There are nearly two billion websites nowadays and around five billion active internet users around the globe. If you have an online business, people worldwide visit your website 24/7.
It’s not easy to stand out from the crowd in such a vast ocean of easily accessible information. Having reliable analytics tools is critical because you need actionable insights about your website performance and customer behavior.
Anonymous raw data collection is no longer enough. You need to be aware of potential friction points throughout the customer journey. To make improvements, you need to ask your customers what they struggle with. Combine the feedback with your data on user behavior, and you’ll get an excellent source of information to optimize your product or service.
In this article, we’ll discuss how to use FullSession to combine web analytics and user feedback. FullSession is a web analytics software that helps businesses monitor and measure how their website visitors behave online. With FullSession, you can track engagement data, identify trends and bottlenecks, and spot pages and elements that need improvement. If you want to know more, sign up for FullSession today.
We’ll also show how to present your findings as actionable insights using a customer feedback report. Before we go into more details, let’s explain what the customer feedback report is and how it helps your business.
What is a customer feedback report?
A customer feedback report presents the key findings of customer feedback analysis. The report aggregates and summarizes analytics data into actionable insights. Customer feedback reports are useful to all stakeholders. They allow you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your products and help in setting product development priorities.
Here are the stakeholders that can benefit from a customer feedback report:
- Business leaders – the report can help identify new company priorities and contribute to setting objectives.
- Product developers – the report can show product features with high potential or signal the need for new features.
- Product designers and user experience designers – the report can help identify obstacles during the customer journey.
- Front-end and back-end developers – the report can point to bugs, website or app stability, or security issues.
- Marketing team – the report can outline new unexplored market opportunities.
It’s good to point out that all critical findings in a customer feedback report are derived from numerical data. You should even convert qualitative feedback to numbers. That’s easier said than done, but you will succeed with proper customer feedback tools and a good plan.
In addition, let’s not underestimate a couple of important stages you must complete before you create the customer feedback report. First of all, you must collect customer feedback. Secondly, you must conduct the feedback analysis. It requires combining the feedback with quantitative data on user behavior. Again, you must convert everything to numbers that point to valuable conclusions.
Why is it important to get feedback from customers?
The universal answer sounds simple. Companies need to know what added value their customers get. We are talking about the customer perspective and not what the product managers think. Customer feedback shows how much your product offering matches the clients’ needs and expectations.
If we look more thoroughly into web businesses, we’ll come up with questions only the users can answer. Users access web content remotely and don’t require a shop assistant to guide them to the right areas or take their money at checkout.
This setting eliminates the personal interactions that would happen in a physical store. That’s why you need other data sources about the customer behavior on your website. Also, you need another way of asking if your customers are satisfied with the experience.
Here are the most common sources of customer feedback that digital product owners can use:
- Customer feedback surveys
- NPS surveys
- Customer satisfaction surveys
- Product reviews – on social media, on-site, app stores, etc.
- Customer support tickets
- Logs from the live chats
- CRM data filled in by account managers
Note that all sources provide information that’s gathered in different situations. It’s wise to consider the context to know the importance of the feedback.
Insights from the chat support, for example, show what problems your customers face and how they feel and talk about it at the time of the experience. In contrast, a customer satisfaction survey post-purchase requires the customer to remember an experience.
These nuances may be essential but not as important as collecting feedback in the first place. Getting representative data is the first step. The next is to measure customer satisfaction.
Why is it important to measure customer satisfaction?
Customer satisfaction is an excellent indicator of the status of customer experience (CX) you provide. In a survey by Gartner, 81% of respondents said they expected future competition to be based primarily on customer experience.
How many bad experiences are enough to lose a customer? Image source: PWC.
Another survey by PWC indicated that 73% of all people consider customer experience when making purchase decisions. More than half (59%) of US respondents said they would ignore a brand after several bad experiences. One bad experience is enough for 17% of the clients to walk away permanently.
Measuring customer satisfaction will allow you to draw a clear picture and spot areas for improvement that can save you money in the long run. Here’s how improved customer satisfaction helps you stay ahead of the competition:
- Improved brand loyalty and customer retention
- High customer satisfaction means repeat business
- Lower acquisition costs
- Lower price pressure
- A catalyst for product improvements
- Word of mouth promotion
Each of the points in this list is important enough by itself. That’s why all businesses should collect and analyze customer feedback and use data to measure customer satisfaction. Let’s say a few words about these advantages of high customer satisfaction.
Improved customer retention
It costs more to get new clients than to keep the current ones. That’s why you should consider all aspects of the customer experience carefully. Don’t stop sending feedback requests after the first customer feedback survey.
For example, you can use confirmation emails to gather feedback after every online purchase. It won’t be too much because every purchase is a different experience, even for loyal customers.
Remember that collecting and analyzing customer feedback are continuous processes. To ensure business growth, you must know what your clients think at all times. You can’t afford the assumption that the experience will stay the same if everything is fine now.
Ensured long-term business success
A loyal core customer base is critical for future-proofing your business. Satisfied customers can be significant when a company is going through tough times. They are cheaper to retain, and you can rely on their purchases when you can’t afford aggressive spending on new customer acquisition.
Lower acquisition costs
It costs a lot to acquire new customers, especially in industries with fierce competition based on product features and price. It is also valid for mature markets with well-known competing brands, each with a solid customer base. That’s why you should always explore opportunities to improve customer satisfaction.
In addition, other costs would go down when your customers are satisfied. A great example is a cost of providing customer support. More support tickets mean you need more people to handle them.
Also, when the customer contacts the support team, it’s too late, and the experience is already not optimal. Your clients end up dealing with issues instead of enjoying the experience. Why go down this spiral when you can ensure excellent customer satisfaction ahead of time?
Lower price pressure
Satisfied customers are less likely to venture into the unknown when they can rely on a familiar experience with your product or service. Your happy customers will always prefer to stay in this comfort zone unless something disrupts it.
A slight price difference won’t be a deal-breaker for your loyal customers. It’s not worth going out there and putting effort just for a few cents more.
Keep in mind that this is valid for products and services with similar value. If your competition is constantly innovating and adding more value, they may be able to convert even people with positive customer sentiment about your brand.
Continuous product improvements
Customer satisfaction, or the lack of it, is a primary driver for innovation. When your clients look for specific features, you must consider them, especially when the competition is restless.
Loyalty is good for customer retention, but it can’t compensate for value disparity. If you lag in product improvements for too long, someone will steal your customers. Industries with high innovation rates are a great example of how being first is always better.
Word of mouth promotion
Satisfied customers feel good about their purchases. The positive experience makes them eager to promote the products and services they buy. They can explain with enthusiasm what features and qualities they like and why.
Word of mouth is a priceless addition to your marketing effort. People would believe your happy customers because the feedback is genuine. That’s why word of mouth is so influential. It raises the NPS score and turns your clients into a marketing force.
The benefits of a customer feedback report
The customer feedback report is an insightful study of customer feedback. The report explains how and why your customers are satisfied or dissatisfied. It helps to understand customer satisfaction in the context of consumer behavior.
The customer feedback report is more than just numbers. You need to analyze the data you gather. It shows which steps and factors in the customer journey affect the experience.
We identified five main benefits of the customer feedback report:
- Importance to all stakeholders
- Points out competitive advantages
- Points out areas for improvement
- Gives actionable insights
- Assists in goal setting and priorities
A good customer feedback report is conclusive and shows facts and dependencies that you didn’t know before. It adds more knowledge about your customer behavior and allows a better understanding of your clients’ needs.
Here are some additional comments about each of the listed benefits.
Importance to all stakeholders
Various teams and individuals in a company can benefit from the customer feedback report. It’s not only for top-level executives but also for other managers and supervisors. The key findings can enable decision-making across all levels of the organization.
Also, the customer feedback report can point to action in any aspect of the customer experience. Depending on the insights, it can aid marketing professionals, product designers, product owners, tech teams, or support teams.
Points out competitive advantages
Everyone loves and celebrates positive customer feedback. Businesses don’t collect feedback only to know what they are doing wrong. Your customers can also tell you what you are doing right. You get a chance to learn more about your competitive advantages. This knowledge can guide your marketing, sales, or product development efforts.
Points out weaknesses
The findings in the customer feedback report can show weaknesses that require immediate attention. These could be product or service flaws that directly cause customer dissatisfaction.
Disadvantages can also relate to how you promote and position your product. Setting unrealistic expectations can affect the experience with an otherwise good product of decent value.
Gives actionable insights
If the customer feedback report findings confirm what you already know, then the insights are non-actionable. If you are already doing what’s necessary for improvement, no further action is needed.
An actionable insight points to meaningful positive change that you need to work for. A helpful customer feedback report shows what you don’t know and suggests how to apply this new knowledge.
Assists in goal setting and priorities
The key findings in a customer feedback report can motivate managers to rethink their priorities. It depends on how urgent the required action is and the dangers of not taking it. Priorities can often move up or down the list because of new information.
14 ways to use a customer feedback report to improve your business
Customers appreciate it when their opinion is valued but wouldn’t invest too much time filling out feedback forms. Businesses are responsible for doing a balanced survey that gathers valuable information without asking for too much customer effort.
You can collect feedback on various topics for various reasons. It all depends on what you need to know right now. For example, you can launch a survey about a new feature of your web app.
The possibilities are endless, but here we listed 14 practical examples of how you can use customer feedback to your advantage.
1. Analyze your customers’ needs
It should be pretty straightforward. Just ask your customers what they need. It could be a product feature, a website feature, or a preference for the shopping process.
Let’s say, for example, that you sell shoes online and nothing else. You don’t have a massive platform that’s a one-stop shop for everything. End users don’t buy batches of shoes regularly and don’t need to track multiple orders. In this case, you can assume the users might prefer to skip creating an account and just enter their payment information at checkout.
It may sound logical at first, but it’s not necessarily true. It may be accurate, but for only a small number of your customers. There’s one way to find out: just ask. It will allow you to direct your effort more meaningfully and spend your budget on things that matter.
2. Improve customer satisfaction
Ask your customers how satisfied they are and what improvements they want to see. Again, don’t change anything that works well. Also, analyze the feedback data carefully. Compare positive to negative responses. Try to figure out if there are groups of customers who want opposite things. Find a balanced solution that improves the overall satisfaction across all customer segments.
Also, be aware of the difference between the product and the overall experience. Let’s go back to the example with the online shoe purchase. A customer could be delighted with his new pair of shoes and still say he wouldn’t shop from your website again. Keep asking until you figure it out. Then you can start planning improvements.
3. Increase customer loyalty and advocacy
People feel more valued when they know their voice is being heard. The very act of requesting feedback can tip the scales in your favor.
Use customer feedback to power decision-making. Customers will see the results and know they contributed to your improvements. It will make them feel like stakeholders. This kind of involvement will increase loyalty, and loyal customers will be more likely to engage in word-of-mouth promotion.
4. Improve customer experience
Most customer satisfaction surveys ask users to evaluate aspects of their experience and put them on a scale. It can limit the feedback to the questions you listed for the survey. Keep in mind that something else may be more critical to the customer.
Use an open-ended customer feedback form to allow users to say the more important things to them. Keep in mind that open-ended questions require more effort to answer. Don’t include too many of them, and keep the survey short and easy to complete.
Last, make sure you go through all answers and label them correctly. It will allow you to turn this qualitative data into numeric data. Then you can quickly summarize the numbers into crucial findings.
5. Identify new opportunities
Customer feedback can be positive and show what things you excel at. If customers see different aspects of your service as your advantage, you can use that insight to stay ahead of the competition. Also, your respondents can help you arrive at conclusions few others have thought about. If acted upon, it will help you stay on the cutting edge.
The feedback may show surprising new opportunities that you never explored before.
6. Enhance your product and service offerings
The data from your satisfaction survey will help you find out what is important to your customers. If we retake the retail example, you can use the findings to add new product groups to your online store.
You can also start a premium service with more customer benefits. It would ensure that you cover more market segments and expand your client base.