<h2>What are industry benchmarks?</h2><p>Industry benchmarking is when you compare your business processes and performance metrics to other businesses within your space or industry, typically your competitors. An industry benchmark is any reference point that can be compared, such as customer satisfaction, product quality or operational costs.</p><h2>Why is benchmarking important?</h2><p>Understanding how you’re performing against your competitors will help you see where you stand in the market and what you need to focus on to start outperforming them. If you’re a smaller business or just starting out, you can use benchmarking to guide your financial forecasting and budgeting, as you can see the industry standards.</p><p>Industry benchmarking also allows you to get ideas and inspiration from your competitors. What are they doing differently? Is it working or failing? How can you do what they do, but better? These are all questions that benchmarking can help you answer.</p><p>So, if you want to grow and improve your business, or you simply want to see where you stand in relation to your competitors, industry benchmarking should be a key part of your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/business-insights" target="_self">growth strategy</a>.</p><h2>Examples of benchmarking in business</h2><p>There are plenty of ways to benchmark your business against others in your industry. You could:</p><ul><li>Compare sales figures for similar products made by your company and your closest competitors.</li><li>Measure service delivery timeframes of your competitors and compare them with your own.</li><li>Survey multiple companies within your industry to identify best practices.</li><li>Analyse marketing processes and platforms used by competitors to see how your own compare.</li><li>Investigate customer reviews and ratings for products and services offered by other businesses to understand consumer sentiment and identify ways to improve your own customer experience.</li></ul><h2>What is internal benchmarking?</h2><p>Internal benchmarking is the process of comparing processes and performance metrics within your own company, to understand how well your business is doing and identify opportunities for growth. If you want to know what success looks like within your business, you should look at what certain teams are already capable of – or have been capable of in the past. You can compare how different teams carry out business processes, workflows or activities to identify what works best.</p><p>Once you’ve identified what ‘best practice’ looks like, this should then become the standard for improvement within your business.</p><h2>The limitations of internal benchmarking</h2><p>Internal benchmarking can be useful to assess company performance and identify areas for improvement. However, there are limitations as the scope of internal benchmarking is very narrow. Your business needs to be aware of your competition and not solely focus on internal operations and processes. By comparing yourself to others in your industry, you’ll ensure your business remains competitive.</p>

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<h2>How does industry benchmarking work?</h2><p>If you’re ready to start industry benchmarking, follow these simple steps to help you understand how you’re performing against your competitors.</p><ul><li><strong>Identify what you want to benchmark</strong></li></ul><p>First, you need to decide what you want to benchmark, for example, a product, service or process. Think about your weakest areas or those you want to focus on. If your customer service is your unique selling point, for example, you may want to discover if your team is outperforming your competitors. There are always improvements that can be made.</p><ul><li><strong>Establish how you’re going to benchmark</strong></li></ul><p>Once you’ve decided what you’re going to benchmark, the next step is to establish your measurement for success. How are you going to compare whatever you’re benchmarking to the competition? Price benchmarking, for example, is fairly straightforward, while product benchmarking may involve you heavily researching your competitor’s products and creating a comparison list between your product’s features, strengths and weaknesses.</p><ul><li><strong>Decide who you want to benchmark against</strong></li></ul><p>It’s unlikely you’d want to benchmark yourself against every single one of your competitors. Pick your biggest competitors or the ones that you think are the strongest in the field you’re trying to benchmark against. Remember that benchmarking can be internal as well as external – for example, you could benchmark one of your processes against another, or one team against another.</p><ul><li><strong>Start collecting the data you need to benchmark</strong></li></ul><p>The data you need to collect will depend on the type of benchmarking you choose to do. It could vary from review and survey responses, to live chat response times and Google rankings. Your own business data should be easy to obtain. To gather data on your competitors, you’ll need to do your research, which could include looking at their website, recent press releases, any reports they’ve published or been featured in, and using various competitor analysis tools, such as SEMrush or SimilarWeb.</p><ul><li><strong>Act on the results to make improvements</strong></li></ul><p>Now you have the data, it’s time to decide what changes you’re going to make and how you’re going to measure the success of these changes. You could conduct a customer survey every six months or regularly measure your Net Promoter Score, for example. Whatever you decide, make sure you act on the information you discover to ensure your benchmarking efforts don’t go to waste.</p><h2>How to benchmark against competitors</h2><p>After you’ve identified who your competitors are, you need to start researching and collecting the data you need to benchmark yourself against the competition. Getting hold of information on your competitors can be a challenge, however some metrics are easier to find than others.</p><h2>SEO performance</h2><p>There are several tools available to help you understand the performance of your competitors’ websites. While the information is public, some of the best tools on the market aren’t free, so you may have to invest to get the data you need.</p><h2>Share of voice</h2><p>You can also measure information on a competitor’s share of voice across online channels, review websites and social media platforms. There are many digital tools available to help you measure share of voice – they can help you understand what people really think about a particular brand, as well as how many consumers are talking about them and the sentiment of the conversation.</p><h2>Private data</h2><p>While private company data is much harder to access, there will be some useful information about your competitors in the public domain. Research company documents such as sales reports, news articles and press releases to learn what information your competitors are releasing. If you can find regular press releases, for example, you might be able to glean trends that could be helpful for your benchmarking.</p><h2>Customer surveys</h2><p>One of the most effective ways to find information about your competitors is through benchmarking surveys. By sending out surveys, you can ask anyone about anything – including your competition. Use them to ask consumers what products or services they’ve used before and whether they’d use them again or recommend them to friends and family.</p><h2>What’s the difference between industry benchmarking and KPIs?</h2><p>Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are used to track your business’s performance in relation to a specific goal. For example, your goal may be to increase sales revenue by 10% this year or reduce customer service response rates by 40%. KPIs tell you whether you’re on track to reach that goal.</p><p>While KPIs help you compare the progress you’re making towards a specific goal, industry benchmarking compares your performance against your competitor’s. Both allow you to identify ways to improve your own performance.</p><h2>What are the different types of benchmarking?</h2><p>There are different types of benchmarking, depending on what you want to achieve. Here, we take a look at some of the most common types of industry benchmarking.</p><h2>Process benchmarking</h2><p>Are your processes as efficient, fast and effective as they could be? Process benchmarking allows you to better understand your processes, by comparing them to how the top players in your industry operate. Improving your processes is important to keep your business running smoothly and at maximum efficiency.</p><h2>Strategic benchmarking</h2><p>To strengthen your strategies, approaches and business model, you need to see what your competitors are doing differently. What strategies do they employ that work and result in effective teams? By understanding the different strategies being used in your industry, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, you can help improve your own planning and determine your business’s priorities.</p><h2>Performance benchmarking</h2><p>Performance benchmarking allows you to measure the performance outcomes that are essential to reaching your objectives, such as customer satisfaction or revenue growth. These outcomes are usually measured by running in-depth surveys or interviews. This type of benchmarking can help you to identify any performance gaps, as well as how you’re performing in comparison to your competitors.</p><h2>Price benchmarking</h2><p>If you want to make sure you remain competitive on price, or if you’re a new business trying to assess your products or services, price benchmarking is vital. It considers both the pricing of competitors’ products and services, as well as comparing quality. This allows you to price your products and services fairly, as well as gain knowledge that can help you outperform the competition.</p><h2>Product benchmarking</h2><p>Product benchmarking compares your products with your competitors’, helping you to discover ways to make changes and improvements, and identify your market position. Use product testing and consumer research to determine your product’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to compare them with others on the market.</p>

<h2>How can Feefo help with industry benchmarking?</h2><p>Customer feedback is an excellent benchmarking tool. Not only can you compare review scores against your competition, but you can also collect honest opinions from your customers, allowing you to learn more about your business and your competition. Feefo has a range of tools that can help you with industry benchmarking.</p><h2>Understand product quality using product ratings</h2><p>If you’re planning to conduct product or price benchmarking, collecting product reviews is vital. By understanding how your customers rate your products and why, you can see where they sit in the market compared to similar products. When collecting product reviews, use Feefo’s Product Attributes feature to ask customers to rate features such as ‘quality’, allowing you to benchmark prices against other products of a similar quality.</p><h2>Research the competition with customer surveys</h2><p>Surveys are flexible, private and can be distributed to anyone, allowing you to ask anyone about anything, including your competition. Use surveys to collect in-depth feedback on your latest products and see how they compare to similar products on the market. Ask consumers what products they’ve bought before and gather more details about what they thought of each product. Surveys should play a key role in your benchmarking efforts, as they can be used to collect a wealth of information from customers, prospects and employees.</p><h2>Measure your customer loyalty with Net Promoter Score</h2><p>Knowing how loyal your customers are can play an important role in performance benchmarking. Net Promoter Score, also known as <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/nps" target="_self">NPS</a>, is a metric that’s widely used to measure customer loyalty. Understanding your NPS is easy. Simply add one question to your surveys or feedback forms: ‘How likely are you to recommend [business name] to a friend, relative or colleague?’. Customers answer on a scale of 0 – 10, which puts them into one of three groups: promoters, passives and detractors.</p><p>The higher your NPS score, the more loyal your customers are. By digging deeper into your reviews and surveys, you can see what promoters love about your business and what detractors would change, allowing you to identify your strengths and weaknesses and make improvements.</p><h2>Improve your processes with Customer Effort Score</h2><p>Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy or difficult it is for a customer to complete a task, such as making a purchase from your website or returning an item. This is useful when you’re process benchmarking, as it allows you to measure how easy some processes are compared to others.</p><p>CES questions can be added to any Feefo survey, asking customers to answer on a simple 1 – 5 scale, with 1 being ‘Very difficult’ to 5 being ‘Very easy’. You can add additional questions to your survey to discover why customers struggled with a specific task, allowing you to see which processes people are struggling with most and make meaningful improvements.</p><h2>Learn if your customers are happy with Customer Satisfaction Score</h2><p>Another metric you can measure with Feefo is Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). This allows you to see how happy your customers are with a particular product, service or process. For example, you may want to know how satisfied customers are with the level of support new customers receive and benchmark this against the support existing customers receive. You may even want to survey customers who have just moved from a competitor brand to yours.</p><h2>Identify common feedback themes with Performance Profiling</h2><p>Feefo’s Customer Sentiment Insight tool uses artificial intelligence technology to automatically analyse all the feedback you receive and identify common themes and the sentiment surrounding them. If you collect thousands of customer reviews or surveys, this tool will save you time and effort by automatically identifying trends in your feedback. This makes it easier for you to see what people love about your business and what needs to be improved and can be used to benchmark products, services or processes against one another.</p>

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What are industry benchmarks? The expert guide to benchmarking 

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<p><span><span>In an era when three in four people say they avoid advertising altogether, what information do consumers trust? Customer feedback.</span></span></p><p><p><p>Feedback provides so much more than social proof, though. If you’re not currently collecting ratings and reviews, or you are but feel like you could get more from them, you’re in the right place.</p><p>Here’s everything you need to know about customer feedback, the benefits it can offer your business, and the right software to moderate it.</p><h2>Why is customer feedback important?</h2><p>Here are four key reasons why you should be collecting, showcasing and analysing ratings and reviews:</p><h3>1. To support your customers</h3><p>According to Feefo’s 2019 Consumer Trends Report, 96% of UK consumers use reviews in some way and 64% read them before making a purchase. But shoppers don’t always trust what they see online – 72% of them worry about fake feedback. Invite-only reviews, which are guaranteed to come from your genuine customers, are a great way to support prospects as they decide whether to buy from you.</p><h3>2. To boost conversion rates</h3><p>Adding customer reviews to your website can massively increase conversions, especially when they are displayed on product pages. In fact, people are 270% more likely to buy a product with five reviews than one without any reviews. <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/customer-stories/salon-services" target="_self">Our work with the hair and beauty company Salon Services</a> also shows that customer spending rises by 294% when reviews are showcased online.</p><h3>3. To monitor internal performance</h3><p>By analysing the customer feedback you receive, you can keep tabs on how well each branch, store, and member of staff is doing. Tools like Feefo’s Insight Labels make this easy, as you can track reviews by categories like staff names, branch locations and product types.</p><p>Using reviews in this way allows you to spot products and services that should be improved or stores that require further investment. You can also use positive reviews to motivate staff by rewarding those who receive excellent feedback.</p><h3>4. To understand your customers’ experiences</h3><p>Collecting and analysing feedback across the entire customer journey can help you dig deeper into the experiences of shoppers, their loyalty to your brand, and so much more.</p><p>Feefo’s Customer Sentiment Insight tool uses AI to automatically identify themes in your reviews. If topics like ‘delivery’ are constantly mentioned in a negative context, this will be highlighted to you, so you can find out what’s going wrong and how to make it right.</p></p></p>

<h2>Using feedback to connect with your customers</h2><p>There are several ways you can use reviews to build better relationships with buyers and improve their loyalty to your brand:</p><h3>1. Create a personalised experience</h3><p>Whether you’re trying to convince your customers to take advantage of an offer or you’re asking them for their honest feedback, you need to speak to them as individuals. Our Feedback Request Manager allows you to build and design feedback campaigns, so you can ask the right questions to the right people at the right time.</p><h3>2. Respond to all feedback</h3><p>Write a review takes time and effort – so when people leave feedback be sure to thank them (whether good or bad!). While we recommend responding to as many reviews as possible, you’ll want to prioritise negative feedback, as this gives you the opportunity to repair broken relationships. You may even be able to turn those one- and two-star ratings into five stars.</p><p>When responding to negative feedback, get in touch with the customer privately so you can fully understand their situation and fix any issues. Once you’ve done as much as you can, respond to the review publicly, so other potential customers can see you provide an excellent service, even when things go wrong.</p><p>For more tips on how to reply to customer comments, check out our<a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience/responding-to-reviews-guide" target="_self"> complete guide on dealing with positive and negative feedback.</a></p><h3>3. Tell people when their feedback made a difference</h3><p>Customer reviews should help inform any changes you make to your business. And when you improve something thanks to that feedback, it’s important to let people know.</p><p>Whether you’ve increased the responsiveness of your customer service team or fixed a problem with your website, use your marketing channels to show customers you listen to all feedback – good and bad.<span><span></span></span><span></span><span></span></p>

<h2><span>How to choose a customer feedback platform</span></h2>
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<p>If you want to make the most of your customer feedback, you need the right platform. Every platform offers something different, so it’s important to pick one that’s right for your business. Here are some key considerations to think about:</p>
<h2>Choose whether you want to collect open vs. invite-only reviews</h2>
<p>One of the biggest decisions to make is whether to opt for an invite-only platform like Feefo, where you only get feedback from verified buyers, or an open platform, where anyone to leave feedback about your business whether or not they’ve purchased from you. Here are the benefits and drawbacks of each:<span></span><span></span></p>
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<h2>Invite only platform:</h2>
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        <p>Beat the fakes - No one can post fake reviews on your website, as only genuine buyers are invited to leave feedback.</p>
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        <p><span>If someone visits your website but doesn’t engage or make a purchase, you can’t collect feedback from them (unless you run surveys).</span></p>
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        <p>Trust your data - With real feedback from real customers, you can be sure that fake reviews aren’t skewing your <span>data – so your business decisions are always backed by valid insights.</span></p>
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        <p><span>As only real buyers can leave feedback, you may collect fewer reviews than you would with an open platform.</span></p>
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        <p>Win more customers over - People are 15% more likely to buy when reading a verified review over an anonymous review. They want to hear from customers who have genuinely interacted with your brand.</p>
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        <p><span>You must proactively reach out to customers for feedback – Feefo makes this easy with an automated email or text message that we send to each of your buyers.</span></p>
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        <p>Streamline the feedback process - Customers don’t need to sign up or log in to leave a review, because their feedback is tied to a specific sale or interaction, so you already know who they are. This means they can share their thoughts with you quickly and easily.</p>
      </td>
      <td></td>
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<h2>Open<span> platform:</span></h2>
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<p></p>
<table class="styled-table">
  <thead>
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      <th><strong>Benefits</strong></th>
      <th><strong>Drawbacks</strong></th>
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        <p>Get lots of feedback - With an open platform, anyone can search for your company and leave a review – so you may be able to collect more feedback faster.</p>
      </td>
      <td><span>Anyone can leave feedback, even if they haven’t interacted with your brand or purchased from you. This opens the door to fake reviews from competitors and spam accounts, which can put your reputation at risk and skew your data.</span></td>
    </tr>
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      <td>
        <p>Hear from non-buyers - If someone visits your website or branch but doesn’t make a purchase, they can still leave feedback about your brand.</p>
      </td>
      <td><span>Flagging and removing fake feedback is challenging, as it’s difficult to spot a fake review from a real one unless the writer gives proof of purchase.</span></td>
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      <td></td>
      <td><span>Open review platforms tend to operate like comparison sites, which means you risk losing potential customers to competitors.</span></td>
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      <td></td>
      <td><span>Customers often have to create or sign into a profile to leave a review, which is time-consuming and may put them off giving feedback.</span></td>
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  </tbody>
</table>
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<h2>Decide where and how you want to display your reviews</h2><p>The best way to show off your positive feedback is by using widgets that work for your company and industry.</p><p><a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/collect-reviews" target="_self">Review platforms</a> offer different widgets and products, so establish what you’d like to achieve with your feedback before seeing what’s out there. That way, it will be much easier to narrow down which platform is right for you.</p><h2>Check the moderation rules</h2><p>Even if you’re using an invite-only platform, you may still get a review that is inappropriate from time to time – for example, one that contains bad language or is talking about the wrong product. In cases like this, you need to be able to flag feedback. A good, trustworthy platform will have clear moderation guidelines to determine whether a review should be removed or not.</p><p>Businesses should not be able to remove any review they want. If that worries you, it shouldn't – 52% of consumers become suspicious if there is no negative feedback on a product or service they want to buy.</p><p>Make sure you read a platform’s moderation guidelines before signing the dotted line. You can read Feefo’s moderation guidelines <a href="https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/5707407/Websites%20Pdfs/Review_Moderation_Guidelines.pdf" target="_blank">here.</a></p><h2>Getting more customers to give feedback</h2><p>Follow these key tips to encourage buyers to leave a review:</p><h3>1. Make your invitation enticing</h3><p>We all receive dozens of emails every day. Ensure yours stand out with a clear subject line and a message that incentivises to your customers to leave feedback.</p><h3>2. Thank people for their time</h3><p>Everyone likes to feel appreciated. Thanking someone, even before they have gone through with providing feedback, puts them in a position to do as you ask.</p><h3>3. Dare them to be honest</h3><p>People love sharing their opinions with others – it can feel extremely freeing. Use that to your advantage by daring your customers to leave an honest review about you. Encourage them in a cheeky way, or you can keep to a formal tone.</p><h3>4. Draw attention to what you want them to talk about</h3><p>This is especially useful if you require feedback regarding a particular product or service, or if you have recently launched something new. In your email, use the key words you want your review to focus on in a bid to guide your customer in the right direction.</p><h3>5. Tap into their sense of social responsibility</h3><p>We all want to feel like we are making a difference. Reviews give people the power to have an influence, so they provide a great opportunity for you to tap into the need for social responsibility.</p><h3>6. Use humour</h3><p>Humour is always a great tactic, especially if something has gone wrong. Maintain your professionalism, but also show your personality (if that's part of your brand image and tone). Customers are more likely to engage with a brand they can relate to.</p><h3>7. Encourage sympathy</h3><p>Tell your customer how hard you’ve worked and what efforts have gone into getting them the right product. You could even name a member of staff that made their experience possible. Tell them that your business depends on their happiness and that it starts with them giving you feedback.</p><h2>Start collecting customer feedback, your way</h2><p>At Feefo, we’re proud to be a trusted, invite-only review platform. That's why over 6500 brands trust us to help develop their <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience/how-to-improve-your-brands-customer-experience" target="_self">customer experiences</a>. Get in touch with our team today to find out what we can do for you.<span></span><span></span><span></span></p>

What are industry benchmarks? The expert guide to benchmarking

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