For decision-makers, Return on Investment (ROI) is a critical tool of measurement used to understand what ventures are worth putting capital towards.
This is why when it comes to investing in customer experience programs or solutions, it’s imperative to know exactly what return you’re getting and how it affects your business.
For some, it can be immediate, while for others it can appear later down the line in the form of customer loyalty, advocacy, and improved brand reputation. In fact, McKinsey & Company report; “a positive customer experience yields 20 percent higher customer satisfaction and a 10 to 15 percent boost in sales conversion rates.”
Regardless, from a growth perspective, improving the customer experience is powerful.
So how can you do so effectively?
In this blog, we’re looking at referrals and customer feedback as tools to enhance the customer experience and drive more revenue for optimized return on investment.
The Power of Customer Feedback and Referrals
Customers have long been providing their feedback and communicating with others about brand experience. This isn’t new. However, for businesses, finding ways to manage that feedback and use it in a productive way, is.
For many, this has been an untapped source of revenue. Using customer feedback, businesses can collect a plethora of information on the customer, and better understand their operations to deliver pristine service. What’s more, most feedback comes organically, so it’s free, or low cost, and if it’s a positive review on a popular site, it can help drive more traffic. Don’t believe us? Nielsen recently reported that “84% of consumers trust the recommendations of others over other forms of marketing” and WOMMA reported, “word of mouth’s impact is almost 20% of sales.”
It’s safe to say that feedback and referrals are necessary for growth, providing you with a direct line into the customer’s mind and new tools to improve the overall experience.
Best Practices For Managing Customers Surveys
While feedback and referrals come with an abundance of benefits, there are steps that you can take to ensure you get the most feedback possible and manage it in the most effective way. In this next section, we’re sharing some best practices for obtaining feedback and prompting referrals so you can ensure you’re getting a favourable return on investment.
Encourage Responses With Real-Time Surveys
According to a study completed by Lee Resource Inc, “95% of complaining customers will not do business with you again if you don’t resolve a complaint instantly.” Customers today expect immediate reactions. Regardless if they are using Facebook Messenger, email, or posting on Trip Advisor, any type of feedback or referral should be acknowledged and responded to in real-time. This not only increases customer satisfaction but also provides an opportunity for management to correct the issue and adjust operations – to ensure the customer has the best experience possible.
What’s more, if you’re sending a survey in real-time, it can help you retrieve more accurate and detailed information. For instance, real-time capabilities allow the customer to have the experience top of mind, things like employee name, location, product purchased, and so on, will be more easily remembered.
With Loop, all of this is possible and can even be automated for less strain on your employees. Using our tools, you can encourage customers to respond in the moment, improving loyalty and deterring dissatisfied customers from sharing their experience.
Analyze To Improve The Experience
Receiving feedback is only one part of improving the customer experience, another, and arguably one of the most important parts is analyzing the data.
When you collect feedback, you get a complete view of the customer’s sentiment without distortion or influence. It provides you clear insight on what’s working operationally and what’s not, employees that are over-performing or service points that are untidy. With this information, you can adjust elements of the experience to directly reflect what the customer wants. For competitors who aren’t measuring the customer experience, this can be a differentiator, especially if you are announcing them regularly.
With the Loop Experience Platform, analyzing surveys is simplified with custom dashboards and visualization reports. Let’s say, for instance, you received 10 reviews within the past 2 hours. With Loop, you can see the feedback come in, in real-time. If you have your platform’s dashboard customized, these insights will be provided immediately when you log in. Further, you can access trending topics using heatmaps to see a visual of popular topics that customers are talking about and whether it is tied to negative or positive sentiment.
All of these elements tie together so you can better understand the experience and how to adjust it for greater satisfaction.
Collect at Every Touchpoint
For the most holistic view of customer sentiment and to ensure no part of your customer journey is left behind, collecting data at every critical touchpoint is essential. This means placing signage or prompting customers with in-location surveys at key, high traffic, areas of your establishment. By doing this, you can see what areas are underperforming and how to improve them to ensure the experience remains consistent throughout – and no area is neglected.
Empower Through Signage and Intuitive Applications
Empower customers to provide feedback by promoting them throughout your establishment and making sure they are easy to use.
Using the Loop platform, you can brand your entire survey with a logo and even select an intuitive design that matches. Filling out a survey then becomes simple, and completely customizable for your audience. Using applications like a SDK, your developers can design a survey that suits your needs, measure for success and adjust where necessary.
Further, with Loop you can obtain signage and place it throughout your establishment for greater visibility. Have signage in key areas, promote it through your employees, or have tent cards placed throughout. Regardless of what you select, Loop provides you with the tools to maximize visibility.
The Underlying Impact On Your Bottom Line
By collecting feedback, listening to comments and suggestions, all while adjusting the experience accordingly, you improve customer retention and encourage new buyers. Customers want to feel valued by your business, and implementing their sentiments does exactly that. And don’t just take our word for it, Walker report it was stated that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience, while Bain and Co. reported, increasing customer retention rates by 5% and increases in profits anywhere from 25% to 95%.
Customer experience programs are a tried and true way of building brand advocates and customers who actively communicate their satisfaction. In addition, using CX solutions like Loop can help increase the number of reviews by tenfold and ensure you are consistently providing a customer experience that meets expectations. As mentioned previously, it also provides your business with an upper hand with competition. Using the feedback you could identify new trends, customer service tactics, and even just simple changes to make the experience better.
Looking to start collecting feedback and improve the customer experience? Talk to one of our representatives today.
