What this post is about
- Customer feedback enables the continuous improvement of your services
- Evaluate direct feedback from immediate communication
- Pay attention to indirect feedback through implicit actions
- With systematic collection, the support team can provide knowledge to the entire company
- Only regular evaluation leads to improvements
Customer feedback enables understanding and optimizing the customer experience. By putting customers at the center, companies can continuously improve their products and eliminate weaknesses in interaction.
Are you ready to actively listen? Then incorporate the following two types of customer feedback into your communication processes:
Collecting direct customer feedback
Direct feedback refers to the immediate communication from customers, where they explicitly express their opinions, concerns, and suggestions. This feedback can be conveyed through comments, emails, or phone calls to customer support, or it may be requested during interactions.
Direct feedback is characterized by specific statements, opinions, or evaluations, and it is clear in its meaning. Often, it can be directly related to a product or service.
Here are some ways to collect direct feedback effectively:
- Ask for follow-up questions
- Create surveys and questionnaires
- Implement customer satisfaction studies
- Invite product testers for interviews
- Be present on review platforms
By gathering direct feedback, businesses can better understand their customers' needs and preferences, and use this valuable information to improve their products and services.
Paying attention to indirect customer feedback
Indirect feedback, on the other hand, is not explicitly expressed by customers but needs to be derived from their behaviors and actions. It includes data from customer interactions on the website, social media engagements, click and purchasing behaviors.
This information provides companies with insights into customer preferences without customers having to explicitly voice their opinions. Accordingly, the data is more subtle and requires analysis and interpretation regarding satisfaction and potential frustrations.
Pay attention to the following signals:
- Duration and click paths of website visits
- Use of specific keywords in support communication
- Moods in messages
- Emojis in customer reviews
- Distinct behavioral patterns
Systematic Collection of Customer Feedback
Capturing customer feedback is crucial to continuously improve support and increase customer satisfaction. A proven method for this is to survey customers exactly where you have the most contact with them. In customer support, this is typically the helpdesk.
Zammad offers you the opportunity to seamlessly integrate a customer survey by creating a new ticket attribute, such as "customer satisfaction," in the Object Manager. This way, customers can rate their satisfaction directly within the ticket. Utilizing the Core Workflows allows you to conveniently control when the attribute becomes visible, for example, only after the ticket has been closed. If your customers prefer to contact your support via email, you can automatically send an email using Triggers and invite them to rate your support.
Now it's getting really interesting! Of course, you want to view the feedback you've collected: As a Zammad administrator, you have the right tool at your fingertips to generate reports in the helpdesk. To do this, you create a corresponding profile in the administration area Report Profiles that filters tickets based on a specific attribute. This way, you can view all tickets with the attribute "customer satisfaction" in the statistics section of your Zammad user interface and conveniently download the statistics in CSV format.
For an even more comprehensive evaluation and analysis, you can also utilize integrations with third-party tools such as Grafana or Kibana. In our free webinar, we will be happy to show you how to make the most of these advanced features.
With Continuous Evaluation for Innovation
Make it a habit to regularly review the latest customer feedback during meetings or immediately share the most relevant insights through common communication channels with all employees who should be informed.
This allows you to identify and resolve weaknesses while gaining valuable insights for the continuous improvement of your products and services.
Continuously capture metrics such as the Customer Satisfaction Score, the Customer Effort Score, and the Net Promoter Score, which we present in detail here. They help statistically measure customer satisfaction and sharpen the focus on essential aspects in customer support.
Regular reports and analyses can also help identify trends and patterns in customer feedback. We recommend aligning them with your internal development cycles so that the gathered insights can be best incorporated.
Summary
Customer feedback is a crucial tool to drive product development, customer experience, and revenue growth. It enables companies to optimize their products, improve customer experience, and build long-term customer relationships. Companies that recognize the potential of customer feedback and actively respond to it will be more successful in the long run and gain a competitive advantage. So, listening pays off!