then plan your Customer Feedback campaign properly before approaching your customers. I hope these 5W rules will help you to improve your CX and take your business in the right direction. Do you also follow the same rules or something else? If something apart from this, then please share it comment box.

Learn more about the Customer Feedback

• What do you do with Customer Feedback?
• 3 Types of Metrics to Measure Customer Feedback
• 5 Must-Ask Questions For Customer Feedback Survey
• 5 Best Strategies to Respond to Customer Feedback
• 7 Reasons why you should take Customer Feedback