There is nothing better than hearing from your customer: what they think, experienced, had trouble with, or got stuck on. Getting this information is like gold – it can be used soooo many ways. As analysts and especially those in Customer Intelligence – it’s creating actionable information from this feedback, that creates the core for what we want to present to execs, site managers, programming, etc.
Take this example:
“The site was very easy to navigate, the only suggestion I can make is to allow to search, other than by brand, but by color or style and narrow down further by another factor. I was unable to this, but could if searching by brand. Thanks!”
Fair critique, with positive feedback and a specific suggestion. Now, the customer may or may not have the best understand of website design, usability, function, logistics, etc – BUT there is more you can glean even the most basic statement. Other than the obvious – is there more here?
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Usability suggestions: Customers are looking for ways to shop and browse by colors and styles. Maybe, more than just drill-downs, you have other ways for customers to find what they are suggesting. Design, programming and site leads love this info.
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Natural Language: They used “color” – not finish, option, or some other term I’ve seen can be adopted by manufacturers or industries. Watch for other terms they might use about your products. Maybe your category names, product types, attributes or other basic terms you use might need to be brushed up. In our profession, we like to be accurate, but customers use what they use – in search and what catches their eye.
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Education/Age: Ok, this goes into speculation, but you can discern a person’s education from what language they use. Punctuation, grammar and structure of the feedback are other indicators. Some might also be derived from age as well, as older might use more formal speech patterns. IF THEY ARE USING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, THEY MIGHT BE MY GRANDPARENTS.
Most already have a number of sources of customer feedback easily at hand. Some are a bit more difficult to catalog, index or get into a ready format to analyze and aggregate. If you take away our aggregation skillz, then where would we be!? The question is, how to get this gold without having to break your back to get it. Or your intern’s back. They are usually younger anyway…
Some great ways to get feedback that are often automated (after you have them installed):
Bizrate: Merchant Rating System. Bizrate is a company that changed it’s name a bit back to Shopzilla, but still maintain a website that has a decent system of offering post-purchase surveys to customers asking them to numerically rate the merchant and the products carried. I like them, as they are very automated and offer good aggregation and I get the comments emailed to me every day, what my customers are saying. I don’t like them from the standpoint they can get a bit officious or customer-tempting to get a customer to write the survey, and that might lead to a negative experience which might reflect on the merchant.
Product Ratings & Reviews: Having a customer write information and add content to the product page is very powerful. You can implement basic “write a review” functionality to your website, or have a vendor run the service which might include content moderation, hosting, additional widgets or review syndication. The two big vendors in this space are BazaarVoice and Power Reviews.
Call Centers: These can take a bit of effort or coordination, but if you can get support from Management to have your phone reps log the basic types of calls or take down specific feedback onto a place to be logged, this can be great feedback. If you have a phone system that can record and email phone calls (I love this), these can be great to review, though a bit more time consuming.
So! Lessons learned? There are some great things you can get from Customer Feedback, even beyond the blatant messaging of what they are outright telling you. Also, there are some great sources that can provide some tangible benefits and help you create a more accurate analysis, punctuate a presentation or make a outright statement to your management.
Tags: bazaarvoice, bizrate, call center, customers, feedback, power reviews
