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Top Tips to Get Feedback From Clients: It's Harder Than You Think!
In every business, there is some aspect of customer service/communication. As a digital marketing agency, we understand how challenging it can be to get feedback on your work. Today, let's go over some of our top tips for getting more reliable client feedback.
Send Surveys: Email, SMS, Paper, etc.
The first method you can try is to send feedback surveys to your clients. There are several ways to send out surveys including emails, text messages, and good old snail mail. Be aware that digital surveys are your best option because customers don't need to mail anything back. If you ask for feedback in-person at an event or meeting, paper is acceptable, but we'd suggest shying away from it otherwise. As with any survey, you need to be aware that very few people will respond to it. In fact, getting just half of your surveys back is considered a huge feat! Depending on your location, service, and client base, a response rate of just 5% could be considered good. At the end of the day, people don't enjoy completing surveys. If they feel very strongly one way or another about your business you could get lucky, but your clients who are simply content will likely ignore your messages every time. How can you combat this? Let's get into it.
Offer Incentives For Feedback!
At some point, you've been a customer of some business. Have you ever felt particularly moved to give feedback? If you're like most people, you only have for very positive or very negative experiences. Even then, it can be hard to motivate customers to give their honest feedback. They can give you a rating out of 5 stars, but why did they give you that rating? Obtaining the "why" is one of the biggest problems we face as a digital marketing agency. Customer feedback is so important to improving our business practices, and we had to get creative to get it. The single best way we've found to get feedback is to offer incentives. We offer clients credit off their monthly fee, additional ads budget, or a gift card simply for responding to our feedback surveys. As soon as you offer customers something in return, the likelihood of them getting back to you skyrockets! You can change the incentive based on what you offer. Monetary incentives are always well-received, but you could also offer special discounts, free items, or even exclusive products. Don't set incentives so high that they're not sustainable for you, but make them enticing enough to get the results you want.
Calls Are Effective
When customer surveys don't get you the type of customer feedback you're looking for, switch to phone calls! Humans are much more responsive to other humans than they are to a screen. The great thing about calls is that they allow for a dialogue that a customer survey does not. If you ask for feedback and the response is vague, you have the person on the phone to ask them to elaborate. You can get more answers in real-time! Most digital marketing agencies assign customer service representatives or client success managers to each account. Even if they have a fantastic relationship with the customer, it may be more beneficial to have another team member conduct the customer feedback call. Why? If you have a good relationship with your coworker, would you be willing to give them honest feedback when they ask? Or, would you feel more comfortable telling your boss what you think? Most people would say that it's easier to be open and honest speaking to a third party. The same is true for clients. Ask another client success manager or a business developer to reach out instead. That way, you'll get honest feedback on everything from the services to the results to their account manager. This can help you identify problems you didn't know existed because the client doesn't want to hurt the account manager's feelings.
Integrate Feedback Forms With Your Website
If customers interact with you mainly via your website, we suggest adding a customer feedback survey there. You can ad a pop-up chat option that includes a feedback form, redirect to a survey page after a purchase is made, or leave one up for people to complete at any time. Any company can include a form on their site, but it makes less sense for, say, a digital marketing agency than it does for an e-commerce site. We send clients separate feedback emails and communicate with them directly, so the chances of them going onto the website solely for the purpose of providing feedback is low. It is recommended to include a "Rate the quality of this chat" option if you have a chat box, but even that won't tell you much about the "why" we're always after.
Some Additional Tips to Keep In Mind
- People are more likely to fill out forms that involve simple click-and-go questions, but those are only as helpful as the questions allow them to be
- Open ended questions are the best way to get the all-important "why." They don't limit the customer's freedom to speak their mind so you can get a lot more information. However, they take time to complete, so many customers will avoid them.
- Asking for feedback immediately after an event, especially a negative one, increases the chances of you getting a response. However, because the customer is in the heat of the moment, the feedback may be too emotionally-charged and does not reflect their true feelings. Angry customers are also less likely to go through the real issues and will only be focused on the problem that just occurred.
- Don't bombard customers with feedback surveys. Sending customer surveys more often does not mean you'll get better responses. In fact, if clients feel like they're being spammed, they're even less likely to comply! We ask for incentivized feedback once per month via email, and our business developers do a monthly check-in call. From experience, we can say that the calls are much more reliable and effective!
- Stress the importance of detailed feedback. Most clients will say "I don't like that" but then don't explain why. Sometimes they can't explain why when we ask. Personal preferences are hard to understand, but it's crucial to do what you can to protect the client/digital marketing agency relationship. If you settle for vague critiques, you could be putting band-aids over a much larger problem. They said they didn't like the photo? Actually, they dislike the color scheme, the logo placement, and the messy background. Until you know those specifics, you can't possibly nail down their branding!
Getting customer feedback has been one of the biggest challenges in business since the dawn of time. There's no fool-proof way to get 100% of your clients to respond. By instituting some of these tips, you should see at least a few more responses. Customer surveys aren't perfect, but they've been one of the main methods of obtaining feedback for years. Every business is trying to find innovative ways to gather information, but until the revolutionary answer comes around, incentives seem to be the most effective. We hope these tips have been helpful! BusySeed is a full-service digital marketing agency and our mission is to grow businesses. We take our relationships with clients very seriously, so we are constantly brainstorming new ways to understand their needs. If you're ready to work with a person-centered agency, give us a call at (888) 353-1484.
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