What do in-store feedback, guest feedback, and attendee feedback have in common? They’re all really hard to get! But the reward for using them correctly and improving your customer experience is big. More and more companies are realising that a great customer experience is the most effective way to win customers from the competition and retain them for the long term.
So what’s the best way to make sure you win at the customer experience game? Well, just ask your customers! These are our top 3 tips to capture powerful feedback in retail, hotels, or events, and to dramatically improve your customer experience.
Pick a metric that’s right for your business
Start with a good understanding of what you’re trying to measure and why. Metrics like the Net Promoter Score (NPS) are proven to be strong indicators of customer loyalty, so they are a great place to start. If you’re not familiar the Net Promoter Score, it measures how likely your customers are to recommend your product or services. The more customers willing to recommend you, the more you’ll be able to grow organically without spending millions in marketing. Brands like Apple, Intercontinental Hotels and Virgin have all adopted Net Promoter Score to ensure they deliver great customer experiences. And we can all clearly see the difference!
Customer Effort Score. This metric helps companies optimise those experiences where customers simply want to go through quickly and easily (imagine the checkout process in a hotel). Companies who are rated “easy to work with” get an increase in customer loyalty of up to 22%. For your metric to be successful, make sure you do the following:
Make it quick and relevant
You usually don’t have more than 20 seconds to collect the information you need from customers. Be concise and relevant (we usually advise no more than 6 questions), making sure you only ask the questions that really matter. One last trick to incentivise customer feedback is to let them know how you’re using it. Use branding boards to explain in few words why you’re asking for a little bit of your customer’s time. One of the best examples we saw was a sports apparel retailer which asked customers to “BE OUR COACH”.
Use it or lose it
Make sure you select a feedback tool that automatically aggregates data and analyses it in real time, so you can start acting upon the feedback right away. This will justify your effort, get buy in from your team members, and get you some true customer love!
Michele Paselli is Co-founder of Satsum; software that helps you measure and improve your customer experience. Satsum is already being used by leading brands like Intercontinental Hotels, and is perfect for improving customer experience in retail, events and hospitality. Surveys are simple to setup and quick complete, and the powerful dashboard automatically delivers recommendations on which aspect of your customer experience you should improve.
