Customer Feedback, or What I Learned on My Summer Vacation
Collecting -- and monitoring -- customer feedback.
Collecting -- and monitoring -- customer feedback.
As a marketer, you never really go on vacation as everything you do is seen through a marketing lens. Recently, I researched and booked my vacation online. Before confirming reservations, I checked customer reviews. One hotel reservation was based on a stellar guidebook review, but I subsequently discovered the hotel’s low ranking on TripAdvisor. Based on these complaints, I canceled the reservation. Later, however, I received an e-mail soliciting feedback.
Small and boutique hotel managers have become Internet savvy. Unlike major chains, they have limited marketing budgets and limited abilities to compensate clients whose experience may be less than optimal. Keenly aware of the power of online customer reviews, they monitor such sites as TripAdvisor.
Having received a bad online review, one hotel I visited works hard to provide a wonderful customer experience by offering a glass of wine when guests arrive, knowledgeable travel advice, and a bottle of wine when they leave. The owner innately understood Nielsen BuzzMetrics’ Pete Blackshaw‘s recommendation that marketers should understand the types of experiences that trigger talk value.
A hotel stay is the quintessential experiential offering. Learning about monitoring and responding to the consumer conversation can be applied to any product, of course, particularly infrequent, expensive ones. It’s important marketers determine when aspects of their offerings cause customers to comment online, to enhance features that cause delight, and to fix those that are negative.
Gathering Customer Input
Your aim in collecting customer feedback and listening to the conversation is to get your target market’s perspective and to uncover issues or insights you can’t get from other analyses. Before starting, check whether your firm collects this information in areas outside the marketing function.
Some suggestions for collecting feedback:
Assessing Customer Feedback
Here’s how to put feedback data into an actionable format and analyze it:
Although more difficult to measure precisely, gathering and organizing customer input from both CGM and customer touch points yields insight regarding your customers’ experience and attitudes. This information will help you improve your offering and address customer concerns.
You may be surprised at what you discover.