Customer satisfaction – we are obsessed with it, and you should be too. After all, providing high-quality products, services, and customer care brings money to the bank. How to check if your feeling of providing the best customer service really checks out with the realit. A loyalty program like DSW's gives the brand access to tons of customer data. DSW used that to their advantage (along with some trusty email automation) to build emails that are hyper-personalized and relevant—a far cry from other generic marketing emails sitting in customers' inboxes. For customer experience to be great, every interaction at every customer touchpoint must be exceptional. In other words, the whole organization must work together to deliver a great customer experience. There are eight essential components to building a great customer experience program: Developing and deploying your customer experience intent statement Building touchpoint maps Redesigning. Customer Feedback Survey Program Name Posted by gillian.glassanos on 9/19/2012 at 5:03 PM ET 125 Points Need a good name for a customer feedback survey program. By making their program name clever and fun, Teddy the Dog has made their program easy to remember and even easier to recognize. With adorable pups and the opportunity to 'earn bones, get treats' on their explainer page, customers can easily see the value of joining their community and appreciate the close connection between what they sell and how they've branded their program.
Looking for a list of the best brand loyalty programs?
We've trawled the Internet, hunting down a wide array of customer loyalty programs, brand rewards memberships and punch card programs across different industries. Here they are:
Click on the following links to jump to your relevant topic:
- The Best Loyalty Programs In the World – Starbucks, Amazon Prime, and Sephora; the best examples of loyalty programs in the world
- Restaurant Loyalty Programs – Loyalty program examples from cafes, fast casual/fast food QSR loyalty including Dunkin, Panera and Chipotle
- Travel Loyalty Programs – Examples of loyalty programs that reward you for travel & hospitality spending, like Expedia, Amtrak and National. Also including the following subcategories:
- Hotel Loyalty Programs – Featuring hotel chains big and small like Hyatt, Starwoods, and even Hotels.com
- Airline Loyalty Programs – First-class service and rewards from Delta, Alaska Airlines and Virgin Atlantic
- Products Loyalty Programs – A huge category of loyalty programs with rewards for purchasing products. Rather than split by industry, we've decided to split them by:
- eCommerce Loyalty Programs – Any loyalty program that focuses on online sales, or features a heavy online component
- Retailer Loyalty Programs – Loyalty program examples focusing on offline or brick-and-mortar retail experiences
Who has the best loyalty rewards program?
Starbucks, Amazon Prime and Sephora have the best customer loyalty programs, tapping into their global reach, strong brand loyalty and regularly returning customers. More than just sales and discounts, their loyalty programs play a big part in delivering excellent customer experiences, for example mobile payments and priority experiences – and generate record revenue, too!
Starbucks loyalty program
Starbucks Rewards is one of the most used loyalty programs in the world! Spending money at Starbucks gets you 'Star points', which you can then redeem for rewards. Plus, you can also pay by mobile through the app, and get notifications of special offers and seasonal drinks.
The loyalty program is so successful Starbucks Rewards was mentioned eight times in its Q4 2018 Earnings Call. Not a surprise, considering that Starbucks Rewards members loaded over a billion dollars of cash onto their cards in 2016, and grew to 15.3 million members by November 2018.
Read More: An Analysis of Starbucks Rewards' Billion-Dollar Loyalty Program
Amazon Prime loyalty program
Amazon's Prime loyalty program has been subject to a lot of analysis, but it's hard to argue that it offers rewards for loyalty to Amazon shoppers, as well as encouraging members to keep going back to Amazon to enjoy the benefits.
And what benefits! Users get faster shipping benefits, exclusive access to movies and TV shows, Kindle books, and generally a superior Amazon experience all-around. No wonder there have been 100 million Prime subscribers globally in April 2018 – with the number expected to spike after Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
See Also: 5 Top-Notch Loyalty Programs That Reimagined The Way We Think About Rewards – #2 is Amazon Prime!Sephora's loyalty program: Sephora
Beauty Pass / Beauty Insider
The Sephora Beauty Insider Program has three tiers – White, Black and Gold. Benefits include…
- Private sales and exclusive events
- Offers on your favorite brands
- A surprise on your birthday
- A brand gift of your choice every 200 points
With attractive benefits like this, it's no wonder some Sephora Super-Shoppers can easily rack up 50,000 Beauty Insider Points – the equivalent of spending $50,000!
What are the best restaurant rewards program?
Good food and great ambience brings customers in – but great a loyalty/rewards program keeps customers coming back regularly.
With Starbucks leading the charge, we are seeing more programs transition towards mobile apps and digital loyalty programs, including the likes of Dunkin' Donuts, Chick-fil-A and Panera Bread.
Chick-fil-A Loyalty Program
With 13 million active members and more sales per average than KFC or McDonald's, Chik-fil-A must be doing something right with its Chik-Fil-A One loyalty program.
In fact, they recently gave a loyal patron free Chick-fil-A meals for the rest of his life. Granted, he's a 100 years old — but it's a nice touch to reward loyalty.
Read More: How Chick-Fil-A overtakes the competition with its loyalty program
DD Perks Rewards: The Dunkin' Donuts Loyalty Program
In less than three years, DD Perks Rewards has signed up seven million members on its way to becoming a massive mobile success.
They combined regular rewards and offers for new members, mobile payment and ordering (only for loyalty members!) and cross-promotions with local sports teams.
Read More: Perk Me Up: How Dunkin' Donuts loyalty program brews fresh customer rewards with DD Perks Rewards
MyPanera: Panera Bread's Loyalty Program
Panera's digital loyalty program, MyPanera, has more than 28 million members, representing more than half its customer base.
MyPanera surprises and delights customers and generated US$1 billion in 2017 from digital, mobile, web and kiosk sales. And the number is set to double by 2019!
Read More: Rise Up: How Panera's digital loyalty program MyPanera is delivering a billion dollars in sales
Red Robin Royalty Loyalty Program
Serving up a whopping US$315 million of burgers in the second quarter of 2018 alone, Red Robin must be doing something right in the competitive American fast food/burger market. Part of their success can be attributed to the Red Robin Royalty loyalty program.
Generous rewards are offered ranging from free entrees to birthday burgers and limited time deals. Red Robin gamifies the experience of earning these rewards, ingraining the habit of patronising their stores.
Read More: 4 Reasons Why Everyone Loves The Red Robin Loyalty Rewards Program
Chipotle loyalty program – Chiptopia
Chiptopia was an experiment in loyalty, run by Chipotle. The program lasted for just three months and is no longer active. Even though more than 3 million customers participated, a variety of factors including an timely health scare and an over-complicated redemption program made it untenable.
Chipotle are coming back with their rewards program, though. In the meantime, you can learn about how Chiptopia failed and how to avoid making the same mistakes.
Read Also: Chipotle's Chiptopia Loyalty Program – What went wrong? Lessons and learnings.
Costa Coffee loyalty program
Costa Coffee loyalty program is called the Costa Coffee Club, and has an app too. They offer points earned, special events and free wifi — eerily similar to another famous cafe loyalty program.
Graeters loyalty program
Graeter's Sweet Rewards Program exists as a loyalty card, but they're also rolling out a pilot mobile app in new cities. Digital loyalty programs, especially for mobile phones, are becoming the norm.
Subway loyalty program: Subcard
The Subcard App has some interesting twists, including earning points with friends (‘Subsquad') and loads more.
Read Also: How Subway Stays Fresh – By Boosting Its Marketing Efforts
The best travel rewards/loyalty program
The travel industry was the first to popularise memberships, rewards and loyalty programs. To this day, most hotels and airlines have points and memberships. Some of the best include Expedia, World of Hyatt and Delta Airlines.
This also includes the subsections for Hotel and Airline Loyalty Program examples.
Expedia loyalty program
Expedia+ Rewards combines tiered membership with rewards points.
Learn more: Expedia+ Rewards
National's loyalty program
National Car Rental is also making use of a mobile app to target loyalty club members.
Learn more: National's loyalty program
Amtrak loyalty program
Amtrak's loyalty program is called Amtrak Guest Rewards, and is framed very much like a hotel's, interestingly!
The best hotel loyalty programs
The best hotel loyalty programs go beyond offering free night stays, room upgrades or complimentary ‘continental' breakfasts. Hyatt, Starwoods and Hotels.com feature exclusive experiences and special rewards.
See also examples for Travel and Airlines.
The World of Hyatt loyalty program
Hyatt revamped their much-beloved Hyatt Gold Passport loyalty program to the World of Hyatt, to focus more on meaningful benefits and brand values, instead of simply room bookings and points.
Despite having a smaller portfolio than larger hotel chains, the revamp had a big effect as Hyatt reported stronger sales growth and customer satisfaction.
Read More: How to inspire empathy with customers: The World of Hyatt loyalty program
Hotels.com loyalty program
Learn more: Hotels.com loyalty program
Starwood Preferred Guest Loyalty Program
Starwood's Preferred Guest loyalty program can be linked with Marriott Rewards and Ritz Carlton rewards.
IHG loyalty program
Learn more: IHG's loyalty program
The best airline loyalty program
Delta, Alaska Airlines and British Airways offer more than just seat upgrades, priority booking and air miles. Read how the best airline loyalty programs keep customers booking with them again and again.
See also examples for Travel and Hotels.
Delta Airline's Loyalty Program: SkyMiles
Many airlines and hospitality offer points and miles. Delta's Skymiles is an example of a loyalty program that's well structured, easy to earn points, and tailored to make it easy to spend for users – especially VIP-level Medallion Status members.
Read More: Delta Airline's Loyalty Program: Examples of a well-structured program
Alaska Airline's loyalty program
Alaska Airline's loyalty program is called Mileage Plan, but offers a host of rewards beyond just bonus miles.
Virgin Atlantic loyalty program
Virgin Atlantic's loyalty program is called the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club.
British Airways loyalty program
British Airways' loyalty program is called the Executive Club, with tiers named after precious stones – Emerald, Sapphire.
The best product loyalty program
Loyalty programs and memberships that offer you rewards for purchasing products from the brand. We've divided this section into eCommerce loyalty programs, which feature online sales or a heavy online component and Retailer Loyalty Programs, which focus on brick-and-mortar retailer examples.
The best eCommerce loyalty program
Sephora and Hotel Pink lead the charge, rewarding their regular customers for their loyalty with membership rewards, exclusive experiences and special tiers.
Hotel Pink, Frank Body‘s Rewards & Loyalty Program
In just a couple of years, Frank Body grew from a modest $5,000 to a multimillion dollar skincare brand. Generatefnisforusers error 2001. They knew their audience and how to reach them with sharp social media branding – but also a successful loyalty program, Hotel Pink.
Hotel Pink ties in aspects of a conventional shopping rewards/loyalty program with points for referrals, allowing customers to earn points any way they choose – making them extremely effective brand ambassadors.
Read More: Why Frank Body's Hotel Pink Is An Effective Loyalty Program For Customer Retention
3Stripes.co: Adidas loyalty program
Adidas's loyalty program for customers in Asia is called 3stripes.co.
It gives participants a $10 voucher for every $100 spent, among a host of other benefits.
Barnes&Nobles loyalty program
Barnes&Nobles has a loyalty program in the form of a $25/year membership with over $50 in coupons.
Dr. Brandt loyalty program
Dr Brandt's loyalty program uses a point system that gives customers points for all sorts of specific actions.
Gilt Insider loyalty program
Gilt Insider loyalty program has four tiers – Insider, Select, Premier and Noir. At the highest level, you get…
- Birthday gifts
- VIP customer service
- Waitlist priority
- Private events
- 1 Hour Preview of Sales
Lancome loyalty program
Learn more: Lancome's loyalty program
Marvel loyalty program
Learn more: Marvel Insider
Nestlé loyalty program
Learn more: Nestlé's loyalty program
Ulta loyalty program
Learn more: Ulta's loyalty program
Yuenglings loyalty program
Yuengling's loyalty program gives subscribers access to coupons, discounts, contests, a free pint of ice cream and more.
Zappos loyalty program
Zappos's loyalty program has 4 tiers – Sliver, Gold, Platinum and Elite – and the last is invite-only.
The best retail loyalty program
Brick-and-mortar retail experiences that focus mostly on returning customers for the offline experience, with no online tie-in. See also the best eCommerce loyalty programs.
Best Buy Loyalty Program
Best Buy's loyalty program is called My Best Buy, and it has three tiers – Regular, Elite, and ElitePlus.
Nordstrom loyalty program
Learn: Nordstrom's loyalty program
Old Navy loyalty program
Learn more: Old Navy's loyalty program
Patagonia loyalty program
Learn more: Patagonia's loyalty program
Samsung loyalty program
The Samsung loyalty program, based in India, is called the Samsung Smart Club.
Binary fortress multi keygen download. There's a Gold tier and a Platinum tier as well!
Delta, Alaska Airlines and British Airways offer more than just seat upgrades, priority booking and air miles. Read how the best airline loyalty programs keep customers booking with them again and again.
See also examples for Travel and Hotels.
Delta Airline's Loyalty Program: SkyMiles
Many airlines and hospitality offer points and miles. Delta's Skymiles is an example of a loyalty program that's well structured, easy to earn points, and tailored to make it easy to spend for users – especially VIP-level Medallion Status members.
Read More: Delta Airline's Loyalty Program: Examples of a well-structured program
Alaska Airline's loyalty program
Alaska Airline's loyalty program is called Mileage Plan, but offers a host of rewards beyond just bonus miles.
Virgin Atlantic loyalty program
Virgin Atlantic's loyalty program is called the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club.
British Airways loyalty program
British Airways' loyalty program is called the Executive Club, with tiers named after precious stones – Emerald, Sapphire.
The best product loyalty program
Loyalty programs and memberships that offer you rewards for purchasing products from the brand. We've divided this section into eCommerce loyalty programs, which feature online sales or a heavy online component and Retailer Loyalty Programs, which focus on brick-and-mortar retailer examples.
The best eCommerce loyalty program
Sephora and Hotel Pink lead the charge, rewarding their regular customers for their loyalty with membership rewards, exclusive experiences and special tiers.
Hotel Pink, Frank Body‘s Rewards & Loyalty Program
In just a couple of years, Frank Body grew from a modest $5,000 to a multimillion dollar skincare brand. Generatefnisforusers error 2001. They knew their audience and how to reach them with sharp social media branding – but also a successful loyalty program, Hotel Pink.
Hotel Pink ties in aspects of a conventional shopping rewards/loyalty program with points for referrals, allowing customers to earn points any way they choose – making them extremely effective brand ambassadors.
Read More: Why Frank Body's Hotel Pink Is An Effective Loyalty Program For Customer Retention
3Stripes.co: Adidas loyalty program
Adidas's loyalty program for customers in Asia is called 3stripes.co.
It gives participants a $10 voucher for every $100 spent, among a host of other benefits.
Barnes&Nobles loyalty program
Barnes&Nobles has a loyalty program in the form of a $25/year membership with over $50 in coupons.
Dr. Brandt loyalty program
Dr Brandt's loyalty program uses a point system that gives customers points for all sorts of specific actions.
Gilt Insider loyalty program
Gilt Insider loyalty program has four tiers – Insider, Select, Premier and Noir. At the highest level, you get…
- Birthday gifts
- VIP customer service
- Waitlist priority
- Private events
- 1 Hour Preview of Sales
Lancome loyalty program
Learn more: Lancome's loyalty program
Marvel loyalty program
Learn more: Marvel Insider
Nestlé loyalty program
Learn more: Nestlé's loyalty program
Ulta loyalty program
Learn more: Ulta's loyalty program
Yuenglings loyalty program
Yuengling's loyalty program gives subscribers access to coupons, discounts, contests, a free pint of ice cream and more.
Zappos loyalty program
Zappos's loyalty program has 4 tiers – Sliver, Gold, Platinum and Elite – and the last is invite-only.
The best retail loyalty program
Brick-and-mortar retail experiences that focus mostly on returning customers for the offline experience, with no online tie-in. See also the best eCommerce loyalty programs.
Best Buy Loyalty Program
Best Buy's loyalty program is called My Best Buy, and it has three tiers – Regular, Elite, and ElitePlus.
Nordstrom loyalty program
Learn: Nordstrom's loyalty program
Old Navy loyalty program
Learn more: Old Navy's loyalty program
Patagonia loyalty program
Learn more: Patagonia's loyalty program
Samsung loyalty program
The Samsung loyalty program, based in India, is called the Samsung Smart Club.
Binary fortress multi keygen download. There's a Gold tier and a Platinum tier as well!
Interested in setting up a loyalty program of your own?
Check out Candybar.co! You can have it completely set up in under an hour, and it's incredibly easy for your customers to use.
Analytics and data gives us all sorts of insights into what our customers want from our business. But sometimes… don't you wish you could get an answer straight from your customers?
That's what customer feedback is all about.
It helps us understand the WHY behind what people are doing. Why are people using one feature three times as often as another? Why do most of your customers stop creating accounts on the last step? Or what causes customers to use your product less frequently (and eventually stop altogether)?
When we match customer feedback to what we're seeing in our analytics, we get a much clearer picture of what's going on. Then we'll know how to fix problems and go after the right opportunities.
I'm going to show you how to use 5 different methods so that you can collect customer feedback day in and day out. This way, you'll always know what your customers REALLY want and how their needs are changing.
Here are the 5 best ways to get consistent (and high quality) feedback from your customers:
- Surveys
- Feedback boxes
- Reach out directly
- User activity
- Usability Tests
Let's jump in and get to it!
1. Surveys
Surveys are the bread and butter for getting feedback. They're easy to set up, easy to send out, easy to analyze, and scale very well. What's not to like?
There are two basic ways to approach surveys.
Long Surveys
This is what we're most familiar with. After creating some questions with SurveyMonkey, we can send out the link to our customer list, Twitter followers, and anyone else. Then we give it a few days, check back, and have all sorts of feedback (hopefully).
Now, many people get poor results when they send out surveys. Either nobody finishes the survey or the responses aren't helpful. It doesn't have to be this way. Use these easy tricks to make sure you get great responses from your surveys.
Keep it short. We've all filled out surveys that took over 20 minutes. Was that a fun 20 minutes that you remember fondly? Of course not – it was tedious work. And I bet you started rushing through the answers after the first few questions right? I sure do. So if we want to get quality answers from our customers, it's critical that we ask only a few key questions. Try to keep your surveys to 5 questions, and definitely don't go over 10.
Ask only the questions that you'll use. Every question should serve a purpose. And don't tell me that one extra question 'couldn't hurt.' It does. If you don't use the information you're asking for, you're wasting your customer's time. You're also wasting yours. You'll have a whole batch of responses to look through and none of them will make a difference. Instead, save time and get better responses, by including only the essential questions.
Start with open-ended questions. When you start asking your customers questions for the first time, their answers are going to completely surprise you. So if you build a survey full of rating scales and multiple choice questions, you'll restrict answers to your own assumptions. But when you use open-ended questions, you'll know what your customers are really thinking.
Short Surveys on Your Site
The other option is to offer a survey right on your site.
But I recommend that you avoid throwing a full-blown survey right at your visitors. If you want to feature a survey on your site, keep it to one or two questions that are highly relevant to the page that it's being displayed on. You'll get much better feedback this way.
But how do we implement something like this? Well, you should use Qualaroo. You'll build the question, pick the page you want to display it on, and sort through the responses as you get them. Here's what a real question looks like:
This is a recent survey that we've been running. You see, we're working on some improvements to our people reports. And before we jump to any conclusions, we want to get as much feedback from our customers as possible. And this Qualaroo survey is one way that we're doing it.
Let's break this survey down a little bit so we can see what's going on. Notice how the survey is asking two very specific questions. This is intentional. If you ask vague questions, you'll get vague answers. We're not asking if people like the report as a whole or how they'd like to see it improved. We're asking for feedback on a single feature within the entire report. This way, we'll know if that part of the report needs fixing and what direction we should go in to fix it.
We use Qualaroo heavily and it's a critical part of our process to understand how to improve our product.
But be careful about relying on surveys too much. When you use surveys exclusively, you'll never get a chance to understand the deeper reasons behind the responses you receive. So use the surveys as a starting point. Mysql.
2. Feedback Boxes
Do you have a structured process for receiving feedback from your customers? Well, you should.
Customer Feedback System
Your customers are constantly thinking of ways that your business could be better. Maybe parts of your site don't quite give them what they're looking for. Or maybe they found something that's broken.
More often than not, they won't reach out to your support team. That only happens if the problem is serious. But for the minor annoyances and issues, your customer will just give up and walk away slightly frustrated. Surveys might catch the problem if you ask a related question at the right time. But I wouldn't count on it.
And when minor issues pop up too frequently, customers will start shopping around for a better solution. Then it's only a matter of time before they're gone for good.
So how do we get customers to tell us about the small things? Use a feedback form.
At the bottom of every page in our product, you'll find this form:
The entire purpose of this form is to make it really easy for our users to tell us when something isn't working quite right. It's available as soon as someone needs it, out of the way when they don't, and sends their message to multiple people here. It even collects information like the account name, the URL, and browser version so we can recreate the problem and determine exactly how to fix it.
I highly recommend you try something similar. Feel free to experiment with different locations to see which one encourages the most feedback from your customers.
But some sites have completely corrupted the feedback form concept.
Let's take a look at how Verizon does it. On the Verizon Wireless site, there's a little feedback button on the right side of the page.
So far, so good. It's unobtrusive and easily available. Let's go ahead and click on it, and then we get this:
Oh dear.
If I was a real user and had clicked on that feedback button, I probably would have gone from mildly irritated to frustrated. Why? Because this entire form looks like work. I'm being asked questions about issues that aren't relevant to mine (you want me to rate your layout?). Some of it may be confusing (what's a cache and how do I clear it?). Instead of being able to alert Verizon about an issue, now I have to jump through a bunch of hoops. After seeing this, I might just bail completely and never send the comment I have.
The whole point of a feedback box is to get feedback from users about small things. That means they have very little motivation to tell us about it in the first place. And you won't hear about the issue through other channels since it's only a minor annoyance.
So make that feedback box as simple and easy to use as possible. Or you'll be missing out on the feedback that it was designed to catch.
Once feedback starts coming in, then what?
First and foremost, you need to respond. Yup, every last piece of feedback gets a response. Even if you have no idea what the user is talking about. Here are some great ideas for how to reply:
- If a user is asking for a feature that you're about to release, offer to give them early access in return for more feedback from them.
- For bugs and tech issues, connect them directly to your support engineers.
- Ask for a more detailed description of what they were trying to accomplish (this will help you build the right solution).
- Give them step-by-step directions on how to use a different feature in your product to achieve the same results.
Someone on your team should have the responsibility of replying to each piece of feedback within a few days. Ideally, send responses within 24 hours.
3. Reach Out Directly
This is one of my favorites. It's also one of the most undervalued. If you want to truly understand somebody, you really need to go talk to them.
Customer Feedback Program Names Examples
When we're using surveys, email, or analytics, we're missing all sorts of contextual information. Customers might say they need more money and more time. But which one are they really passionate about? Which one truly keeps them up at night? You won't know for sure until you hear the passion in their voices as they talk about their problems.
You also want a chance to dig deeper. Let's say you run a SaaS business that helps freelancers send invoices to their clients. And recently, you've been receiving feedback (from your surveys and feedback form) that your customers would like to customize the design of their invoices. There are several possible reasons why they would want to do this:
- Maybe they are designers, and they want another chance to show their skill set.
- Or maybe your current design is just awful.
- They might be looking to change a few key parts, like adding notes at the bottom.
Each of these reasons requires an entirely different solution. If you don't reach out and talk to your customers, you'll never learn what's really going on, and you'll be trying to fix the symptom instead of the real problem.
You'll get major bonus points from this if you do it in person. So dive into your customer list and see if anyone is local. Then invite them to lunch and tell them you're looking to completely understand how your business helps solve their problem. You will get more value from this 1-hour lunch then you will from hundreds of customer surveys
4. User Activity from Your Analytics
Wouldn't it be nice to know which features and which sections of your site people are actually using? And how often? Sure, we can use web analytics products to get a sense of what the total usage is like. But what does an individual use?
Most analytics products don't tell us what individual people are doing. That's because they were built to track web sites as a whole, not your customers.
But when you use customer analytics, you'll be able to see the activity of individual people.
What's the big deal? Why is this useful?
When we look through the activity of individuals, it's much easier to identify the reason why certain outcomes occur. Let's see how this works in practice.
Take a look at this report, which shows the data from an individual person:
This is data from a business that has a 30-day free trial. So the goal is to get someone to create an account, and start using the product, then demonstrate the value of the product so that the user wants to upgrade to a paid plan.
Since we've received $0 revenue from this person, we know they haven't upgraded to a paid plan. By looking at the timeline, we can see which actions they took on which days (the bigger the dot, the more times they completed that action on that day). It looks like they visited the site for the first time in early June and immediately created an account. After that, they explored all sorts of features on the site. But then activity started to drop off. Within a few weeks, this person stopped coming back and never upgraded to a paid plan.
Based on this activity, we can assume that this person didn't find enough value in what the product offered and decided to move on.
With this data, we know who DIDN'T value our business. And since we have their email (it's blurred out towards the top), we can then use some of these other feedback methods to dive deeper into trying to understand why they didn't think our product is valuable. We could reach out to them directly and try to set up a meeting. Or maybe we'll pull a list of people that have similar patterns of activity, and email them a survey. Either way, we already know exactly which questions we should be asking.
5. Usability Tests
What if you could watch someone use your product or website? You'll see what sections they're drawn to, what catches their eye, and where they get confused. That kind of information is invaluable.
Well, there are services that give you exactly that. You can define a task that you want someone to complete, have a random person do it, and get a recording of the entire process. For a long time, it took tens of thousands of dollars to pull this off. You need to have a research firm do it for you. These days, the cost has become very reasonable.
These are ideal for new web apps and account creations. If you've built a new signup process or you're about to release a new product, I highly recommend that you watch someone use it. This will flag some of the biggest problems right away and increase the rate at which you acquire new customers.
Definitely check out UserTesting.com, which offers tests at $39 per person. A few of these will pay you back with huge gains by showing you where your biggest problems are.
The Bootstrap Usability Test
Let's say you're bootstrapping and want to do some bare bones user testing.
First, go find someone that's part of your target market. So if you're selling to mommy bloggers, don't grab some 20-something graphic designer (unless they also happen to be a mommy blogger).
Then bribe them with whatever you can (free lunch perhaps?) to try out your new product. Sit them down in your office and ask them to complete a simple task. Don't offer guidance or help;, just watch them try to figure it out. A couple of these will expose the biggest flaws that you'll need to fix immediately.
But don't do this with friends and family. They think you're awesome and that everything you do is great. So they won't be able to look at your product in an unbiased way. They'll soften negative feedback and strengthen positive comments. This is the exact opposite of what you need right now. To get unbiased feedback that reflects what real users will be thinking, go find some strangers for your bootstrapped user testing.
When to Make Changes Based on Feedback
So now you're getting all sorts of feedback, which is awesome. But what do you do with it?
If you have any degree of traction with your business or product, you'll quickly be overwhelmed with feedback. Between the feedback emails, surveys, and user tests, you'll have far more ideas than you could ever act on.
No matter what you do, you will not be able to act on every piece of feedback you receive. You won't have the resources.
And even if you did have an unlimited amount of time and money to respond to every piece of feedback, you wouldn't want to. That's because some of the suggestions you receive will come out of nowhere – from customers who were trying to do something so obscure that an adjustment might actually get in the way of the rest of your customers.
When you're filtering through all this feedback, you're looking for trends. Let's say that you see an issue pop up this week, and then someone else brings it up again 2 weeks from now. A month after that, someone mentions it again. And then there are 3 customers who all talk about it during the same week. That is feedback that you want to act on. Reach out to these people, get a deep understanding of what they're trying to do, and then build something that will make it happen.
Bottom Line
When you collect feedback from your customers consistently, you'll know if you're building your business in the right direction. So experiment with the methods above and find the right combination for your business.
As soon as you find a process for collecting high-quality feedback from your customers on a regular basis, make it a standard practice.
You'll want to start with these methods:
- Surveys
- Feedback boxes
- Reaching out directly
- User activity
- Usability tests
Customer Feedback Programs
What other ways have you used to get high quality feedback from your customers? Tell us in the comments!
About the Author: Lars Lofgren is a Marketing Analyst and has his Google Analytics Individual Qualification (he's certified). Learn how to grow your business at his marketing blog or follow him on Twitter @larslofgren.
