For any business the customers are the most important part of their success strategy. The customer happiness and customer satisfaction is a key to customer loyalty and customer retention. Which are necessary ingredients for a long term sustainable success. In order to please their customers businesses invest a huge amount of resources. Businesses try to improve each and every touchpoint in the customer journey, along with the offerings businesses made to the customers, they also invest in internal resources, IT infrastructure, and brand image building and communication channels.
Businesses try to improve each and every business function& process in any way possible with the aim to improve everything for the customers to obtain higher customer satisfaction. However, how would you know what you are doing is indeed improving customer interaction and experience? The simplest way is to ask them. By asking customers directly a business can clarify a lot of things, and it can gain much deeper understanding of the customers and their preferences.
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Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the businesses are realizing the importance of the customer feedback. Earlier only large enterprises and big companies were collecting customer feedback, now a day’s even local and small businesses are also collecting customer feedback. The biggest problem for small and medium sized enterprises were the resources required for customer feedback collection. However, with the advancements of technology that is not a problem anymore.
Smaller businesses can also acquire a customer feedback system to automate the feedback collection which save a lot of resources furthermore the digital customer feedback systems provides in-built analytical and data processing features which makes it a lot easier for a small business to manage the entire campaign is a semi-autonomous way. Furthermore the customer feedback system also allow businesses to share the surveys using online channels such as emails, SMS, website, etc.
When a business knows what its customers like they can invest more in those areas, and vice versa. That is the reason businesses commission a customer feedback system which not only help them utilizing the best channels to collect customer feedback data, but also help them to process and analyze that data with at most accuracy. Here are some key features of a customer feedback system which can help you achieve you feedback campaign goals:
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Effortless Customer Feedback Collection Process
For any customer feedback collection campaign the biggest challenge is to allocate resources who reach out to your customers, ask them survey questions and fill in the forms, etc. Furthermore the customer feedback forms data have to be compiled in excel sheets or any other format to make it useable for the higher management. Which is not only lengthier and expensive process but it also have higher error rates. When taking customer feedback in one on one meeting, or at store/service center or through phone call, the customers tend to provide a bit more sanitized version of their actual opinion.
People try to avoid saying bad or negative things in front of the company representative. However, with the help of a customer feedback system this problem can be avoided. As the customer knows they are responding on a tablet, touch screen, kiosk, or website or through their email, so they tend to provide more honest opinion without any fear of hurting someone’s feelings.
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As they are using digital channels so they also don’t rush to the answers, people tend to take more time to think when doing online surveys or utilizing any digital channel for their feedback. This not only offer them more freedom but also raise the quality of the feedback. The customers tend to be more honest when submitting feedback independently via a digital channel. Furthermore the customer feedback system also allow scheduling customer feedback campaigns for example NPS Score and CSAT Score can be pushed on different channels while the system is automatically sending post-purchase surveys to new customers.
The customer feedback system allow multiple campaigns for multiple audience group including regular monthly or quarterly or annual customer feedback campaigns. The automation saves a lot of resources and make the feedback collection process simple and more convenient. The customer feedback system can also utilize multiple channels to shoot out surveys and have features to consolidate all feeds into a single database to make the data analysis simple and easier.
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Improve Customer Feedback Data Quality and Quantity
The biggest problem with the traditional customer feedback collection methods is that in order to get more quantity businesses have to invest more time and resources. Furthermore the data collected from traditional forms, phone calls, one-on-one interviews, or from at-premises customers and visitors need to be processed manually. Usually a manager with a couple of supervisors and the customer care or sales team collects the customer feedback data. Businesses can also hire dedicated staff for this purpose and they can also appoint staff from multiple functions to form up a team for the customer feedback data collection campaign.
Whatever the case is, the customer conversion rate is very poor with traditional customer feedback channels and methods. The customer conversion rate means if the staff is reaching out to 100 customers how many of them provide feedback. This figure could vary from 10 to 40 out of 100. However, mostly it is in lower range. And in order to gather the required quantity of the feedbacks the team had to spend more time and in some cases more team members are also added to improve efficiency.
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Whatever the case is one thing is sure that the traditional customer feedback data collection methods are expensive and time consuming. That is not the only challenge. Once the feedback data is collected from different channels the real ordeal begins which is converting this manual data into digital formats which can be used by the managers to perform different analysis to extract actionable reports from the data. As everything is manual so the human errors are very common.
Mostly the errors occurs while data entry, furthermore the duplication is also very common. Which decrease the quality of the feedback data and impact the results/reports. Another important factor is the psychological, when customers are dealing with a staff member they want to remain polite and humble, which prevents them to fully express themselves. However, with the customer feedback system none of that problem occurs, everything is managed by the digital software which conducts the feedback.
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The customer feedback system is very capable of automating various steps of the customer feedback campaign and make it easier to close the loop (closed-loop customer feedback system). All the data is digitalized form the get go. Customers don’t feel shy while expressing themselves and they give the most honest opinion through digital channels. The customer feedback system is also capable of automatically linking a feedback to a customer, hence most of the time the customer didn’t even have to input their personal details. The surveys become easier and convenient, a long questionnaire can be done in only a few clicks on taps on the touch screen or mobile.
Which increase the customer conversion rate, usually with the digital customer feedback system 30 to 80 out of 100 customers happily provide their feedback. Obviously for different businesses and different surveys the rate is different but in general the customer feedback system can produce far superior results than the traditional methods. The data is already digital, so errors are eliminated, there couldn’t be any duplication either. The customer feedback systems comes with in-built data processing and analysis tools which allow the user to generate highly accurate reports with a few clicks. Hence businesses can get more quantity and quality of the customer feedback data with a digital system in place.
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Automation Saves Time and Cost
The most important factor of customer feedback collection campaign is the cost. Businesses have to invest a lot of resources in a traditional customer feedback collection campaign. They should appoint staff who will be contacting and reaching out to the customers and visitors. Furthermore in some cases businesses might have to hire new staff and the staff retention in itself is expensive. Furthermore they will also have to appoint data entry operators, then they should have to assign at least one manager who will be overseeing and managing the entire project including the staff.
This makes it very expensive, and on top of that the quality of the data is also not as good as it should be and the customer submission rate is also low. Especially if you are conducting customer surveys at your premises the submission rate will be low, because most of the customers who have already done the transaction would like to leave as quickly as possible, whether you are a bank, hospital, retail store, shopping mall or any other type of organization. Which makes it harder to collect as much feedback as possible.
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However, a digital customer feedback system prevent all those obstacles and problems. Hence the cost is very low, there is some initial cost but that too is not much comparing to the traditional methods. The running cost or operational expense of a customer feedback system is also very low. Furthermore it offer almost autonomous process which doesn’t require any human intervention. The business can appoint a manager who can create surveys from the customer feedback system dashboard/back office and push them to the relevant channels within a few clicks.
The administrator or manager can also have facility to schedule multiple campaigns for multiple channels and also for different audience groups. Which makes it more effective and efficient. Such features increase the customer feedback submissions. The system can be linked to customer data and eve with financial data, hence the customer are not asked to put so much details, in fact they are directly given the actual questionnaire and they can submit it within minutes. Which also encourage more customers to provide feedback and increase the feedback quality. Hence the business can significantly reduce the cost while they get highly accurate feedback data too.
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Better Targeting Significantly Improves the Feedback Data
One of the biggest drawback of the traditional customer feedback collection methods is that they don’t offer good audience targeting. However, a customer feedback system can provide excellent audience management and targeting features. The customer feedback system software is usually empowered by AI and it is integrated with other internal systems as well. Which means it can synchronize data with other relevant internal systems as well such as CRM, Sales system, Customer portals, etc. This allow the customer feedback system to manage audience in different groups.
Furthermore the system administrator or manager can also choose audience based on various internal pre-programmed filters and tools to form a more precise and targeted list of the audience for the customer feedback campaign. This allow the businesses to collect highly accurate feedback data with at most relevance. For example if you want are selling male hats and female shoes, you want to get feedback on female shoes, then you don’t have to send the surveys to the male customers, furthermore you can also target the customer who have already purchased the female shoes and so on.
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Similarly if you are in service industry, let say you are a hospital or bank. Let say in case of hospital you want to learn what patients thinks about your new children section or if you are a bank you want to collect feedback about a new credit card that you have just launched or maybe for an existing most popular product. You can select the customers who have any past interaction with those departments or either you can analyze customer persona and their demographic details to set up a targeted audience group for the customer feedback campaign. In any case you can easily target the most relevant audience who can provide you more valuable insight of your product or service that you are interested to evaluate.
This can significantly improve the quality of the customer feedback data. For example if I bought a personal credit card, and I am employed at a local retail store, if the bank asks me about their corporate account services, what would I tell them? Most of the time people tend to ignore such requests, and in some cases people also submit their opinion, which not only reduce the quantity of the data for a particular campaign but it also reduce the quality of the data. That is why collecting feedback from only relevant audience is crucial for the success of the feedback campaign.
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Centralized Management and Integration Offers Great Value
A digital customer feedback system is a great tools for collecting the customer feedback data from various touch points and different branches. A business could have multiple branches with one head office or main branch. The senior management and stakeholders usually sits in the head office. All the branches are monitored and somewhat controlled from the head office. That is why the management at head office is interested in monitoring activities, operations and performance at all branches. The digital customer feedback system allow businesses to add multiple hierarchal groups with different levels of administration and system access.
The system allow the head offices to add as many branches as they want and allow them to appoint staff and assign them different job roles with varying level of access and administration. This enables the head office to monitor each and every branch in real-time and it also allow them to compare two more branches side-by-side to analyze their performance. Similarly there are several other useful features that can help management in decision making and strategy building processes. Such features help them highlight several problems too and enable them to fix them in time.
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Furthermore the system integration capabilities allow the customer feedback system to connect with any other third-party system or tool to further improve the efficiency of the system which can add great value to your feedback campaigns. These days businesses have a very connected internal IT infrastructure, the flow of information is vital for any business. The customer feedback system can easily be added to the grid where it can automatically push data from the required software, tool or database and vice versa.
This make management even simpler and intuitive which is a key to success of any software solution. Businesses easily link customer data, their financial data, their demographic data and other information to the customer feedback system which can help the system to execute more targeted customer feedback collection campaigns. The post-sale surveys, regular surveys and other customer feedback campaigns can be set to automatic.
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For example, if I have made a purchase the sales system will tell the feedback system to through me a survey, the customer database will provide my relevant information and the feedback can be automatically routed to the sales or customer care or anyone else automatically. The automatic data sharing can improve the internal data flow and help the management take necessary actions immediately. Furthermore the integration also allow the businesses to fetch the reporting data and other analytical data from the system to another internal system which also help improving user experience and make management more convenient and simpler.
Automatic Alerts and Notification Keep Management Informed
In case of a traditional customer feedback method by the time a manager knows about the negative feedbacks it is already too late. Mostly these campaigns last for minimum 2 to 4 weeks, and at the end of the campaign all the data is digitalized, analyzed and processed to generate actionable reports. Which makes it very hard for the staff and managers to identify the customers with concerns and negative feedback. In case after the campaign if a business tries to reach out to the unhappy customers, by that time most of them are already moved to a competitor.
However, the digital customer feedback system collects data in real-time and smart algorithms and AI processes it in real-time. As soon as someone submit a negative feedback an alert can be generated to the manager, customer care or even the service agent who serviced the customer. This can prevent any delay and notify the relevant persons immediately and provide them enough time to address customer’s concerns and prevent them from leaving for a competitor. The head office and the branch manager can also configure alerts to closely monitor the performance of the teams and even individual employees. Which helps businesses in addressing the issues swiftly which provide them a chance to save a customer.
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The alerts and notifications are completely configurable and can be changed for certain incidents, let say if a day’s total feedback reached to 50 negative feedbacks, and even businesses can set comparison between negative and positive feedbacks such as if the negative feedbacks for the day reached to 20% of the positive feedbacks of the day an email alert should be sent to the branch manager, if the negative feedback reached to the 30% of the positive feedbacks and email alert should be sent to the General Manager at the Head Office and so on.
These alerts make monitoring more efficient and impactful. Furthermore the business can set alerts for the individual employee performance, as the customer feedback system can also collect feedback data for individual employee. Let say more customers are unhappy with an employee when he is providing credit card services and less more are happy when he is offering corporate account opening service. Such data can be treasure trove for a business who is eager to boost customer experience and employee performance.
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Help Closing the Feedback Loop
Closing the customer feedback loops is one of the most important task of any customer feedback campaign. It means that when business collects customer feedback data on a particular subject and then later they do some changes in their internal processes or anything that is relevant to that particular subject, they inform the customers about it who have given the negative feedback for that in past. This is called closing the loop. Businesses tend to do that to improve relationship with their customers. If the customers are informed that their concerned are taken seriously and are addressed by adequate actions and policy changes they feel a sense of importance and feel more connected with the business.
It not only reduce the effects of their negative experience but it also help gaining their trust and loyalty. That is why closing the loop is considered to be an essential part of any customer feedback collection campaign. A customer feedback system provides a complete framework to manage the communication between the customer and the business both during the feedback campaign and even afterwards. It can also be integrated to customer relationship management software or complaint center system to further aid closing the feedback loop.
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Conclusion
Businesses in Dubai and anywhere else in UAE are tend to collect customer feedback data to better understand their feelings, thoughts, liking/disliking, preferences and much more. The customer feedback data can be taken as the anchor point for the future strategies, policy making, product development, brand identity and much more. This help businesses to align themselves with customers’ interests and market trends. The traditional customer feedback collection methods are no longer beneficial for the businesses. They are slow, require a lot of resources which make them expensive, and the traditional customer feedback data collection methods tend to produce poor quality data.
However, a customer feedback system leverage the power of digital advancements and provide a great tool to collect, process, and analyze the customer feedback. With the added benefits of the automation the cost and the hustle can be reduced to almost a fraction of a traditional customer feedback data collection campaign. Businesses can not only collect more data at lower cost but with higher accuracy which improves the quality of the feedback data and help businesses to plug it in to their strategy building and decision making processes. It enables businesses to immediately identify a problem and take timely actions to prevent any customer from leaving and also help them to gain the trust of the customer by fully or semi-automatic customer feedback loop approach.
RSI Concepts is a leading customer feedback system provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you develop a customized or standard customer feedback system which can help to gain deeper insight to your customers behavior, mindset and market trends, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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