Happy customers are more likely to become loyal, paying customers. But how do you find out if they are in fact happy? What exactly are you doing so well that is making you stand out from the competition? You find that out with customer feedback.
Look at any template for a business model canvas and you’ll see how important it is to have true customer insight even before starting a business. And to keep that business afloat, you’ll find countless case studies of companies that succeeded simply by listening to their customers and giving them what they want.
That means, of course, that you’ll need a lot more than a 1 out 5-star rating system, you need a customized feedback form. You can easily create one with your logo and form analytics with an online form builder, like Mightyforms, that also lets you check all of the 5 rules to get valuable feedback that actually helps your business.
#1 Define your goals
Like mentioned before, valuable feedback doesn’t come from 1 out of 5-star ratings. The reason for that is simply because it’s too vague. You need to know exactly what you need them to evaluate so you can be as objective as possible. Keep that in mind when writing the survey questions.
Unless you are very specific on what you want them to rate (be it the product, service, pricing, event or overall digital experience), it’s going to be impossible to translate their feedback into actionable innovation.
#2 Make your feedback form online
This may seem obvious, especially after recommending the use of an online form builder to create the feedback form. However, there are still businesses that make use of paper forms when communicating with their clients.
So rule number 2 is here to tell those businesses: Don’t. Paper forms can be filled out incorrectly, lost and a nightmare to distribute.
Once you create the feedback form with MightyForms, you can either share it on social media, with a simple click or get a shareable link that you can send to your e-mail mailing list. You can also, of course, embed it on a page of your website. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for users to access and fill out our form.
#3 Make it responsive
Speaking of making your customer feedback form accessible, they have to be responsive. This is non-negotiable. According to GSMA Intelligence, the number of people with mobile technology is closing in on 5 billion. Your form needs to be accessible for all of those people wherever they are.
This is also another reason to use an online form builder, considering how most of them create online forms responsive by default. You can even preview how your custom customer feedback form will look like on different devices.
#4 Keep track of all responses
This is especially important if you are asking for the feedback of hundreds or even thousands of people. You want to be able to analyze the data objectively and know the percentages of positive feedback versus negative, as well as the most common issues so that you can prioritize the fixes.
Most online feedback forms will automatically export the data that your customers submitted into a CSV file. But they can’t all keep track of the responses as they are being filled out. MightyForms Real-time Data Capture allows you to keep track of submissions as they are being submitted, even if the user abandons the form.
#5 Reward your customers
The final rule is probably the most important: You need to reward the users that gave you their time and attention to fill out your feedback form. Most of them probably need an incentive in the first place to even consider filling out your form. So how can you give them a very special thank you? Keep it simple and automatic.
As soon as they click the submit button you can send them a success pop-up message thanking them. A discount coupon or free gift is an especially nice touch, and you can make sure they get it as soon as they submit the form by redirecting them to a personalized landing page, or send them the coupon code with an automatic email.
And there you have it. Five golden rules to get the most out of a feedback survey so that you can keep pleasing the customers you have and engage with more customers in the future.