In the age of the customer, brands understand they need to place the customer at the center of everything they do. Voice-of-the-customer (VoC) programs aim at better engaging with customers in what should be a meaningful dialogue. But customers don’t rely only on those to share their experience. They use their preferred channel to send feedback, making it available everywhere for who listens. Customer experience (CX) professionals should leverage what is available to them and seek the gems sometimes hidden in customer feedback.

on a table, four hands place a card with a smiley on it, expressing feedback

Feedback Comes In Multiple Ways — Are You Listening?

Customer feedback is not limited to structured data coming from surveys. Customers also send spontaneous feedback about their experiences. While structured feedback is easier to analyse, unsolicited and unstructured feedback can cast light on elements that CX pros might not even be aware of but have an impact on the quality of their customers’ experience. Are you capturing it all where ever it is? And are you able to analyse it even when it comes to you in an unstructured way? Or are you staying in the dark?

Customer Feedback Represents CX Opportunities — Are You Acting On It?

Our recent research shows that customers have multiple intents when they send feedback. In 53% of the cases, they are offering opportunities to improve their experience (and that of other customers). When they request a solution to an issue they are experiencing or try to get your acknowledgment, they’re looking for a direct action. When they make suggestions for improvements or highlight issues that might affect other customers, they are sending valuable and actionable insights. Are you harnessing all the value that comes your way?

Close The Feedback Loop To Keep The Conversation Going

In the same research, we found that up to 11% of customer feedback remains unseen — customers wanted to send feedback but in the end did not do it. And it about half of those cases, bad feedback experience is what prevents them from doing so. Along with feedback fatigue and flows requiring too much effort, some customers express that they feel it is pointless to send feedback … because no one is reading it.

To avoid creating that state of learned helplessness, CX leaders need to consider feedback as a crucial customer journey. They need to collaborate with their contact service and VoC teams and close the feedback loop systematically. By doing so, not only will they be able to harness opportunities customers share, they will keep the conversation going.

Join me at our CX EMEA forum to get started. In addition to detailed findings, I will share a simple framework you can use to design better feedback experiences.