Create customer feedback loops at scale
Create customer feedback loops at scale
1. Automate a survey that goes to the customers who have been buying from you for 6 months, asking why they shop with you, what their lifestyle is like, and where else they shop online.
Each of these questions can lead you to new partnerships, and as your customer base grows, you will be provided with a continual source of new insights.
2. Segment your customer database into non-customers, people who click but don't buy, first-time buyers, repeat buyers, and people who haven't bought in a while.
Getting specific with who you’re trying to get feedback from, can reveal insights for each type of lead & customer. For instance, some insights from product users could help designers improve UX and design flow. Other insights can help you rework your value proposition to further distinguish you from the competition and so forth.
3. Set up interactive surveys and live chat to collect feedback from non-buying visitors to your site.
Use tools like PopSurvey, WebEngage or Qualaroo to create multiple-choice or rating scale surveys. Use tools like ClickDesk, Olark or Zopim to set up live chat for high touch pages. Collect feedback on where visitors get lost on the site and learn about their behavior. Use the feedback to better guide visitors to the right pages or offer them suitable deals. For example, after a visitor being on Vero’s landing page for more than 30 seconds without taking action, the site displays a pop-up asking “What is the main thing preventing you from signing up to Vero at this point?” Visitors receive a call to action based on their response. On the other hand, on NitroPDF’s pricing page, they ask visitors “How many times do you convert documents on a daily basis?” to get data on the needs of potential customers. For Ez Texting, using Olark’s live chat widget on their pricing page helped to increase signups by 31%. Accounting company CheckMark also saw a 20% increase in new sales within just a few months of implementing live chat.
4. Reach out via email to specific customer segments like people who had clicked through but hadn't bought, to survey and find out if they were interested in buying, or to new subscribers to offer them help and assistance.
Use emails to build feedback loops into your follow-up communications with leads the moment they subscribe to your list, right after they’ve consumed your lead magnet, if they haven’t opened an email in some time or if they open, and click but never buy. For example, Noah Kagan’s AppSumo had a great new product, How To Make a $1,000 a Month Business. The initial test group had well received the product, however, a highly targeted email campaign launched to 30,000 people converted only 30 people to buy, 0.1% conversion rate, on the launch date. The team then sent a survey to people who had opened the email and clicked through but didn’t buy. The survey had 4 simple questions: Were you at least interested in buying? YES or NO. Be specific about the answer. What’s holding you back from starting your business? Should we make our support sumo do a dance video? Armed with data, they completely redesigned the landing page using the customer’s language & business type to provide answers to most pressing fears and concerns. That one survey literally turned the whole product around and from there on in, it sold a lot better and conversions from email campaigns went up as well.
5. Write emails with simple friendly language to collect feedback from first-time buyers, asking questions like, “Were you satisfied with the experience of buying [the product]?" or "How can we make it even better the next time?”
Send emails to customers after buying their first product from you or after buying multiple products. Design a survey that’s not overwhelming, making sure you’re only asking the most relevant questions that will be quick to fill in. We know from different studies that the more fields, questions, or choices you give to the user, the less likely they’ll be to take action. Use so-called “one-second” surveys. For instance, Zingerman’s, an Ann Arbor-based mail order deli, sent a survey with one question, “How likely are you to recommend Zingerman’s Mail Order to a friend or colleague?” where 0 = not a chance and 10 = in a heartbeat. After that, the email asks the customer if they have time to give a short explanation of the score.
6. Ask repeat buyers for a review in exchange for a little perk, like a $1,000 cash draw for everyone who leaves a review.
For example, sports company Evo-Gear split-tested 3 different email approaches: A basic request for a product review (control). An email suggesting that a review would help the community of other customers by giving good shopping advice. An announcement for a cash prized contest valued at $1,000 for review. They gained 280 reviews on a single product. In the end, the approach that hinted at community, converted around the same as the control, and the contest’s initial conversion rate was 5.6%, roughly double the control’s conversion rate.
7. Gamify your review process by handpicking the best reviewers and creating a leaderboard for their most helpful reviews.
For instance, Amazon has introduced the Vine Voices program, where the reviewer’s rank is determined by the overall helpfulness of all their reviews, factoring in the number of reviews they have written. The program also makes a game out of reviewing products, displaying a leaderboard of the most helpful reviewers.
8. Integrate customer support tools within the product to communicate with customers in real-time when they most need it.
Using live chat solution O-Lark, Unbounce builds live support right into their app that helps them communicate with customers when they need it most. In their Kindle Fire HDX, Amazon included a Mayday button that enabled on-device, video tech support. It gave product users access to tech help that could see what they saw on their devices and if needed, take total control over the device. The feature made sense for a traditionally less tech-savvy demographic group of people over 50, and enabled Amazon to run usability testing and collect feedback on pain points in the device.
9. Engage non-converting customers with an automated email at the end of your email onboarding process to learn why they didn't convert.
For example, Vero sent a simple personal email one week after the customer’s trial expired, obtaining insight into why people decided not to use them, which is a huge help when making future product decisions. They also found out that only around 2% of people completed the survey, and of those, around half ended up giving Vero another try. While the completion numbers were not massive, they gave an insight into how to improve testing and surveying as well.