Futurehome Increases their App Store Rating to 4+ with Zonka Feedback

What do you do when your app’s rating falls short of reflecting the true quality of your product? How do you prevent those low ratings from shaping potential customers' first impressions? For Futurehome, these weren’t just passing questions—they were challenges with the potential to impact their reputation and bottom line.

Futurehome, known for its innovative smart home automation solutions, enables over 40,000 users across 30,000 homes to control everything from lighting and heating to energy consumption—all through a single app. Despite the advanced nature of their product, Futurehome’s app ratings were stuck at 2.9 on the App Store and 3.2 on Google Play. The gap between their cutting-edge technology and user feedback raised serious concerns.

Sindre Gahlla, Head of Support at Futurehome, faced an urgent challenge: understanding whether dissatisfaction stemmed from the product itself or from customer service. Without the right customer experience tool, his team lacked visibility into the root causes of customer frustrations.

In our conversation, Sindre highlighted several key challenges they encountered:

• Lack of Customization to Measure Key Metrics: Zendesk’s native feedback system offered limited customization, preventing Futurehome from effectively tracking important KPIs such as Customer Effort Score (CES) and product satisfaction.
• Inability to Track Agent Performance & Measure Resolution Rates: They struggled to assess how well agents were resolving customer issues, leaving gaps in performance tracking and limiting their ability to improve support.
• Difficulty Redirecting Satisfied Customers to Review Pages: Despite providing solid support, Futurehome couldn’t easily guide satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, which affected their app store ratings.
• Costly SMS Survey Management: Managing SMS surveys through Zendesk became increasingly expensive, making it hard to justify the cost while trying to gather real-time customer feedback.

In 2023, Futurehome switched to Zonka Feedback, seeking a solution that could not only capture customer satisfaction (CSAT) but also provide actionable insights after every interaction. What followed was a transformative journey that not only boosted their app ratings but also gave them the clarity to drive improvements across both product and support. Let’s look at the complete story of how it unfolded!

With the help of Zonka Feedback, Futurehome integrated a customized feedback system that fit seamlessly into their existing workflows. This out of the box integration provided them with the features they needed to measure critical CX metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Customer Effort Score (CES) after every support interaction. 

1. Measuring Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Futurehome implemented customized CSAT surveys after every support interaction using Zonka Feedback. These surveys gave them clear and actionable data on how satisfied customers were with the service they received. The flexibility to customize survey questions allowed Sindre and his team to dig deeper into the customer experience, tailoring the surveys to ask not just how satisfied customers were, but also why they felt that way. Using advanced survey logic, they could ask follow-up questions based on the score, further clarifying the reasons behind a high or low rating.

2. Tracking Customer Effort Score (CES)

Understanding how easily customers could resolve their issues was just as vital as measuring overall satisfaction. Using Zonka Feedback’s CES feature, Futurehome was able to track the amount of effort customers had to put into getting their problems solved. This data helped them identify pain points in their support process, allowing them to smooth out the customer journey. By adding a CES question, they distinguished between dissatisfaction with the product and the support experience.

A key benefit of the Zendesk integration was linking survey responses to specific agents, allowing Futurehome to track individual agent performance and better measure issue resolution, which had been difficult with Zendesk’s native system.

3. Automated URL Redirection for Reviews

A pivotal breakthrough for Futurehome came with Zonka Feedback’s automated URL redirection feature. This powerful feature transformed how Futurehome captured positive sentiment. After customers provided feedback and rated their support experience and Customer Effort Score (CES) highly, they were automatically redirected to either Google Play or the App Store to leave a review. Sindre and his team recognized the impact this had on their app ratings.

By leveraging this automated process, Futurehome turned satisfied customers into vocal advocates, driving app ratings upward. Using Zonka Feedback’s survey logic, they automatically prompted happy customers to leave reviews, boosting their overall app ratings.

4. Affordable SMS Surveys with Twilio Integration

SMS was an effective way for Futurehome to gather quick customer feedback, but the high costs associated with Zendesk's system were hard to justify. Sindre and his team needed a more budget-friendly option, and the integration of Twilio with Zonka Feedback became their ideal solution. By using their own Twilio account, they were able to send out SMS surveys without the high costs typically associated with other platforms.

This seamless integration allowed Futurehome to run cost-effective survey campaigns, improving customer engagement and making feedback collection more accessible.

In an organization like Futurehome, where customer satisfaction and app ratings directly influence growth, the implementation of Zonka Feedback was nothing short of transformative. It helped them deliver results that reshaped both their support strategy and customer perception about the product. These included:

• Boosted App Ratings: Futurehome’s app ratings skyrocketed, jumping from 2.9 to over 4.0 on the App Store and 3.2 to over 4.0 on Google Play, thanks to Zonka Feedback’s smart automated URL redirection.
• Increased Customer Satisfaction: Consistent measurement through custom CSAT surveys after every support interaction, helped them get clear insights into customer happiness and increased their CSAT score from 3.29 to 4.55.
• Enhanced Customer Effort Score: By identifying pain points in the customer journey and streamlining their support processes, they could significantly improve their CES score from 3.43 to 5.87 making it easier for customers to resolve their issues.

Additionally, Zonka Feedback allowed Futurehome to dissect customer sentiment, distinguishing between satisfaction with the product and the support provided. This level of granularity gave them the precise insights they needed to focus their efforts, improving both product quality and service.

Their focused efforts paid off in the form of improved customer engagement and better online reputation. Positive reviews and testimonials began flooding in, painting a picture of a company that truly cared about its customers. This boost in reputation attracted new customers and strengthened existing relationships.

Most importantly, by using Zonka Feedback, Futurehome could close the feedback loop in real time. Negative comments were addressed promptly, ensuring that customers felt heard and valued. Positive feedback was redirected to online review platforms, amplifying the company's success stories.

Looking ahead, Sindre and his team are eager to explore the advanced features of Zonka Feedback, confident that continuous innovation will keep them at the forefront of delivering exceptional customer experiences. 

Now it's your turn to take your customer experience to the next level! Sign up for a free trial today or schedule a demo, and start delivering exceptional service, boost customer satisfaction, and build stronger relationships through smarter and actionable feedback.