How long should customer service take to respond?

In general, the majority (38%) of consumers feel it’s important to respond to a complaint within one day, and almost 18% expect a response within a few hours or even sooner.

What is a reasonable response time?

In a perfect world, it’s as soon as possible. But almost one-third of respondents said three days were soon enough and another 12.5% were satisfied with a week.

Common ways to handle customer complaints?

Common approaches include: Apologizing and owning mistakes, take the conversation offline, look for a win/win solution to the customer's problem. While these are common approaches to customer complaints, they're not always the best.

What are the 5 steps to handling a customer complaint?

Here are several approaches you can take: Ask for more information. Gather intel from customers. Apologize and look for opportunities to make things right. Offer incentives to compensate customers for the loss of their time and money. Ask customers for feedback or updates to their review.

What is the best way to respond to a customer complaint?

Here are some actionable steps you can take to respond to your customer complaints. (1.) Listen to your reviewer, (2.) be transparent, (3.) cite your sources, (4.) be timely, (5.) watch your tone, (6.) offer next steps, (7.) escalate to management, (8.) apply the 80/20 rule.

Customer Experience – GatherUp

Q: How long should it take to resolve a customer complaint?

Our survey data suggests that if you respond within the hour and resolve the majority of complaints within the day, you will be on the right side of your customers.

3 Ways To Request Customer Feedback And Online Reviews By Email

Aaron Weiche — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 14:37:55 +0000

Customer experience, feedback and online reviews are massively important to any type of business today. The best companies are proactive in engaging their customers and send them emails to request feedback and reviews to manage their reputation. Did you know that GatherUp offers 3 different request formats (and endless options) for your review request email? We do, and each one has it’s own specific purpose – to get you customer feedback (1st-party review), a 3rd-party review (Google, TripAdvisor) or both. These core 3 formats are known as our Request Modes and allow you to target your main goals while making the desired customizations in your email request process. Let’s look at the 3 options our platform offers for email requests (we offer SMS/text too) and show you how to enable or create each one so that you can get the most out of GatherUp and your interactions with your customers.

1- Customer Feedback Request Using Ultimate Mode

This is the feedback request email format that allows you to capture the full amount of customer experience data our platform has to offer. Both 1st-party reviews (direct customer feedback) and 3rd-party reviews are requested along with the option of custom survey questions.

Example Ultimate Mode email request process and screens.

Main Focus: The main focus is listening to the customers experience by capturing Net Promoter Score, 1st-party reviews and survey questions. Secondary Focus: The secondary focus of Ultimate Mode is to encourage 3rd-party reviews on sites like Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor (or other sites you set). Why: This mode thanks your customers for their business, captures NPS, asks them for feedback, asks survey questions and captures 1st-party reviews that you can stream to your Review Widget on your website. There is a reason why it is called Ultimate Mode – for most businesses it offers the maximum customer data and value. Pros: What’s best about emailing requests in Ultimate Mode?

This version gets you the most detailed feedback from your customers
You can capture your Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Capture survey question scoring on price, service, results, etc.; you decide
You will get 5x to 15x the amount of 1st-party reviews (direct feedback) vs. 3rd-party reviews, and it is VERY valuable and provides you with WAY more insight than just reviews
Generate 1st-party reviews to stream to your Review Widget for SEO benefits and ratings to your Conversion Pop-up making your website stronger

Cons: This is a 3-step process so you will see some decline in engagement at each step of the request process. Set-Up: When you are in the location you want to manage, go to SETTINGS > REQUEST MODES> and then select ULTIMATE MODE from the mode options. Then use the main screen area to turn reminders on and off, edit the email content of each step, select email options and more.

2- Customer Feedback Request Using Review Mode

As some customers asked for a more direct route to obtaining 3rd-party reviews like Google reviews, we added Review Mode to the options. This mode is a more compact 2-step process with the email request asking the NPS question and the next step/page asking for the 3rd-party review. The consumer also has the option to leave you a 1st-party review directly if they choose to. This mode does NOT ask the customer for their comments or feedback in a step, so the only typing they do is to leave an online review.

Email review request using Review Mode.

Main Focus: Quickly capture NPS and ask for a 3rd-party review Why: Review Mode takes our base Ultimate Mode process and shortens it to a 2-step process. You still get to capture NPS and understand if the customer is happy or upset to personalize the content in the following step, but now the consumer will only write a 3rd-party online review if they take action from the email. Pros: What’s best about this version?

You capture your NPS score
You still segment happy and unhappy customers to personalize the email content (NOTE: We do not support review gating. We follow Google’s terms of service. We do support personalized content so happy customers are thanked, while unhappy customers are given an apology.)
You get customers to the online review links fast, with just one click

Cons: You lose the ability to capture customer feedback – good or bad – that can help you identify a problem, help save a customer, get 1st-party reviews to use in marketing or push them to your website with our Review widget. You also can’t use the survey questions feature. Set-up: When you are in the location you want to manage, go to SETTINGS > REQUEST MODES> and then select REVIEW MODE from the mode options. Then use the main screen area to turn reminders on and off, edit the email content of each step, select email options and more.

3- Customer Feedback Request Using Direct Mode

Let’s get right to the point, it is Direct Mode after all. Direct mode allow you to ask for 1st-party and 3rd-party reviews right in the email request. It’s a 1-step process that allows the consumer to choose their path to leaving you review, whether direct or at a review site like Google. Main focus: Put online review links right in front of your customer immediately and still offer a feedback route to capture 1st-party reviews at the consumers choice. Why: If your only focus is 3rd-party online reviews, this puts that process in its fastest route. Going to Direct Mode when you have no idea on how any set of your customers generally feel about you might create a problem. We usually advise to use Ultimate Mode to start and once you have a good baseline of customer data and a high NPS you can move to Direct Mode. Pros: What’s best about this version?

The fastest way to request online reviews
Review links in your very first email that follows up with the customer
GIVE FEEDBACK button that hopefully an unhappy customer uses

Cons: You can’t capture Net Promoter Score or personalize the process for your happy and unhappy customers. You run the risk of putting a frustrated customer in the position to easily write a bad review. You lose the ability to capture customer feedback, good or bad, that can help you identify a problem, help save your customer, use in all marketing or push positive 1st-party reviews to your website with our Reviews Widget. You also can’t use the survey questions feature. Set-Up: When you are in the location you want to manage, go to SETTINGS > REQUEST MODES> and then select DIRECT MODE from the mode options. Then use the main screen area to turn reminders on and off, edit the email content of each step, select email feature options and more.

Make The Right Request

More than anything, the fact you are asking your customers for feedback and online reviews of any kind is a huge win. Most businesses fail to do this. Not you. We hope this post gives you a better understanding of the many options in GatherUp for requesting feedback and online reviews using email. In addition to email we offer many other methods to obtain reviews and feedback including text messages, short URLs, kiosk mode our multi-location locator and more. We hope this breakdown helps you make an informed decision and get the most out of your customer’s opinion of your business. It truly matters.

Using Customer Feedback to Solve Employment Challenges

Holly Stanley — Wed, 11 May 2022 21:08:48 +0000

Sourcing high-quality candidates to fill your business’ empty positions will always be a challenge. But these days, it’s becoming even harder to find and attract top talent. This is down to multiple factors but often it’s a result of differing business and candidate expectations.

Today we’ll look more closely at the mismatch between employers who are hiring and people searching for jobs, and how GatherUp can help employers solve these challenges.

What is the Great Mismatch?

In a Vox article Tim Brackney, president and COO of management consulting firm RGP, refers to the current disconnect between the number of employers hiring and unemployed people searching for jobs as the “Great Mismatch.”

That mismatch refers to various things like skills, experience, and desires. Part of the mismatch is down to the fact that skills are rapidly changing as companies start following different work habits, change software, and prioritize different client needs.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 8.4 million potential workers who are unemployed, but it also says there are a record 10.9 million jobs open.

The rate at which unemployed people are getting jobs is lower than it was pre-pandemic, and it’s taking longer to hire people. At the same time, job seekers say that companies are unresponsive to them.

So how can employers better attract the skillset they need to meet customer demands? The key lies in better understanding the exact skills your business needs to grow.

The Great Mismatch in hiring and job searching

So that your business doesn’t suffer the consequences of this mismatch in hiring and job searching expectations, it’s important to dive into what it is your business needs to achieve in hiring new employees and customer success. You need to refine the exact items that your business needs to improve or modify.

The key components your business needs to succeed will depend on your unique model and customer base. But these essential components can usually be divided into three categories.

1. Service

Customer service is the backbone of solid customer experience. It’s often what differentiates local businesses and encourages customers to return and refer your business.

Customer service includes everything from your in-person interactions, phone calls, emails, and social media responses.

If your customer service isn’t where you’d like it to be, it’s important to refine this side of your business.

2. Better products

Instead of constantly adding more products to your offering, sometimes it’s best to just improve the ones you’re already selling.

Are your customers happy with the products you currently offer or do you receive complaints?

Knowing more about your customer preferences will help you shape your offering to match their needs.

3. More streamlined processes and operations

While your customer service might be generally good and people are happy with your products, your processes or operations could be letting your business down. For example, customers might be satisfied with the attention you give them once they’re in touch with your business, but it might frustrate them that they have to use an online ticket system to get their queries resolved.

Evaluating your processes and operations will help you better understand what your customers need and how you can shift your business to match their expectations.

Use customer feedback surveys to understand where your employment needs lie

The best way to meet customer expectations and successfully grow your business is to identify what it is exactly that your customer base expects from you.

Do they want to see more physical locations of your grocery store in a nearby town? Would they prefer longer opening hours on a Saturday? Or do they feel your staff don’t always answer their questions properly?

Answers to questions like these will help you better understand which areas of your business to focus on and how you can make better future hiring decisions to help you achieve these aims.

Make it a priority to schedule quarterly or monthly customer feedback surveys so you can get regular insights into how your customers feel about your business. Ask a mix of open and closed questions. If you use NPS surveys, make sure to always follow up with questions for the biggest detractors and promoters of your business.

A great example of this is laid out in our article “How one business made a mess of masking.” Successful businesses listened to customers voicing opinion on masking policies and adjusted or communicated in a new way. It helped drive a change that resulted in better customer outcomes.

Use GatherUp features to streamline your customer feedback requesting process

On top of using GatherUp to request customer feedback and automate follow-ups, there are a whole host of features to make it easier to organize and analyze your customer feedback responses to better know where your hiring and retention challenges exist.

Customer Activity

Customer Activity shows account details and metrics as well as activity, ratings, and reviews for 1st and 3rd party reviews. You can quickly review and take action from a single screen. If you’re running a mix of customer feedback surveys and NPS surveys, this screen is helpful for compiling all the data in one place.

You can see customer profiles, look at the status, and source of every response you receive.

Manage each response and reply to individual customers to gather more details if you need them.

Access to this feature makes it easy to get a quick overview of customer sentiment as well as which topics appear in their feedback most frequently.

Auto-Tagging

Auto-Tagging identifies specific keywords in 1st and 3rd-party reviews and customer feedback. Tags can then be used to filter data in Customer Activity and create a Tag Widget. Using this feature helps you identify common themes throughout your customer feedback. You can then group this feedback together and work out your next steps for addressing it.

This feature is particularly helpful when you receive multiple feedback responses at the same time and need an easy way to streamline your data.

If you’re having retention challenges one best practice would be to create a reward system for employees. Create a tag for each employee’s name. Encourage employees to ask for reviews. They can even say things like “My name is John. You will receive an email asking for feedback. It’d be great to know how I did today.” Whenever that person’s name is mentioned in a 5-star review they get a gift card. Or gamify it and create a leaderboard of employees mentioned in 5-star reviews.

Another use case would be to create tags or even profiles based on different parts of your sales process. This helps identify when the issue happens and you can work to address that single point of contact, rather than worry about the entire customer journey. For instance, a landscaping company might ask for feedback at the following stages: consultation, design, install and job completion.

Insights Report

The Insights Report uses AI to surface keywords in customer feedback and review content to help you uncover new information.

Presented as a visual chart, the Insights Report highlights discovered keywords and how they impact your overall ratings, reviews, and reputation. It’s a valuable tool for better understanding customer sentiment and what elements of your business are helping increase customer satisfaction and which factors need attention to better match customer expectations.

The Sentiment section is particularly helpful for understanding customers’ feelings about certain keywords. The feature assigns sentiment to each keyword, clearly showing you how customers feel about different elements of your business.

For example, if you find “time” is often in red or mentioned in a negative light, it indicates your team needs training on speed and efficiency.

“GatherUp is a force multiplier for our franchise owners to scale their reputation management beyond the normal capabilities of an individual or team. The efficiencies gained through GatherUp have enabled franchise owners to dedicate additional staff hours to direct positive client and caregiver engagement based off the increased reviews received.”

Matt Ericksen, Director of Sales & Operations at Griswold Home Care. Tweet

Use GatherUp to solve the hiring mismatch

Once you know which elements of your business require improvement or more focus, you’ll find it much easier to identify which skills are most important to your business’s future. That way you can hire for those skills. Potential candidates will know what you’re looking for and will be able to decide if it’s the right match for them.

You’ll attract more like-minded team members and people who are suited to your business values and goals. Knowing what you’re looking for from new hires and how to attract them will help prevent you from experiencing the “Great Mismatch.”

Ready to start solving your business’s employment issues? Sign up for a GatherUp demo today.

Related reading:

6 Ways to use Google My Business to improve customer experience

Holly Stanley — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 20:15:34 +0000

Business owners often think of Google My Business as a tool to help improve their rankings and discoverability. While this is true, the platform also comes with valuable tools for improving your customer experience.

Stats show that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. Ultimately customer experience boils down to meeting your customers’ needs while also surpassing their expectations.

Prioritizing your customers will help you retain a loyal base of customers while also attracting new ones. From discovering your business to setting foot inside, Google My Business makes the whole experience much easier for customers and business owners. The best part is that the platform is free to use.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is the modern-day version of a storefront. It’s essentially a digital business listing that enables you to connect with your customers on both Search and Maps.

An optimized business profile enables you to display your business name, address, high-quality photos, new offers, service, and products along with anything else that makes your business unique.

Customers can interact with your listing by asking questions, uploading photos, and leaving reviews. When you provide up to date contact details, customers can also call, message, or chat with you directly.
These days, Google My Business profiles provide an essential role in helping customers find your business and interact with it both online and offline. Take a look at the role of Google My Business in the local buyer’s journey.

Why is Google My Business important for customer experience?

Traditionally, people used to rely on word of mouth recommendations. Now, instead of asking friends, and family, when people want to find local businesses they usually turn straight to search engines.

Since over 90% of all search engine traffic goes through Google, having a Google My Business account is the first step to getting on your target audience’s radar. Correctly optimizing your profile with the correct contact details, photos of your business, opening hours, and a list of services will help your business be more visible to its target customer base.

Google My Business isn’t just for getting the top spot in Google SERPs though –– the dashboard’s features and tools can help enhance your business offering to be more in line with what your customers want.

Enabling certain features and buttons can also make it easier for customers to communicate with you and find out if your offering meets their needs.

Ultimately the platform streamlines the customer’s experience from discovery right up until they enter your business’s location in real life.

6 Ways of using Google My Business to boost customer experience

From showing customers your business offering to simplifying communication and improving your services to match customer expectations, Google My Business can help you improve the whole customer experience from start to finish. Let’s take a look at six different ways to use the platform:

1. Use customer reviews to improve your business offering

Google reviews give you an invaluable insight into your customers’ honest opinions about your business. Positive reviews can help validate what’s going well for your business and show you what customers value the most.

Although sometimes tough to read, negative feedback is equally, if not more valuable. Critical feedback is usually a result of customers’ expectations not being met. When you dig into the exact problems and issues, negative feedback can be great for fuelling future business development and team training sessions.

For example, if you receive multiple reviews saying that team members are often slow at attending customers, you could focus your team training sessions on helping them improve their speed and efficiency.

Responding to this negative feedback by taking swift action will improve the experience for future customers.

Responding to reviews can help ensure a positive customer experience even after a purchase or service is complete.

Taking the time to reply to customer feedback helps customers feel valued by your business. When customers know that a business appreciates them, they’ll be more likely to return to do business again. As we know, retaining a solid base of loyal customers is key to growing your business sustainably –– it costs 5 times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one.

Take a look at this review response which promises to use negative customer feedback to improve their service:

Positive Yelp Juice Bar review and owner response

In fact, according to studies by Google, businesses that respond to reviews are 1.7X more trustworthy than businesses that don’t. To help you reply to both positive and negative feedback, take a look at our complete guide on how to reply to reviews.
Using a reputation management platform ensures you never miss a customer review again. For instance, when you set up GatherUp, you’ll receive custom notifications whenever a customer leaves you a review. That way you can respond timely to customers as well as use their feedback to make business-wide improvements.

2. Make it easier for customers to contact you

People are short on time and the last thing they want to do is spend time trying to hunt down your business contact details. If you make it simple for customers to contact your business, they’ll be more likely to choose you over competitors.

Make sure to include all your business’s contact details including:

Address
Website
Phone number

Google My Business also provides some CTA buttons to encourage customers to interact with your business. Once you’ve included your address, customers can click on a directions button to see driving, walking, and public transportation routes.

Thinking Cup coffee shop GMB

By adding your contact details, customers using the mobile app can also tap call or message buttons to connect with your business with just one tap.

Thinking Cup GMB call option

Most customers hate wasting time trying to find a business’s phone number or address. By providing accurate contact details, you’ll make it much easier for people to get in touch with you.

3. Include attributes and special features

Putting your business in the right category and including relevant attributes on your profile helps customers know what to expect from your business. When people are searching for a local business, they may have multiple questions about the kinds of facilities your business has.

For example, before visiting a cafe, people might want to know if you have free WiFi. Or people who are looking for a grocery store may need to know if you have on-site car parking.

Instead of having to do time-consuming digging on your website or past reviews, customers want to see what your business offers quickly. By including plenty of details in the form of multiple attributes, customers will know exactly what to expect from your business before they set foot through the door.

Equally, the more detail you can provide, the more likely you’ll reach your target customer.

Depending on your business category, you can choose to add different attributes and special features.

Service businesses – add service menus and include a booking button.
Hotels – include amenities and class ratings.
Restaurants and bars – add menus, display popular dishes, and include a link for online orders and bookings.

All businesses can also include other helpful attributes like wheelchair accessibility, WiFi, and parking.

Take a look at this listing for the coffee shop, Thinking Cup, in Boston. From a quick glance at the business’s attributes, customers can see that although they offer a takeaway service they don’t offer delivery. Customers can also see that it’s wheelchair accessible:

Thinking Cup coffee shop GMB attributes

Customers who know what to expect from your business will more likely have their expectations met and be satisfied with the overall experience.

4. Use messaging tools for customer-centric communication

Customers no longer want to have to call a business to find out more details. People want an easier method of getting in touch while on the go. When you provide a convenient method for customers to contact you, more people will get in touch and engage with your business.

With Google My Business, customers can text questions that you receive directly through the GMB mobile app or dashboard on your browser.

Koverhouse Hotel in-app messaging GMB

Instead of making customers go through lengthy contact us forms or forcing them on a hunt for customer service phone numbers, people can reach your business right where they found it.

Within the Messages tab, you can then easily manage, review, and respond to customer questions all in one place. By making communication easy for customers, they’ll begin their experience with your business positively.

Prompt and informative responses will also boost customer trust making it more likely they’ll continue to engage with your business. After all, there’s nothing more frustrating than receiving a slow response or one that doesn’t answer your questions.

5. Uncover customers insights

The Insights tab within the Google My Business dashboard can help you better understand customer behavior, and improve how future customers find you. Insights show you how customers found your business as well as how customers interact with your listing.

Knowing how customers found your business listing and how many found it via direct or discovery search are all helpful for understanding how well your marketing efforts are going. But identifying which search terms people are using to find your business can help you understand what customers expect from your business.

For example, if you own a coffee shop, you might expect people to search for something along the lines of “coffee shops near me.” But in reality, most of your customers are finding your business by searching “lunch spots near me.”

This difference in search terms would show you that customers are coming to your business with the aim of finding a local spot to have lunch. Armed with this knowledge, you could make changes to your coffee shop by ensuring there’s always plenty of lunch choices. That way, you’re matching your customers’ expectations with a top-quality experience.

GMB customer insights report

(Image Source)

Identifying which keywords, actions, and photos are most popular can help you understand your customers’ expectations of your business.

Once you’ve viewed this data on your GMB dashboard, reputation management software can help you dig deeper into customer insights. To help you transform your customer data into an actionable improvement plan, it’s useful to see it in different formats. Deep dives into customer sentiment and trends will ultimately help you build a more complete picture of how customers interact with your business.

For example, within GatherUp, you can use detailed reporting tools to better understand how customers feel about your business offering.

For instance, the Impact Report uses AI to identify frequently mentioned keywords and show how customers feel about your business. For instance, we can see that the keyword “coffee” is mentioned frequently in positive reviews:

GatherUp Impact Report

When looking at the Sentiment Report, users can see a breakdown of how many times each keyword was mentioned by customers and with what sentiment rating:

GatherUp customer sentiment report

Detailed reports help business owners and managers accurately understand which elements of their business require improvements and where customers are most satisfied. Tailoring your offering to your customers’ feedback will help you match their overall expectations for their experience with your business.

6. Use the booking tool for easy reservations

Customers don’t want to have to call to find out availability or make an appointment. When people find a business they want to engage with, they want to know right away whether their availability matches up with their own personal schedule.

Increasingly, customers want to see what time slots are available and make a booking with just a couple of clicks. The scheduling tool is especially helpful for appointment-based businesses like gyms, hair salons, and dentists.

The Google My Business bookings tool enables you to link to your business’s scheduling provider and use GMB to accept on-demand appointments easily.

When you make it easy for customers to book appointments, they’ll be more likely to choose you over competitors that make it harder to reserve time slots.

Take a look at this list of hair salons in Miami, Florida –– only one of the businesses provides an option to schedule through the platform:

GMB scheduling tool hair salons Miami listing

By simply including the scheduling option makes Bishops Haircuts salon a much more convenient choice for time-pressed customers looking to book a time quickly and efficiently.

Once customers click through, they can see a calendar view of upcoming dates and available times to book:

GMB appointment booking window

Appointment-based businesses can easily boost their customer experience by allowing customers to book appointments in just a few clicks.

Use GMB to improve CX and delight more customers

Effectively using Google My Business’s tools will enhance your business’s customer experience and ensure it remains relevant in today’s competitive local business landscape.

Take the time to find your way around Google My Business and see how you can start using its features to improve your business’s customer experience.

Ready to make customer experience a priority in your business? Sign up for a free trial today.

Related reading:

SURVEY: How Quickly Should A Business Respond to a Complaint?

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 17:56:02 +0000

Customers want to feel heard and understood, so when they experience a problem and leave a complaint, they expect a timely response. But if their complaint goes unaddressed for too long, the message conveyed is that they’re ignored and undervalued — leading to an erosion of trust and a negative view of your business. The customer can even get so frustrated that they abandon your business altogether.

When you respond promptly and effectively to customer complaints, it shows that you value their feedback and take their concerns seriously. Addressing complaints quickly helps turn a negative experience into a positive one, with customers more likely to feel satisfied with the outcome and even become loyal customers. Over time, customer loyalty leads to positive reviews and word-of-mouth referrals, which can ultimately increase your customer base and revenue.

So, exactly how fast should you respond to a customer complaint? In a perfect world, it’s as soon as possible. But sometimes it’s a little more nuanced than that. Let’s dive in.

How fast should you respond to a customer complaint?

According to recent data, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question, with 60% defining “immediate” as 10 minutes or less. Younger consumers aged 16 to 24 place a particularly high value on fast responses, with 71% saying it can drastically improve the customer experience.

Many small businesses attempt an immediate response by dealing with complaints as they come in — in real time. But as your business grows and your communication channels begin to multiply and fragment, responding in real time becomes much harder. For example, in addition to taking complaints by phone, there could also be text, social media, chatbots, and email to monitor. Bottom line: how fast you can respond to a customer complaint will largely be determined by the number and type of communication channels you use.

To find out the optimal response time according to consumers, we decided to do our own survey and ask a more representative group of consumers what their expectations were. The question we asked of a sample (n=480) of U.S. adults was simple:

When you complain to a local merchant,
how long is reasonable for them to respond and resolve?

The answers were somewhat more lenient than expected. The fact that almost one-third of respondents indicated that three days were soon enough and another 12.5% were satisfied with a week was surprising. But in general, the majority (38%) feel it’s important to respond within one day, and almost 18% expect a response within a few hours or even sooner.

How fast you respond to a customer complaint is a major indicator of how much you value and respect your customers. In fact, two-thirds of adults think that the most important thing a brand can do to provide a good customer experience is to value their time.

The speed of your response can also influence your revenue. As one study showed, consumers who get a resolution to their complaint in five minutes or less will end up spending more with the business on future purchases. Good customer service in general boosts revenue as well, with 88% of customers saying it’s more likely to make them purchase again.

There’s also a difference between how small and large companies handle customer complaints with respect to time. When dealing with large organizations or companies with a national presence that generally don’t prioritize complaint resolution, it can take customers anywhere from three to seven days to get an initial response.

But for most businesses, that time frame really isn’t ideal. For the consumer, the more distressing and troublesome the problem, the sooner they expect a response along with assurance that the problem is being resolved — and a three-to-seven-day window isn’t going to cut it.

More expectations around customer complaints

The means by which the customer originally communicated their complaint is the biggest factor in their expectations for the speed of the response. When communicating in person or on a call, they are likely to expect a fast response to the customer complaint, whereas communicating over email means they’re likely to expect some delays and even some possible back and forth before a resolution is given.

Keep in mind that with both in-person and phone communication, the risk for your business is if your team becomes reactive to the confrontation and lets their emotions control the conversation rather than reason.

Sometimes it’s really difficult to put yourself into the right headspace when there’s a distraught human in front of you and you’re feeling attacked. That’s why in some cases, a fast response to the customer complaint may not be the best course of action, and a delayed resolution tactic may be more beneficial instead. As a marketing expert once pointed out in some excellent advice: If the customer remains angry, get their contact info and call them back, and give them a short time frame when you’ll do so. Trying to resolve a problem with an angry customer is far too difficult and can backfire.

Using a delay tactic like this gives the customer some time to cool down. Just as importantly, it gives you more time to thoroughly understand the situation and think through an appropriate response and resolution, so you can communicate in a tone that best represents the business and better manage the interaction.

It doesn’t mean, however, handing the customer off to multiple people. A third of consumers say the most frustrating aspect of getting help from customer service is having to repeat the problem to other representatives. If you have to get someone else involved, make sure they have the full details of the complaint and all other pertinent information.

5-step complaint response process and advice

As we’ve pointed out, how fast you can respond to complaints is going to be dependent on the channel in which you receive it, as well as the nature, details, and complexity of the problem. But in general, here are five rules to apply to your complaint response process:

1. Start and control the process

This might sound counterintuitive, but you can actually start and control the complaint process yourself, rather than leave it solely up to the customer. You can do this by proactively sending a customer feedback survey to each of your customers. If a complaint comes back, you can have more control over the tone, the timing, and the forum for resolving the complaint.

While it’s still important to provide a fast response to the customer complaint, the customer will appreciate that you initiated the conversation in the first place and give you the benefit of the doubt as to the timeframe you need for solving it.

2. Make complaints easy

In addition to proactively surveying your customers, it’s important to make it super easy for them to share their opinions and frustrations through the channels they prefer. Ensure your customers are aware that you’re able to take feedback via email, text, your website, phone, a chat tool if you use one, and/or in person.

Offering a variety of channels for giving and receiving feedback is critical to making your customers feel comfortable sharing a problem they experienced and confident that someone is paying attention and will respond.

3. Set a complaint response and resolution time goal

How fast you should respond to a customer complaint is ultimately up to your business and available resources. As our survey shows, many consumers allow for a window of a few days for a business to respond. But the sooner you respond, the better it is for your business and customers. Set a standard for your team that lays out both an initial response time and a resolution time — and then strive to achieve those times.

Though it may not be feasible in every case, our survey data suggests that if you respond within the hour and resolve the majority of complaints within the day, you will be on the right side of your customers.

4. Make sure you understand the complaint

That being said, responding quickly shouldn’t take precedence over understanding the complaint. Giving a fast response to a customer complaint that doesn’t actually address the problem just so you can meet a time goal is only going to set you back with the customer — and cost you more time and headaches in the long run.

The initial response can be fast — something like “Thank you for your feedback. We received your complaint and will follow up ASAP.” But then take a moment to process the situation and put yourself in the customer’s shoes before giving an actual resolution. This will help you be less defensive and come up with a workable action plan, while still aiming to meet your resolution time standards.

5. Be apologetic and clear about the resolution

Every response to a complaint should begin with an apology. It’s also a good idea to reiterate to the customer your understanding of what happened so they know you’re listening. Finally, be clear about what you plan to do to resolve the complaint — even if a few steps are involved. Remember: how fast to respond to a customer complaint is a worthy consideration and speed is always important, but so is giving a clear, satisfactory resolution as well.

With practice and confidence, your team can get into a rhythm with complaint resolution that’s efficient for everyone. Following these guidelines will help you ensure you’re not only resolving complaints quickly but also effectively.

To learn how GatherUp can support your business with gathering, responding to, and analyzing customer feedback, start your free trial today.

8 Steps for Dealing with Customer Complaints

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:01:43 +0000

These customers are furious.

Read Gloria W.'s review of CarelonRx on Yelp

They’re riled up and eager to spread the word about the terrible way CarelonRx does business. Here’s the thing about negative reviews, and dealing with customer complaints. They’re terrible either way. If you’re guilty, what can you say other than ‘I’m sorry, please let us fix this?’ If you’re innocent, how do you get customers to believe you?

It’s a disaster.

How do you deal with customer complaints like this?

Start by understanding who your reviewers are

Your reviewers aren’t created equal. Understanding who they are is the first step, and your evaluation should be based on two important criteria:

Why reviewers leave reviews
What reviewers say in their review

Today, I’m sharing a review response framework that will show you how to deal with customer complaints.

Let’s examine these two options in more detail to better understand what they mean.

1. Why reviewers leave reviews

In a recent study by J.M. Rensink, What motivates people to write online reviews, he outlined the seven primary motivations people have for writing reviews. These are the five most relevant:

Vengeance. Your reviewer feels slighted or mistreated. They’ve had a terrible experience with your company, and they’re looking for payback.

Anger/anxiety relief. This reviewer is looking for reassurance. Venting about their experience online relieves some of the stress from their recent experience.

Solution seeking. Your customer has a problem, but they don’t believe they can come to you with the problem. Sharing their experience online gives them the opportunity to outsource their problem to (seemingly) unbiased reviewers who will help them.

Attempts at altruism. These reviewers feel duty-bound to report the facts of their experience as honestly as possible. They’ll share the juicy details of their experience with you, whether positive or negative.
Triggering events. Events and social dynamics drive these reviews. They can be positive or negative, but the key point is that they’re triggered by external activity (e.g., politics, commercials, or a public relations disaster).

What about their review?

2. What reviewers say in their review

Next, we need to inspect the review itself. We need to analyze our customer’s reviews. Their words communicate intent; are they:

Unhappy: These reviewers have shared their stories outlining why their experience made them unhappy. Their feedback is specific and actionable, with information your company can use to repair and restore the relationship.
Misguided: There’s a misunderstanding somewhere. These customers have fuzzy, implicit, or unrealistic expectations that weren’t met. As a result, they’re angry. From their point of view, their anger is justified.
Dishonest: These reviewers are consistently dishonest. They’re willing to lie to get what they want, whether for vengeance, punishment, or freebies. Whatever it is, they’re willing to destroy your reputation to get it. These dishonest reviewers have no problem turning others against you.
Ragers: As the name suggests, these reviewers display a toxic amount of emotional and verbal abuse. These reviewers punish anyone who crosses them—they threaten, bully, smear, and manipulate anyone who goes against their wishes.
Trolls: Believe it or not, these reviewers are horrible people. Trolls tend to have the dark-tetrad of personality traits—narcissism, sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. These reviewers don’t have a real purpose behind their comments—they just want to hurt others.

Why does this matter?

Understanding your customers’ motivation helps you take the right course of action. If you’re dealing with customer complaints from ragers and trolls, vengeance is probably a more likely motivator.

Reviewers will tell you who they are if you listen.

How to deal with customer complaints

You’ll want to use the right workflow to respond to customer complaints. Let’s look at a decision workflow you can use to deal with these customer complaints.

Your customer writes a review.
Is the review fair and balanced?

Fair and balanced? What does that mean?

It’s a yes or no question.

A fair and balanced review is one in which customers create a well-thought-out and factual response. When appropriate, they cite sources and list references. The customer can agree or disagree with your position, but the review is free from abusive behavior—no name-calling, ad hominem attacks, raging, manipulation, or dishonesty.

If the review is fair and balanced, you have two options:

Respond to your customer’s review
Leave it alone

What if your customer’s complaint is unfair and imbalanced?

What happens then?

Remember the section above highlighting what reviewers say in their feedback? If your customers make a complaint, they’re unhappy, misguided, dishonest, trolls, or ragers.

If your reviewer is:

Unhappy: Work to restore the relationship. This customer has acted in good faith. They have legitimate reasons to be angry. Work with them; do your very best to address the important issues. If you’re willing to offer concessions or incentives, these reviewers are the ones who deserve it.
Misguided: With misguided reviewers, you want to share the facts. It’s best if the facts come from an objective source—one that hasn’t been edited, comes from a third party, is backed by a reliable source, etc. Expect these reviewers to argue with you and complain. Expect them to tell you, “You don’t understand. Here, let me show you.”
Dishonest: The best way to get rid of these reviewers is to tell the truth and share evidence. Share the truth and expose these reviewers, but don’t get emotional. An emotional response weakens your position. Don’t expect an apology or acknowledgment of guilt. When they’re exposed, the silence from these reviewers is deafening.
Trolling or raging: You’ve probably heard the saying, don’t feed the trolls. This is absolutely true. These reviewers aren’t interested in anything you have to say. In the case of trolls, they’re only interested in a strong, negative emotional reaction from you. They’re looking for a response they can use to prove your ‘badness.’ With ragers, their primary focus is punishment. They want to vent all of their anger, hatred, bitterness, and resentment at you. Nothing you say matters to them. Monitor their reviews but do not engage. Their poor behavior will create a sharp contrast that will work in your favor. Prospective customers will see how you respond to other reviews and note how different customers behave.

Let’s distill this down to a simpler set of concepts.

If your customer is unhappy about a mistake you’ve made, own it and make it right.
If reviewers are misguided or dishonest, share the facts.
If reviewers are abusive, monitor but do not respond.

Why are these details important?

Following these response protocols makes it easier to resist baiting and conflict with customers. It also makes it easier to respond with empathy, transparency, and respect when you know who you’re dealing with.

Dealing with customer complaints

At this point, you know how to profile your reviewers. You know who they are, their motivations, and when to respond.

How should you respond to reviewers?

Scratch that.

How should you respond to reviewers so you (a.) Protect your relationship with the customer (b.) Attract new customers (c.) Protect your reputation over time?

Listen to your reviewer: If you truly listen to your customer, you improve mutual understanding. The four types of listening are appreciative (listening for enjoyment), empathic (listening to show mutual concern), comprehensive (listening to gain information), and critical (listening to evaluate). You’ll want to convey that you’ve heard your reviewer when responding to reviews.
Be transparent: Share any relevant connections. Outline any conflicts of interest. If you have important information that a reasonable person would expect to be disclosed, share it. This obviously wouldn’t apply to personal, confidential, or legally protected information.
Cite your sources: Cite your sources—use links, content, video, audio, references, etc. to make your case. Give reviewers and lurkers the information they need to verify important details in your response. Make it easy for everyone to verify the information you provide.
Be timely: Reviewers expect you to respond within 24-48 hours. Aim for responses in minutes or hours, not days. A timely response shows that you’re taking reviewer concerns seriously. While you can’t be everywhere simultaneously, you can prioritize responses using this guide and the 80/20 rule (see below).
Watch your tone: Be warm, kind, respectful, firm, and empathetic. Treat your customers like a close friend or member of the family. Reviewers with complaints will vent their anger and frustrations at you, but everyone expects you to handle their outbursts with grace and empathy.
Offer next steps: Unhappy or misguided reviewers need next steps. While their review gives them some power, there’s really no way for them to resolve the issues on their own. If you plan on restoring the relationship with your customer, you’ll need to lead them towards a satisfactory outcome. What’s a satisfactory outcome? An apology, ownership of your mistake, and a resolution that makes any wrongs, right.
Escalate to management: The more serious the offense (from the reviewer’s perspective), the more important it is to escalate the issue to management. This is essential because it shows customers that your company is willing to loop management in to get their problem resolved.
Apply the 80/20 rule: Focus your attention on the review sites with the greatest influence. Start with the big four (Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor), then work your way down to niche and industry-specific sites.

These are simple, straightforward steps you can take to deal with customer complaints. This response framework is incredibly effective but has one major flaw.

It depends on good character.

Remember, your brand is your reputation, and your reputation relies on character and perception to be effective. Perception is temporary, character is permanent.

Your business can survive almost anything, if your company has good character.

Use this framework to deal with customer complaints

Your reviewers aren’t created equal.

You’ll want to use profiling to identify your reviewers. Your evaluation should be based on two important criteria: Why reviewers leave reviews and what reviewers say in their reviews.

Know who gives you the how.

Analyzing reviewer feedback gives you clarity. Is your reviewer unhappy, misguided, dishonest, or abusive? Use this response framework as a guide. With consistent application, you’ll know how to deal with customer complaints and negative reviews, one reviewer at a time.

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The Power of Positive Reviews: And How to Get More

GatherUp — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 15:53:27 +0000

When your customers love you, it shows. One of the perks of having satisfied customers is you can get positive reviews of your business for a whole bunch of people to see. And who doesn’t want that?

Positive reviews not only feel good as a business owner, they also help elevate your online reputation and instill confidence among new and existing customers. Google’s own research shows that 71% of consumers feel more comfortable using a business that has positive reviews.

Though getting a negative review here and there is common (and not the end of the world), it’s a powerful indicator that you’re doing something right when you can point to a host of positive reviews from verified customers. So there’s nothing wrong with striving for positivity.

Here’s a closer look at the benefits of positive reviews and how you can encourage more of your satisfied customers to leave reviews.

Benefits of positive online reviews

Positive online reviews help your business:

Establish credibility: Positive reviews from real customers provide valuable social proof that your business is legitimate, does what it says, and delivers on its promises. When customers are willing to publicly share the positive experiences they’ve had, it builds your credibility and trustworthiness — making your business more attractive to potential new customers.
Improve SEO and visibility: Search engines like Google use the presence of verified positive reviews to rank your business for trustworthiness, authority, and relevance, therefore bumping up your website in search results. The higher your site ranks, the easier it is for new customers to find you when they’re looking for products and services like yours.
Increase conversions: Positive reviews help inspire potential new customers to convert, whether it’s clicking over to your website, booking an appointment, calling with a question, or making an actual purchase on the spot. And having more positive reviews than your competitors is often the deciding factor for new customers when choosing between you or them.
Boost revenue: Positive reviews bring more new customers through your door and reinforce with your existing customers that they’ve made the right choice. More customer interest, conversions, and traffic lead to more sales and greater revenue.

We’ve established that positive reviews are beneficial, but the trick is getting reviews in the first place. And we know that at least 50% of surveyed businesses say this is difficult for them. So let’s talk about that next.

Source: GatherUp SMB Marketing Activities Survey, August 2023

5 strategies for encouraging customers to leave reviews

Feeling hesitant about asking customers to leave a review is normal. Maybe you don’t want to seem intrusive or make anyone feel obligated — or you’re worried they won’t leave a positive review.

But never asking or encouraging your customers to leave a review decreases your odds of building a solid body of quality, positive reviews that can net you the benefits outlined above. Because only 10-15% of customers will leave a review. In other words, if you don’t put it out there, very few people are going to pick it up, let alone even realize it’s an option.

Asking for reviews from customers is important. That’s where you start, and there are lots of ways to do this. If you want to encourage satisfied customers to get into the game and leave more reviews, try the following:

1. Share your existing positive reviews

Don’t hide your light. If your customers are raving about you, showcase this. When other customers see the positive comments and feedback, it can have a knock-on effect of making them want to join in with their own feedback. Think of it almost like FOMO — fear of missing out — but in a nice way.

Post some of your most glowing reviews on your website, include them on in-store signage, and highlight them on your social media channels. This shows your customers that other happy customers exist just like them and that your business acknowledges and appreciates their reviews.

2. Be obvious — like really obvious

Sometimes making it super obvious where and how customers can leave a review is all the encouragement they need. When a customer who’s just had a really great interaction with your business happens to notice a link to leave a review as they’re walking out of your store, they could very well jump on it.

GatherUp makes it easy to automatically request reviews from all of your customers. But if you don’t have a review management tool, you can still request reviews. Include review information everywhere you can — in your store, at the bottom of purchase receipts, on your website or customer portal, on social media posts, in emails and texts, and other places where you have a presence or a direct line of communication with customers. You never know who will see or hear it and take advantage.

3. Assure your customers it’s easy — and then make sure it’s easy

Even after a great experience, even when it’s super obvious, some customers may still hesitate to leave a review because they think it’s going to be a long, complicated process. No one wants to take time out of their day for a bunch of extra work if they don’t have to. When you advertise where or how to leave a review, say it upfront: Quick and easy! One simple step! Whatever is appropriate for your review method. Then just ensure that it is that easy. When customers realize this, they may end up leaving multiple reviews over time since they know for certain it isn’t hard or annoying.

Guide to Get More Reviews

How to Get More Google Reviews (and Remove Them)

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4. Offer incentives

Incentives can be good motivation too. Although FTC guidelines say you can’t incentivize customers to only leave a positive review, you can, however, incentivize them to leave any kind of review that conveys their true experience. (And since we’re talking about encouraging satisfied customers to leave reviews, hopefully, you’ll get some positive ones.)

Along with your review request, consider offering something in exchange, such as a free gift card, discount off their next purchase, cash, extra points in a rewards program, or any other perk you feel comfortable providing. For the subset of happy customers who prefer a little something in return for their efforts, an incentive is right down their alley and can make all the difference for them.

5. Engage with customers who do leave reviews

Finally, we say it all the time: respond to your reviews — good, bad, or neutral. Why? Because it shows that you’re paying attention to what your customers are saying and that you’re not ignoring or indifferent to them.

When someone has something nice to say, thank them and celebrate the win. If someone has a problem, address it right away. When customers see your business engaging like that, it helps them feel like part of a community and know that their thoughts and experiences matter. Engagement fosters emotional connections with your customers that open up genuine communication — encouraging honest feedback and more positive reviews.

Keep the good vibes going with GatherUp

Whether or not you get positive reviews really comes down to providing the best customer experience you can. And that’s the result of listening to your customers, doing more of what’s working, and improving what isn’t.

With GatherUp’s comprehensive customer experience and reputation management platform, you have the tools you need to proactively request reviews, collect and listen to customer feedback, and turn that feedback into actionable insights. The more actions you can take to improve the customer experience, the more positive reviews you’ll get, and the better your online reputation will be.

To learn how GatherUp can support your business in getting more positive reviews and enhancing your reputation, schedule a demo.

Customer Feedback Survey Templates

Micah Hartmann — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:55:48 +0000

Updated 10/16/23

The number one priority for businesses today is customer experience (CX), which is understandable since 86% of buyers will pay more if their experience with a brand is exceptional.

In a post-COVID world, customers seek local businesses that are empathetic, compassionate, and trustworthy more than ever. According to a recent Salesforce study, 89% of customers are more loyal to companies they trust.

Source: Salesforce

So we understand how crucial a good customer experience is – and that trust plays into that. Now we need to figure out how to improve the buyer’s journey to enhance CX wherever possible. Analyzing the awareness, consideration, and decision stages can help you address any pain points that stick out along the way.

One of the most effective strategies for enhancing CX is conducting customer feedback surveys. Engaging with your customers by asking targeted questions and listening closely to their feedback can help you stay relevant and competitive in your industry. We’re here to share customer feedback survey templates to get you started.

What is a Customer Feedback Survey?

A customer feedback survey is just what it sounds like. It’s a survey you send out to customers asking for feedback on your services or experiences they’ve had with your business.

Let’s say you run a roofing business. Here are some sample questions you could use to form surveys to send to your customers after installing a new roof:

Were you satisfied with our roofing services?
What were the top factors in your decision to hire us?
Are you pleased with the quality of our roofing products?
Were there any problems that arose that we didn’t handle to your satisfaction?
How would you rate our communication?
How would you rate the level of personal service you received from our team?
How would you rate the overall installation process?
How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the job we performed?
How would you describe our services to a friend?
How likely are you to recommend our business to a friend?

What Should a Customer Feedback Survey Accomplish?

Feedback surveys can help you connect and empathize with your customers. Hop into their shoes and see your business from their perspective. You can ask for feedback on whether you’re meeting their (usually rather high) expectations or falling short. If you find the latter to be accurate, you’ll have your work cut out for you.

Surveys typically have questions regarding your products, services, goals, or customers’ personal experiences with your brand. You can also ask for overall satisfaction ratings. Shooting out surveys is an effective and fast way to gain valuable insight to help your local business grow in the right direction.

Don’t be afraid to get creative with your surveys. For example, you could develop a quiz that enables people to interact with your business in a fun way. Surveys aren’t just for long-time customers, either. They’re also a great way to collect data to inform future marketing efforts or generate new leads for your business.

What are the Best Ways to Deliver Customer Feedback Surveys to Your Customers?

Here are the top four ways to deliver customer feedback surveys to your customers quickly to get valuable feedback.

Via Email

Email is one of the easiest and most-used methods for sending surveys to customers. If you want, you can even set up a workflow that automatically triggers your email to send once a customer performs a specific action – like paying for a service online.

You can either send a survey embedded directly into an email or include a link that leads the customer to your website or landing page.

On Your Website

Keep these surveys as short as possible – with just a couple of questions. You can get people’s feedback on specific pages they’re viewing to learn how to improve their experience or your onsite content. Be intentional, and remember that you’re looking to achieve a singular goal through your survey.

Through SMS Messages

Another way to ask customers to complete a feedback survey is via text message. This method is only appropriate if your customers gave you explicit permission to text them or if they opted into text message marketing notifications. If they have, you can send out a survey link straight to customers’ phones, which is a great way to get in front of people quickly.

In-Person

While customers are waiting in your office for an appointment or after you provide a service, you can ask them to fill out a quick physical survey. There’s nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned paper and pen. If you have older clients who are less familiar with technology, physical surveys can be ideal.

Customer Feedback Survey Templates & Best Practices

Follow these tips for creating and sending optimized, useful, and engaging customer feedback surveys.

1. Add Branding

Make sure you create surveys using your logo, colors, and other branding elements so your customers immediately know who they’re from. If they know you personally, they’ll be more willing to give you feedback.

Source: McDVoice.com

2. Focus on a Specific Goal

If you don’t know what you want to accomplish by sending out a customer feedback survey, don’t bother. You’ll waste your time and your customers’. However, if you have a specific goal in mind, your survey can ask questions that help you achieve it.

Here are some of the most common types of customer feedback surveys:

Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey: Gauges how loyal a customer is to your brand and how likely they are to recommend your business to someone else, predicts future growth
Customer effort score (CES) survey: Rates how easy it is for your customers to use your products or services
Customer satisfaction survey (CSAT): Measures how satisfied a customer is with your products or services
Product satisfaction survey: Gathers feedback on how customers feel about your products and how you can improve them
Lost customer surveys: Helps you understand why a customer unsubscribed or left your business
Post-event surveys: Helps you discover what people enjoyed, disliked, and how likely they are to attend another one of your events in the future

Here’s an example of an NPS survey that Noblr sends out to members several months after taking out a policy. They send the survey via email. Clicking on the scale leads the customer to a more extensive survey online.

Feel free to customize your customer feedback surveys or create new ones from scratch that address a specific problem or goal. Be as intentional as possible. To get meaningful answers, you need to ask significant questions.

Your customers should know your intentions as soon as they open your survey. Tell them upfront why you’re asking for their help. If they don’t see the purpose and how they can provide value, they’ll be less likely to engage. Having an explicit objective, however, will help motivate them to take action.

3. Ask Clear, Engaging Questions

If your questions are interesting to your customers, they’ll have an easier time jumping in and engaging. Especially if your customer feedback surveys are longer, it’s smart to start with exciting questions to draw in survey takers. Make your customers feel like they’re contributing value and providing useful insight.

Here’s an example of a comprehensive hotel customer satisfaction survey:

Source: iAuditor

Another strategy is starting with broader, more general questions (like demographics) that are easy to answer. Then you can lead customers into more specific questions further down. People may be more willing to start the survey if it looks simple. And once they dive in, they’ll be more likely to finish.

Regardless of your chosen method, make sure your surveys have a logical flow. Try to organize your questions to flow naturally from one to the next until the survey is complete.

4. Consider Using Both Close-Ended and Open-Ended Questions

Close-ended questions (multiple-choice, yes/no, checkboxes) are easier and quicker to answer. But don’t be afraid to throw in some open-ended questions as well. Open-ended questions allow customers to share their opinions with more depth, flexibility, and personality.

Source: ResearchGate

There’s a time and place for both types of questions. Typically, close-ended questions are useful for quantitative or demographic feedback – often placed at the beginning of a survey. Open-ended questions can give you more qualitative information. They allow customers to explain why they gave their answers. They also enable survey-takers to clear up confusion around close-ended questions that feel too black and white.

5. Keep Them Short and Sweet

Do you enjoy filling out long-winded surveys from brands? Your customers likely won’t either.

Stick to ten questions or less whenever possible. We recommend keeping your surveys to four to six questions for the best results. Long surveys – especially when they contain several open-ended questions – can be intimidating and time-consuming to finish. Your customers may simply be too busy for them.

You also have a better chance of receiving higher-quality responses if you keep your surveys short and to the point because survey takers can spend more time on each answer.

6. Personalize Your Surveys

Don’t underestimate the power of personalization. Personalized emails get higher engagement. And personalizing your surveys can hold your customers accountable and show them you value them as individuals.

The feedback you gain from non-anonymous surveys can also offer you more valuable insights. When you know who you’re sampling, you’ll better understand why different groups of customers respond the way they do. You can also identify trends that surface based on various demographics and personality types.

7. Measure and Analyze Feedback

The customer feedback you receive should lead you to act, making changes to improve your processes, people, and services. If it doesn’t, what’s the point?

When analyzing the data, make sure you look for trends, not one-offs. Don’t change something because one person reacted negatively to your business. Focus on issues that repeatedly surface over time.

For example, let’s say you run a remodeling company and send out a monthly newsletter that shares photos of your latest home improvement projects. If you receive feedback from one person that your emails are way too long, you may have nothing to worry about.

On the other hand, if multiple people complain about your newsletters being longwinded or too “salesy,” you’ll know it’s time for a change.

Examples of Customer Feedback Survey Templates

Here are several examples of customer feedback survey templates you can study and learn from to effectively craft your own.

1. Client Satisfaction Survey

Source: Attorney at Work

This survey states the objective clearly, has a warm tone, and combines close-ended and open-ended questions. It allows clients to say as much or as little as they like. Its questions are engaging and show clients their opinions are valued and appreciated.

Here’s another excellent example of a CSAT survey:

Source: UT Health San Antonio

2. Net Promoter Score Survey

This survey touches on a lot more than just NPS. It also tackles speed, order accuracy, and quality while leaving room for a first-party review. They’re effective across any industry, from Healthcare to Real Estate. They’re especially effective for enterprise and franchise reputation analysis.

3. Customer Effort Score Survey

Source: QuestionPro

Here’s an example question from a CES survey specifically addressing how much effort the customer had to exert to fulfill their request. Feedback for this type of survey can give you an idea of the status of your professional relationship with a customer. Just remember that NPS measures the relationship over a more extended period. Use the two scores in tandem for a complete picture of your customer.

4. Lost Customer Survey

After a customer leaves, Esurance sends out this email. It has a button at the bottom that leads to a short online survey to improve customer experience.

5. Post-Event Survey

Source: Microsoft

Asking questions about your event’s leaders, food, activities, or entertainment can help you understand whether you met attendees’ expectations. You’ll learn whether participants found the event valuable and worth their time and money.

Customer Experience is the Backbone of Your Business

Getting quality feedback from your customers or clients is essential for your business’s growth and success. Reliable feedback can influence your in-person and online customer service, products, services, communications, marketing, and more. Around here, we refer to listening as a superpower.

GatherUp can help you attract new customers, retain loyal ones, boost sales, and improve your reputation by empowering you to listen carefully and enhance the customer experience. It’s simple, but also incredibly effective – as the best strategies usually are.

How to Turn Customer Reviews into Actionable Insights

GatherUp — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 18:48:02 +0000

One of the goals of customer reviews is to get more of them, since a large body of quality reviews helps to build up your online presence and lend more social credibility and trustworthiness to your business. But once those reviews start coming in regularly, how do you keep up with what’s being said about your business, and what, exactly, should you do with the information?

In other words, it’s not just about getting the reviews themselves but turning them into actionable insights and practical next steps. After all, if you don’t know what to do with the feedback you’re collecting, your customers may as well be talking to a wall.

With two important GatherUp features, you can start extracting value and real-world ideas from your customer feedback that help you know what to address and improve — or what’s working well — so you can give your customers the best experience possible.

Here’s a closer look at these features.

Tag and monitor keywords

GatherUp’s auto-tagging feature allows you to track what’s being said in your customer reviews by tagging specific keywords in those reviews.

Here’s how it works:

Input and auto-assign keywords as tags: Determine the keywords you want to look for in reviews — such as specific products or services, product and service categories, or positive, negative, or indifferent sentiment, for example. Then input those keywords into GatherUp as tags. Reviews that include those keywords and sentiment will be auto-tagged. You can also choose to apply those same tags to older reviews.
Capture and segment reviews: When auto-tagged reviews come in that contain your keywords, you can then segment those reviews by topic to help you uncover valuable insights on key areas of your business. For example, if you tagged the keyword “slow,” you can segment all the reviews you get that mention “slow” to give you insight into which customers said this and under what circumstances.
Promote reviews on web pages: Finally, you can feed specific reviews to your product or service pages on your website to help build trust and increase conversions. For example, you could promote reviews that were tagged with positive sentiment and mentioned a specific product on your site’s product page so potential customers have more information and can feel more comfortable about making a purchase decision.

By identifying themes in your customer reviews — products or services that are routinely mentioned, sentiment that is routinely expressed — you can elevate the great work you’re doing by sharing positive reviews on your website while also tracking and evaluating areas where you may be falling down so you can make improvements.

Crunch and simplify large amounts of customer feedback data

GatherUp’s Smart Insights feature uses artificial intelligence (AI) to distill all your customer feedback data into an easy-to-understand report with actionable next steps.

Here’s how it works:

Generate a report: When you have customer feedback activity — whether for a client (if you run an agency), a certain location (if you run a multi-location or franchise business), or your main business if you only operate a single location — you can generate the report to get insights about that feedback.
Learn what’s working and what isn’t: Once the report is generated, you can see 5 examples of “Where you’re crushing it” and 5 examples of “Areas of improvement.” For example, if you operate a restaurant, you could get insight that you’re “crushing it” on the quality of service and tastiness of the food, among others, but where you need to improve includes hygiene and food quality.
Download and repeat: You can download the report into a PDF so you can share with other stakeholders, and you can regenerate the report as often as you like to get new or different insights.

By extracting the most important trends and highlights across your entire body of reviews, you get specific details about what to keep doing or what to change that can make a big impact with your customers and your overall business. And because AI does the legwork and analysis for you, you don’t have to burn hours of time combing through the feedback and reviews yourself. You get a handy, digestible report with zero manual effort on your part.

Guide: How to Integrate AI

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Get to insights and action faster with GatherUp

Your customer review strategy isn’t complete without actionable insights. When you use GatherUp’s customer experience and reputation management platform, you get the automated tools and insight you need to quickly understand what your customers are telling you and take action so you can improve their experience.

How to Conduct 2 Types of Surveys Critical to Customer Loyalty

GatherUp — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:14:40 +0000

A big part of running a successful business is knowing what your customers think about it. Are they mostly satisfied, or are they often frustrated? Are they enthusiastic about your business, or indifferent? Are they likely to refer your business to others, or warn people away?

To truly know what your customers are experiencing when they interact with your business, it’s critical to gather customer feedback. Surveys in particular can give you the information you need to not only identify and fix problems but to also expand on what’s working well — all which can help increase customer loyalty and help you avoid losing out to the competition. After all, over half (59%) of customers will walk away after several bad experiences, and 17% will walk after just one.

There are two types of customer surveys you can use to get a comprehensive picture of the customer experience. We’ll take a closer look at both types as well as how to design and conduct them effectively to get higher completion rates and ensure more accurate answers.

1. Customer satisfaction survey

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys dive into how satisfied or unsatisfied your customers are with a product or service you sell, or an interaction they’ve had with your team. CSAT surveys can be formatted in a variety of ways — from a single question to a multi-question survey — but all are intended to illuminate the sentiment or emotion at the center of the customer’s experience.

Why does emotion matter? Recent research by Gallup shows that 70% of customer decisions to stay loyal to a brand are based on emotional factors, and only 30% on rational factors.

You can use a CSAT survey when you want to uncover the potential weaknesses in your brand or business, or figure out what your strengths are so you can capitalize and expand on them. CSAT surveys help you pinpoint opportunities for change and improvement so that problems don’t turn into a ripple effect of bad reviews, fleeing customers, and lost revenue.

How to conduct a CSAT survey

To conduct a CSAT survey effectively:

Come up with a goal for the survey: Before you get started, decide what you want to get out of the survey. That way you can avoid asking every question possible and risk over-complicating it — for yourself and your customers. For example, you could focus the survey just on a new service offering or how well your customer service team is performing (or not).
Keep it simple and brief: When was the last time you voluntarily filled out a 30-question survey that involved a bunch of reading and deciphering? The truth is, most people won’t even bother. To respect your customers’ valuable time and help ensure they’ll respond to your survey, keep it brief — no more than four to five questions is ideal — and use simple, easy-to-understand language.
Include open- and closed-ended questions: Open-ended questions invite customers to share their opinion about something without you guiding their response. While closed-ended questions are easy to compile into data — such as 40% of your customers said yes and 60% said no. Asking both types of questions in your survey will give you a well-rounded view into customer perspectives and experiences.
Choose the right time to survey: A good guideline is if you have quick or frequent interactions with customers — e.g., they make a purchase at the counter and leave, or they call and book an appointment — then send the survey right after the experience or within a day or two so it’s fresh in the customer’s mind. If you have less frequent or more involved interactions with customers — e.g., they come in for an hour-plus meeting or appointment once a year — then send a survey every six months or so that focuses on their overall satisfaction with your business.
Follow up as needed: Survey answers can reveal a lot on their own, but you may want to dive deeper into certain aspects of the feedback. At the end of the CSAT survey, ask if the customer is open to providing additional feedback. Not everyone will be open to it, but for those who are, you can get even richer insights from them since they’re likely to be genuinely invested in your business and want to see it improve or succeed.

2. Net Promoter Score survey

Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys are quick temperature checks that help you understand how likely — or unlikely — a customer is to recommend your overall business, product, or service to others.

NPS surveys typically use a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being “not likely” and 10 being “very likely.” Customers that give scores in the 9-10 range are “promoters,” customers that give scores in the 7-8 range are “passives,” and customers that give scores in the 0-6 range are “detractors.” Promoters enthusiastically talk about your business while detractors speak negatively about it, and passives tend to behave indifferently toward it.

To calculate your NPS score, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. NPS scores can be understood like this:

-100-0 = Poor
1-30 = Average
31-70 = Good
71-100 = Excellent

You can use an NPS survey when you want to measure customer loyalty and enthusiasm. If your customers love your business, you’ll see it in the NPS score. If they don’t, you can look at it as a catalyst to make necessary business improvements and re-engage with passives and detractors.

How to conduct an NPS survey

To conduct an NPS survey effectively:

Make your question quantitative: Since you’re asking customers to give an answer on a scale of 0-10, the question you ask needs to be worded so that it can be rated numerically, which means wording it such as “How likely are you…” or “On a scale of 0-10…” Though not calculated into the NPS score, you can also follow up with open-ended, qualitative questions to get more insight. For example, ask why they gave you that score.
Get specific: Understanding how customers view your overall business is helpful, but to get even more value out of the NPS survey, try being as specific as possible. You could ask something like: How likely are you to book [insert service] again? If you have a multi-location business, you can also get specific with branches and locations, such as: How likely are you to recommend our new branch at [insert location] to a friend?
Use NPS surveys throughout the customer journey: Since NPS surveys function as a great customer check-in, you can inject them at different points in the customer journey. For example, you can survey customers right after making a purchase to understand how satisfied they were with the experience. Then, a few months later, you can check in again to find out how likely they are to recommend your business to others.
Collect enough data: You want enough data to be able to draw significant conclusions. It’s harder to understand how customers really rate your business if you only get a handful of responses — even though your customer base may be in the hundreds or thousands. To maximize participation, send your survey on different days of the week and at different times until you can gather enough data. This will also help you set a benchmark for what works and how to get the most responses going forward.
Don’t survey too often: Though you want enough responses to get accurate insights, there’s a delicate balance between not surveying enough and surveying too often. Remember, you want to give your customers time to form an opinion about your business, product, or service. After sending an initial NPS survey, wait several months to send the next one, and ensure you’re controlling for events like new branch openings and new product or service launches to avoid a biased score. Sending NPS surveys frequently enough can help you measure long-term customer loyalty.

How GatherUp helps you gather and analyze customer feedback

In an overly digital world where it’s easy to lose sight of people, GatherUp makes it possible for you to listen to, understand, and engage customers through the power of customer feedback. Customer surveys remain a viable way to understand how customers feel about your business so you can identify and implement the improvements that will win you customers for life — and keep your competitors at bay.

But surveys are ultimately meaningless without a good way to analyze the responses.

GatherUp’s comprehensive customer feedback and review management platform allows you to conduct CSAT and NPS surveys and gather, analyze, and report on the data — all in one place. You get powerful insights you need to fully understand the customer experience, come up with a road map for improving customer loyalty, and better promote the strengths of your business to help earn new customers.

How does it work?

You can listen to customers by gathering reviews, CSAT and NPS scores, and other survey responses, then analyze that feedback for actionable insights. You can act on those insights through review replies, widgets, social, email, SMS, and webchat to attract, engage, and retain customers – at scale, and all within one platform.

With GatherUp, you can turn the customer voice into customer loyalty and grow your business.

To learn more, schedule a demo.

4 Ways to Use Customer Reviews to Improve the Customer Experience

GatherUp — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 18:39:45 +0000

Customer reviews are signposts that point exactly what needs to change in your business. If someone is disgruntled, or even just slightly disappointed, their review is a clue that there’s room for improvement. Negative feedback isn’t the only catalyst for change. Positive feedback can also inspire new ideas and innovation that moves the whole business in a better direction.

Businesses that actively ask for and collect customer feedback have access to a significant source of valuable information they can use to analyze and improve the customer experience. When you can deliver a truly great experience at any point in the buying journey and during every interaction, customers will pay as much as 16% more for a product or service. They’re also more willing to try additional products or services — giving another potential boost to your revenue.

Here are four ways to use customer reviews to improve and optimize your customer experience, and a brief discussion of how you can get the insights you need from your reviews.

1. Introduce a coveted new product or service

Let’s say you have a dental practice, and you get a customer review like this: “I booked the whitening treatment and really liked it. It would be great if you could sell an at-home treatment so I don’t have to come into the clinic every time.”

Maybe you’ve never considered a product like this before. Or maybe this is the fifth time in a month someone has made the suggestion. Learning from your reviews and offering the products and services your customers desire can give you a competitive advantage. Your customers will appreciate that you listened to them, they’ll be happy to spend more to get what they’ve been asking for, and they’ll have fewer reasons to hop over to your competitor.

2. Create more relevant messages and content

Customer reviews reveal a lot about the type of content your customers want to see. What keywords are they using? What are they routinely mentioning in their reviews or survey responses? What are their questions or concerns? What advice or industry knowledge are they seeking? In short, what can you give them that they’ll want to open and read?

Based on what you’re seeing in the feedback, you can segment your customers into different groups with different interests or needs, and then create and send targeted, personalized messages, posts, or other communications — using email, SMS (text) marketing, blog posts, social media, newsletters, or other channels. Your customers will want to engage with the content, which can increase sales and customer retention as a result.

3. Reward your top customers

When a repeat customer who is also a power user of your products or services posts a review, it tends to be detailed and include a depth of knowledge that can help convince others to do business with you. They end up being a valuable marketing tool in their own right.

You can identify and reward your top customers by giving them a stake in the game that makes them feel like an insider. Maybe it’s a loyalty card or premium level of customer service at no charge. You could invite them to be beta users of a new product or service you’re developing, or ask for their ideas about features they want to see. Your top customers won’t just feel like customers, they’ll feel like partners in the success and future direction of your business — and best of all, they’ll keep referring new customers.

4. Provide better customer support

Let’s say you have a dog grooming business, and you get a customer review like this: “I had to reschedule a grooming so I called and left a message because there’s no way to reschedule online. I didn’t get a call back until two days later.”

Customer reviews get really specific about what’s frustrating. In this case, there are two issues: the lack of a prompt response, and no way to easily reschedule online. Now you have a roadmap for how to provide better support to your customers. For example, you can add the Bookings feature on your Google Business Profile so customers can book directly from there. Or maybe you can add staff to your front desk to handle calls more efficiently. Your customers will tell you what’s not working, and when you make an effort to change, you can make customers for life.

Gaining the Right Insights

Gathering customer feedback is essential, but to make sense of it and use it effectively, you need the right tools that can help you uncover the most relevant insights.

One way to do this is with the power of AI. If you’re using a customer feedback and review management system, consider one with an integrated, AI-based capability that can analyze and summarize all the feedback and reviews that come in and turn them into an easily digestible report that identifies key insights (hint: GatherUp does this).

Any business can benefit from it, but it’s especially helpful for multi-location or franchise businesses that want to get insights across all locations to inform business-wide optimizations, but don’t have the time or resources to do it manually.

With the insights clearly laid out, you can make decisions about how to move forward to change, improve, and optimize your customer experience. As a result, you can earn more sales, communicate in a more personalized way, retain more customers, and support them more effectively.

To learn how GatherUp’s customer feedback and review management platform with AI capabilities can help your business, schedule a demo.