Customer Feedback is an imperative diagnostic that every conscious modern-day organization should perform on a routine basis to understand the market perception of their business/service. While most organizations have managed to devise a regular and systematic customer feedback system most of them do not spend the required time to Structure, Strategize and Create a feedback form that doesn’t just provide the required information but also allows the customers to share their honest feedback that in turn can help the organization improve itself.

Before executing a customer feedback exercise it is important to keep in mind a few common mistakes that can reduce the effectiveness of the feedback process.

Fuel Business Growth with Customer Feedback 🔥

Collect real-time, in-moment feedback at all touchpoints in customer journey and leverage feedback insights to transform customer experience.

8 Things companies get wrong while capturing customer feedback

Not having a clear objective
Asking for too much information
Asking multiple open questions
Asking leading questions.
Creating a super long feedback form
Not rewarding the customer
Making the customer work
Not beta testing the feedback form

Here is a curated list of common errors that you should avoid while capturing the customer feedback for your organization.

8 Things Companies Get Wrong While Capturing Customer Feedback

1. Not Having a Clear Objective

Most organizations know that they are required to survey the customer regarding X, Y, Z aspects of their product. However What is the key objective behind taking this feedback? is a question that is seldom asked before initiating the process.
If you are asking a customer for his opinion about a new feature or a service provided by your brand, what are you planning to do with the information later? How will it be used in the business process or will aid further strategic decisions? If the results are not in favor of the service or the feature is your organization prepared to take the corrective action? If not, maybe executing the whole process and spending the time and resources involved in the exercise needs to be re-examined.

Pro Tip: Before initiating the feedback process, discuss with the internal team and the key stakeholders the following questions.
What is the exact information we wish to receive with this feedback exercise?

What are we planning to do with the information?

Are we prepared to take the next step post analyzing the results?

2. Asking for Too Much Information

Most feedback forms ask customers to submit too many personal details before the actual survey begins. This information could be about their marital status, sex, nationality, gender, age, email id, purchase details, phone number, personal income, etc. Although this information might be required in a few cases most surveys just include this as a lazy step to retrieve the customer details from the form itself.
This practice might irk the respondents as in the present times of technological advancement retrieving customer details from the organization’s database is a 2-minute job. In case collecting the personal information of the respondent is essential, it is better to place such questions towards the end of the form as the chances of the customer dropping out then are relatively lower.

Pro Tip: Identify the source of customer details beforehand and limit personal questions to 1 or 2. Place the Personal Questions at the end of the form.

3. Asking Multiple Open Questions

Many feedback forms leave a lot of blank spaces for long answers or paragraph boxes to be filled in response to a question or a statement. While you might be looking forward to the respondent’s thoughts or opinion about a certain subject, leaving multiple large empty boxes makes the feedback form look like an examination sheet, and let’s be real none of us were very comfortable at the sight of it.

Another variation of this mistake is not giving an adequate breadth of response options to the customers in the feedback form. For example, many feedback forms give multiple-choice options where the user does not have the room to say that he dislikes a product/service or that it was extremely bad. This shows an obvious bias on the part of the organization and fails the objective behind taking customer feedback in the first place.

Pro Tip: Limit Open Questions to a 2 or 3 only and blanket them between multiple-choice or check-box questions to make them appear less intimidating. Give users multiple options that explore both negative and positive spectrum to a question in order to achieve unbiased feedback. Read more about Survey Logic here.

4. Asking Leading Questions

Another carnal mistake companies make while creating a feedback form is letting their own bias come in the way of the feedback process by adding Leading questions. Leading questions inevitably try to push the respondent’s view towards one direction, which is usually the one that the organization believes in or endorses.
These kinds of questions don’t just dilute the sanctity of the feedback but can also lead the customer feeling unhappy or irritated especially if she does not identify with the said view. The feedback process should be completely unbiased and neutral and should rather encourage the customer to share their honest point of view.

Pro Tip: Always check the final feedback form for personal bias before sharing it with the customer.

5. Creating a Super Long Feedback Form

Every time an organization asks the customers to fill out a feedback form there is a tentative time indicated that will be required to fill out the entire survey. In most cases, the time indicated is misleading which is one of the most common reasons why customers hate filling out feedback forms in the first place.
This tactic might lead to more number of responses however there is a huge trade-off in terms of the quality of the response as the user might get irritated due to spending more time than he was anticipating. When you are sharing a feedback form with a customer, be honest about the time it will take to complete the same.

Pro Tip: While designing the feedback form, you need to keep in mind the negative correlation between the length of the survey and the number of responses. Even if your feedback form is lengthy, be honest to your customers. To avoid such mistakes you can also use pre-built survey templates.

6. Not Rewarding the Customer

Long feedback forms can be time-consuming and tedious, the easiest way to encourage customers to share their opinion is by incentivizing them for their valuable time. The incentive doesn’t have to be of high monetary value but if it is well thought out you might receive a lot of customer interest in not just filling out the feedback but with current respondents getting referral respondents to share their opinion as well.

Pro Tip: Analyse your user data to identify the affinity or interest areas of your consumers and give them a relevant incentive for sharing their feedback.

7. Making the Customer Work

It is almost an obvious understanding that if you are executing a Customer Feedback exercise you shouldn’t straddle the responsibility of taking the action/lead on the customer herself. Make sure that you are not making the users go through an unnecessary tedious process to share their feedback with you.
Sometimes organizations ask users to download an app, or go to the website and sign up and go to a particular section to reach the feedback page. One has to keep in mind that it is the organization that is seeking the customer’s valuable opinion and not the other way round. Hence you need to give the respondent the easiest way to share their feedback with you. Unless there is a huge incentive or a big reward at the end of the feedback process customers won’t take the pain to complete the feedback form and share it with you.

Pro Tip: Share the link to the feedback form over Email or SMS with the customer with a one-step action required. In case the process of submitting the feedback is long or complicated spell out clear instructions for them to complete the exercise without any hassles.

8. Not Beta Testing the Feedback Form

More often than not feedback forms are shared with the customers without any focus group testing, which does not weed out any obvious errors that might be present in the form. For example, the survey creator sometimes fails to see obvious leading questions or lack of options required for a multiple-choice question.

Pro Tip: Always have 15-20 of the target customers take the feedback and share their opinion of the feedback form itself before going live. After receiving their inputs make the necessary edits in the form before sharing it with a larger audience.

Customer Feedback can be an insightful and rewarding journey for both the organization and the customers. By avoiding a few common mistakes you can ensure that the process is structured, streamlined and beneficial for all the parties involved.

Zonka Feedback provides enterprise solutions for organizations planning to capture Customer Feedback using Tablet, Kiosk, SMS, Email feedback and more. To view, a list of our solutions visit our website.