<h2>What is a customer journey map?&nbsp;</h2>Customer journeys can be complicated and are rarely linear, crossing multiple devices and channels. By aggregating and analysing your customers’ journeys, you can start to better understand their pain points, behaviours, needs and expectations. The best way to plot out and analyse the data you collect from your customers is to carry out customer journey mapping.A customer journey map brings your customers’ journeys to life in a visual way, making it easier to see and understand how their experiences flow across your brand’s touchpoints. It’s a strategic approach to improving your customer experience and can be more effective than trying to understand and improve individual touchpoints at a tactical level.<h2 style="text-align: justify;">What are the benefits of a customer journey map?&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2>It can improve your overview of the strengths and weaknesses in your current customer journey. By analysing the journey your customers take when interacting with you and purchasing from you, as well as their needs, thoughts and feelings along the way, you’ll better understand what your customers want from you at each stage and whether you’re meeting those needs.&nbsp;

<h2>When and why is a customer journey map used?&nbsp;</h2>Here are some of the most popular examples of when and why you might want to use a customer journey map.&nbsp;<h3>To help better understand your customers</h3>Creating a customer journey map can be a good way to help your business better understand how customers engage with your brand. It can help colleagues across the business see how each touchpoint contributes to the customer journey.&nbsp;<h3>To identify gaps in the customer experience</h3>Dedicating time to a customer journey mapping project and visualising the journeys your customers take can help you review and understand them and their experiences. Customer journey mapping can shed light on pain points or experience gaps you might not be aware of.&nbsp;<h3>To improve your products and processes</h3>By plotting out the various touchpoints in a customer’s journey with your brand, you can highlight problematic or inefficient processes that might lead to drop-offs or complaints. It can also help you to refine and enhance your products and services.&nbsp;<h3>To deliver relevant and effective communications</h3>Creating a customer journey map can help you to recognise your customers’ wants, needs, questions, and expectations. Use this information to create an insight-led marketing and communications plan. Delivering targeted and relevant messages at key stages throughout the customer journey can help them feel appreciated as consumers.&nbsp;<h3>To prevent churn</h3>Every business has a churn rate – the rate at which customers stop doing business with your brand. Customer journey mapping can offer insight into where and why your customers might encounter problems or frustrations. By plotting out your customers’ experiences, you can identify areas of concern and plan to improve them.&nbsp;<h3>To close the deal</h3>Mapping out the customer journey will provide a clear indication of the touchpoints and experiences that lead up to the point of conversion. By matching your prospects’ needs to how they’re fulfilled in the moments before conversion, it becomes easier to exceed their expectations and deliver experiences that convert to sales.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>How to create a customer journey map&nbsp;</h2>Follow our four-step guide to learn how to create a customer journey map.&nbsp;<h3>List your customer touchpoints</h3>Touchpoints are all the places that your customers can interact with you, both online and offline. Start by creating a list of every touchpoint for your business. Consider where each touchpoint sits in the customer journey – from brand awareness through to loyalty – and organise them accordingly. Think about how your audience might feel at each touchpoint and consider each one in terms of potential obstacles.&nbsp;<h3>Identify your customer personas</h3>Use business data, market research and your target audience characteristics to segment your customers into important groups and create customer personas. Select a persona to be the focus for your customer journey map. Each persona will have a different journey so try not to tackle too many personas with one map. Choose your most common persona (i.e. the one that represents most of your customers) and start from there.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Gather research&nbsp;</h3>It’s important to make the most of the insights, feedback and data you have about your customers. The more data-driven your customer journey map is, the more useful it will be in meeting your journey mapping goals. Use several data sources to gather information for your customer journey map, including:&nbsp;<h3>Customer satisfaction surveys&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Use existing responses or create new surveys to get targeted insights into your customers’ experiences. Look for touchpoints that are mentioned often or themes that occur across multiple touchpoints.&nbsp;<h3>Customer reviews&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Customers usually leave reviews if they are happy or frustrated. Analyse your reviews to see where these moments take place.&nbsp;<h3>Customer experience metrics&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>If you already use Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score or another method of collecting customer feedback, analyse the data you receive to look for themes or popular topics.&nbsp;<h3>Surveys&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Reaching out to existing customers can be useful for gathering research for your journey mapping project. On-page surveys can collect insights to better understand your website experience.&nbsp;<h3>Website analytics&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Analyse how touchpoints are contributing to your website traffic, which ones drive sales, where the most drop-offs occur, and which pages are causing frustration.&nbsp;<h3>Website searches&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>If your website has search functionality, review the results to see which topics or questions your customers are looking for.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Competitor research&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Research your competitors and their touchpoints to identify areas where they outperform you and could potentially win business from consumers.&nbsp;<h3>Conducted interviews&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Sitting down with a panel of your customers or target audience can be invaluable. Ask questions to understand what their expectations of your brand are, or how they found the customer journey.&nbsp;<h3>Site navigation maps&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Analyse your website navigation, looking at how people move from page to page to complete their goals. It should provide a logical and simple experience that turns website visitors into customers.&nbsp;<h3>Chatbots and FAQs&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Use analytics to see which FAQ pages get the highest engagement to better understand where your customers are struggling in their experience with your brand. Chatbot queries also provide valuable insight.&nbsp;<h3>Insights from sales&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Conduct research with your sales team to find out the most common customer and prospect questions, frustrations, expectations and needs.&nbsp;<h3>Identify elements to include in your customer journey map</h3>Your customer journey map can represent different stages in the customer journey. Start by analysing the current state of your customer journeys to highlight how your prospects and customers are interacting with your business in real-time. We’ve identified the key journey mapping elements:&nbsp;<h3>Current state&nbsp;</h3>Current state journey maps offer insights into how things are currently working and flag any issues or areas for improvement. By starting with the current state, you’ll create a benchmark map to improve on, helping you to track any wins from the improvements you make.&nbsp;<h3>Day in the life&nbsp;</h3>Day in the life customer journey mapping plots the typical day of your focus persona. This type of map shows you when your customers interact with your brand, when they might engage with your products or services, and which problems they might face as the day progresses.&nbsp;<h3>Future state&nbsp;</h3>If you know the current state of your customer journeys, it’s much easier to plan ahead and identify how to deliver new experiences for customers. Future state journey maps are driven by your brand’s vision for customer experience, focusing on creativity, ideal scenarios, and ideation.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Service map&nbsp;</h3>Service maps focus on what happens behind the scenes in terms of delivery and operations. They combine the scenarios faced by the customer with scenarios affecting your organisation, and are most effective when created by colleagues from different areas of your business.&nbsp;

<h2>What are customer touchpoints?&nbsp;</h2>Put simply, a customer touchpoint is every moment a customer encounters your business. Every interaction they have with your brand is a touchpoint, even if it’s not a physical interaction. You find them at every stage in the customer journey and they can have a significant impact on how customers feel about your business.&nbsp;Examples of touchpoints include a customer scrolling through social media and seeing your posts, receiving a text message to inform them their order is out for delivery, or visiting a physical store. There are endless customer touchpoints and every single one is critical to your business, as they can change impact customer loyalty, sales and lifetime value.&nbsp;<h2>Customer touchpoints and the customer journey&nbsp;</h2>Customer touchpoints can be collated and used to create a touchpoint map. This differs from the customer journey, which looks at how customers transition from one touchpoint to another, and the steps they take to become a paying customer.&nbsp;&nbsp;In most cases, a customer will not experience every single touchpoint – their journey will usually be made up of a select few. Each customer will experience a different customer journey, as they come across varying touchpoints and have different interactions with your brand.&nbsp;<h2>What’s the difference between a customer touchpoint and a channel?&nbsp;</h2>Customer touchpoints and channels are both important elements within a customer journey. A touchpoint is when a customer interacts with your business, for example, watching a product demonstration, completing a website form or booking a table in a restaurant. A channel is the environment in which a customer touchpoint happens. This could include your website, a social media channel, or an advertising leaflet.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>Why are customer touchpoints important?&nbsp;</h2>Customer touchpoints play a crucial role in defining the experience for your customers. Knowing what your touchpoints are can help you improve them and identify areas where you might be missing out on business opportunities.&nbsp;The way that consumers shop and interact with businesses has changed dramatically over the years. For example, 15 years ago the average customer would use just two touchpoints when making a purchase, with just 7% of consumers using over four touchpoints. Today, customers are using an average of 5-6 touchpoints.&nbsp;&nbsp;This increase is largely due to advances in technology, which have provided consumers with more ways to interact with a business. Having effective customer touchpoints can not only improve sales, but it can also boost customer loyalty. Retaining an existing customer is <a href="https://www.huify.com/blog/acquisition-vs-retention-customer-lifetime-value" target="_self">more valuable than acquiring a new one,</a> and touchpoints can help with this.&nbsp;<h2>How to identify customer touchpoints&nbsp;</h2>Your business will have a unique set of customer touchpoints. If you have touchpoints you’re not aware of, you could be missing out on revenue by failing to capitalise on these interactions. Here are some steps you can take to identify your customer touchpoints:&nbsp;<h3>Put yourself in your customers’ shoes</h3>The most effective way to identify your customer touchpoints is to put yourself in their shoes. Ask yourself what you would do if you were looking to solve a problem or needed to make a purchase decision about your products. Put yourself on your customer journey and make a note of every touchpoint you find along the way.&nbsp;Follow this process until you’ve completed a purchase. You can align your thoughts on what customer touchpoints might be for your business with feedback from existing customers. Reviews and surveys can help you to understand consumers’ real-life experiences with your business.&nbsp;<h3>Map your customer journey and customer experience</h3>A customer journey map is essential because it outlines all the touchpoints that a customer could experience while interacting with your business. Take it one step further by creating a customer experience map, which will analyse every aspect of customer experience with your brand and highlight multiple touchpoints.&nbsp;Customer journey and customer experience maps are both useful for identifying customer touchpoints. A journey map is best for focusing on a specific path that a customer might take and the touchpoints they encounter along this path. A customer experience map can help you visualise every customer journey and gain a deeper understanding of how customers interact with your business.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Categorise your touchpoints</h3>Once you’ve identified your customer touchpoints, categorise them so that you can better understand the customer experience. Typically, touchpoints will fall into one of four categories:&nbsp;<ul><li>Products: These include software, hardware and services. Depending on your business, your website might fall into this category because it may be a part of your product or service.</li></ul><ul><li>Interactions: Any customer touchpoint that is a two-way interaction should fall under the interactions category. This could be online (such as live chat), on the phone, or in person.&nbsp;</li><li>Settings: These are places where your products or services might be seen or used by customers, for example, in-store, at an event or on TV.&nbsp;</li><li>Messages: Any one-way communication is a message touchpoint. This could be advertising, product packaging, or any touchpoint where you are communicating with customers, but where they cannot communicate back.</li></ul>

<h3>Customer touchpoint examples&nbsp;</h3>Customer touchpoint examples can provide useful insight into the common touchpoints that most businesses will have. These are some of the most popular customer touchpoints, categorised into pre-purchase, during purchase and post-purchase touchpoints.&nbsp;<h3>Pre-purchase touchpoints&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Online advertising, including display advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) and social media adverts</li></ul><ul><li>Social media channels</li><li>Digital marketing, including blogs, infographics and promotional videos</li><li>Word of mouth, including referrals from friends and family.</li></ul><h3>During purchase touchpoints&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Conversations, including those in-store or at an event</li></ul><ul><li>Product pages</li><li>Reviews, including review platforms and on-page reviews</li><li>Point of sale (POS), including merchandising in-store or speaking with a sales representative</li><li>Ecommerce.</li></ul><h3>Post-purchase touchpoints&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Feedback surveys</li><li>Thank you email, including handwritten notes sent with products</li><li>Cross-selling and upselling, for example, selling a new phone case when a customer buys a new phone</li><li>Loyalty programmes, including exclusive discounts and offers</li><li>Billing, as a negative billing experience could deter customers and result in negative feedback.</li></ul><h2>What is a customer purchase journey?&nbsp;</h2>A customer purchase journey is the path a consumer takes from identifying a problem or need they have through to purchasing from a brand and becoming a loyal customer. There are different versions of the customer purchase journey, which you can visualise as a funnel, but we’ve identified the five stages as:&nbsp;<ul><li>Problem or need</li></ul><ul><li>Search&nbsp;</li></ul><ul><li>Consideration</li></ul><ul><li>Purchase</li></ul><ul><li>Brand loyalty</li></ul>Our <a href="https://www.feefo.com/en/business/resources/reports/the-2019-feefo-consumer-report" target="_self">survey of 2,000 UK shoppers</a> found that businesses must listen, learn and engage consumers at every stage of the customer purchase journey. The infographic below shares the findings of the survey, aligning key statistics with the five different stages to help you understand how consumers think and behave across the purchase journey.&nbsp;

<h3>Customer journey analysis&nbsp;</h3>Whether you use Google Analytics on your website, Facebook Analytics for social media, or track your customer data using another platform, it’s important to analyse your customers’ journeys. If you have multiple sources of website and marketing tracking, you should be able to collate the data to identify:&nbsp;<ul><li>Your customer demographics, including age, gender and interests</li><li>Common customer website journeys</li></ul><ul><li>The best-performing sources of traffic and referrals to your website</li><li>Customer contact volumes.</li></ul>To find out what customers are saying about your brand, look at your customer reviews and use social listening tools to track conversations that involve your brand name. You can also set up short surveys, email follow-ups, or interviews to better understand the journey your customers take with you.&nbsp;

<h3>Top seven customer journey mapping tools&nbsp;</h3>Customer journey mapping tools can help you maximise every touchpoint that a prospective customer has with your brand before buying, helping to improve your conversion volumes and ultimately your bottom line. Here are seven customer journey mapping tools to get you started:&nbsp;<h3>Smaply</h3>One of the top mapping tools is <a href="https://www.smaply.com/" target="_self">Smaply.</a> It offers three tools – journey mapping, persona mapping, and stakeholder mapping – helping you get to grips with the entire customer journey.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Lucidchart</h3><a href="https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/examples/customer-journey-mapping-software" target="_self">Lucidchart</a> is a purpose-built customer mapping tool, used by 99% of Fortune 500 companies. It offers a range of integrations, helping you to import data automatically from your website, social media channels and analytics.&nbsp;<h3>Canvanizer</h3>If you’re looking for a simple, straightforward and free to use tool, <a href="https://canvanizer.com/" target="_self">Canvanizer</a> is a good choice. Choose from a wide range of templates to help with customer feedback, SWOT analyses and social media strategy planning.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>OmniGraffle</h3>Although it’s not purpose-built for journey mapping, <a href="https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle" target="_self">OmniGraffle</a> helps you create diagrams that explain complicated ideas. You’ll need to manually add information from your own data sources, but the tool will simplify your customer journey mapping process.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>PowerPoint</h3>Customer journey maps are usually presented as flow charts or diagrams, which you can create with ease using PowerPoint. The template below is a good example of how simple your customer journey map can be.&nbsp;Credit: <a href="https://pslides.com/templates/customer-journey-map-for-powerpoint/" target="_self">PSlides.com</a><h3>Google Analytics</h3>If you’re new to customer journey mapping, <a href="https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/" target="_self">Google Analytics</a> has information to get you started. For example, it can show you your customer behaviour flow, which explores how people make the most common journeys on your website.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>UXPressia</h3>Finally, <a href="https://uxpressia.com/" target="_self">UXPressia</a> is another purpose-built software solution that uses customer personas and journey maps in tandem to create a storyboard with commentary, quotes, problems and customer experiences at each point in their journey.&nbsp;&nbsp;Collecting customer feedback is a key part of your customer journey mapping process. To find out more about how you can use your customers’ opinions to understand them – and your business – better, <a href="https://www.feefo.com/en/business/contact" target="_self">get in touch</a> with a member of our team.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

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The ultimate guide to customer journey mapping  

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Asking your customers for feedback is the best way to gain insight into what their pain points are and get you the information you need to make significant changes.&nbsp;Customer feedback can take lots of different forms and businesses can collect it in a whole range of different ways. This guide explains why gathering customer feedback can be beneficial to your business and the best ways to collect useful, actionable insights.&nbsp;<h2>The benefits of collecting customer feedback&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2><h3>1. Get to know your clients directly&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Company reviews provide a direct line of communication between your customer and your business. Existing customers can provide objective feedback about your products and services and you will be able to better understand who they are and what their needs are.&nbsp;If a certain group of customers is finding problems and the rest are happy with it, then that gives you more insight into who your target audience is.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>2. Take on your competition with confidence&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>You will have the opportunity to benchmark your services against your competitors and identify ways to do better.&nbsp;&nbsp;Keep an eye on what customers are saying about your competition. If they are complaining about an issue, make sure never to repeat the mistake. If they are praising them, find out how you can offer the same and offer better.&nbsp;<h3>3. Help you identify areas to improve&nbsp;</h3>Embrace negative business reviews and take all criticism on board as part of the learning curve for your business. If there's a recurring grievance trending among multiple reviews, then you need to look at fixing it. If it’s a one-off, then find out more details about what went wrong and try to ensure it doesn't happen again.&nbsp;Never delete a negative review unless it contains something malicious or offensive. Instead, always respond to a negative review with an apology and make a plan with them to resolve the issue. It lets the customer that you care and also highlights to potential clients that you are responsive and you listen to feedback.&nbsp;<h3>4. Build trust and credibility&nbsp;</h3>As a company, it's important to appear as authentic as possible, particularly on the internet.&nbsp;&nbsp;The best endorsement you can get is from existing patrons. Transparency and sincerity are crucial, and word-of-mouth marketing is extremely useful for setting your business apart from the rest.&nbsp;&nbsp;Both good and bad company reviews, but especially the good, tell strangers that your business is real and trustworthy, which helps give other customers the confidence to buy from you.&nbsp;<h3>5. Improve your visibility&nbsp;</h3>Customer reviews provide you with the exposure you need — and more so if you are a new or small company. Each new online review opens the door for more people to have their say and give their opinion about your services, and this increases your chances of getting discovered by more and more new customers.&nbsp;<h3>6. Grow user-generated content (UGC)&nbsp;</h3>A high number of business reviews also help you rank higher on search engines. Customer reviews are a great opportunity to get user-generated content (UGC) that increases your brand’s visibility across the internet and supports your search engine optimization efforts.&nbsp;Google likes robust pages with a lot of content that usually product pages lack so badly. With a substantial amount of reviews on your pages, you can prompt Googlebot to pick up long-tail keywords from UGC that your page can rank for — especially if those reviews include keywords that web users are searching for.&nbsp;<h3>7. Improve your Google Ads quality score&nbsp;</h3>Google says that ads with star ratings get a <a href="https://adwords.googleblog.com/2011/04/5-simple-ways-to-improve-your-adwords.html" target="_self">CTR of 17% higher</a> than those without ratings. Make sure to have at least 100 company reviews live from the last 12 months and encourage your customers to leave their feedback for your business across the web.&nbsp;The more times you're mentioned, the more important Google thinks you are.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>8. Influence future buying decisions&nbsp;</h3><a href="http://learn.podium.com/rs/841-BRM-380/images/2017-SOOR-Infographic.jpg">93% of customers say that online business reviews have a direct impact on their purchasing decisions</a>. Customers can see what it’s like to do business with you, how you make other customers feel, how you compare to the other options they’re considering and what sets you apart.Company reviews act as a viable customer touchpoint in their buying journey. Seeing a plethora of positive reviews helps accelerate their journey to the next step towards a purchase — leading to more conversions for you.&nbsp;

<h3>4. In-app customer feedback collection&nbsp;</h3>In-app customer feedback software can sit inside a range of different apps and products — often hiding away somewhere at the side of the screen, in a bottom corner, or even a pop-up prompt to give some feedback or rate the app after a few minutes of using the product.&nbsp;&nbsp;They’re used to collect customer feedback in real-time, so the customer is using the product as they are being asked how they feel about it.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Benefits of in-app feedback collection:&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>As the product collects customers’ information, the feedback tends to be extremely concise and relevant to their exact point in the customer journey</li><li>Once the mechanism is integrated into your app or software, there’s not much for you to do other than wait for the feedback</li><li>Response rates can be quite high. Since the feedback collection takes place within your product or app, customers can access it whenever they need to, and whilst this usually means they’re reporting a bug or an error, it’s the feedback you need to make things better.</li></ul><h3>Disadvantages of in-app feedback collection:&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Because of the types of questions that are commonly asked, this isn’t the customer feedback method for you if you’re after detailed responses</li><li>As this method is always ‘switched on’ and extremely accessible to your customers, it could easily lead to an influx of responses, some of which may be completely irrelevant</li><li>Depending on how your feedback collection is set up, you might not have enough information to follow up with your customers and delve a little deeper into their responses.</li></ul><h3>5. Feature requests&nbsp;</h3>Feature requests are ideas and suggestions from existing customers about how they think a product could be improved. Not all feature requests are the same — they can be bug reports, ways to improve current features, or completely new ideas.&nbsp;&nbsp;Companies can collect and manage customer requests in various ways, including:&nbsp;<ul><li>Feedback boards</li><li>Idea portals</li><li>Apps, such as Trello</li><li>Specific software dedicated to hosting this type of customer feedback</li></ul><h3>Benefits of feature requests:&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Collecting customer requests help you solve problems, and so long as you’re taking note of what your customers are asking for, you’re ultimately making your product stronger and picking up on issues that could have otherwise gone unnoticed</li><li>Even if you don’t put the customer feedback into action, allowing real users to speak up is a great way of making them feel as though they’re part of your product roadmap</li><li>Feature request boards are great for creating a real sense of community for you and your customers.</li></ul><h3>Disadvantages of feature requests:&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Often the requests and problems are very specific to individual users and may not benefit the majority of your customers</li><li>Unless your customers are actively asked to provide ideas, feature request boards are often underused.</li></ul><h3>6. Social media&nbsp;</h3>Social media is cost-effective and provides genuine insight into customer behaviour, as people are happy to share their opinions socially. <a href="https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-interaction/" target="_self">80% of customers expect companies to interact with them through social media</a> over other marketing channels. Talk to customers where they are most comfortable and they’re more likely to tell you their honest opinion about you.&nbsp;<h3>Benefits of social media:&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Interactive features like polls, quizzes, questions, chat, and rating options on Instagram stories are a great way to engage your audience and obtain feedback</li><li>You can gain customer feedback under the guise of competitions and interactivity by asking for their feedback in exchange for a prize. The more likes, mentions, comments and shares you get, the more people you can ask for feedback</li></ul><ul><li>Comments on social posts can offer you valuable insights into what you’re doing well and where you are lacking</li><li>You can also monitor your competitor’s posts to see what their audience is saying. What is their tone of voice like? Are most of the comments positive or negative? Identify any key issues that you can address, or avoid, from your competitor's feedback.</li></ul><h3>Disadvantages of social media:&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Managing social media accounts will require extra resources to commit to keeping up your brand’s media presence</li></ul><ul><li>Not all feedback will be useful — it’s extremely difficult to moderate social media feedback and you may find that many customer interactions aren’t always constructive.&nbsp;</li></ul>

<h3>7. Live chat&nbsp;</h3>Live chat allows customers to air their grievances, ask questions, resolve issues, and locate what they need as soon as they want and in real-time.&nbsp;Keep transcripts of all interactions with your customers, from live chats to recording sales and customer service calls. Take swift action on resolving any issue, use the transcripts to identify patterns and problem areas you can improve on and, if you can, get back to that customer to tell them you have resolved their issue.&nbsp;<h3>Benefits of live chat:&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Live chat provides direct feedback from your customers in an unbiased way and as it’s all collected online, you will have an archive of transcripts that you can refer back to in the future</li><li>Transcript logs can give you data insights into things like peak hours, average first response time, and chat duration. These figures will give you valuable information about your customers and the quality of your customer service.</li></ul><h3>Disadvantages of live chat:&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Going through large transcripts from hundreds and thousands of customers can be time-consuming.</li></ul>&nbsp;<h2>Top tips for collecting customer feedback&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2>Perfect your timing - Timing is crucial as it can increase, or decrease, your chances of a customer offering their feedback. Asking for feedback once the customer has ordered but before they receive the product, is unlikely to get you any kind of product feedback. Conversely, by sending an email 24 hours after confirmed delivery, you’re far more likely to gain a response from your customers.Personalise your feedback form — Your brand image can often be emotive for customers, so include your recognisable colour palette and logo when asking any questions. Secondly – and, arguably most importantly – personalise the questions to your database. Make your questions widely applicable to all customers or create segments of audience data to make each question more personal and relevant.Make it user-friendly — A user-friendly feedback form will help to reduce your bounce rate and encourage users to complete all the fields. Common pet peeves for feedback forms include:&nbsp;<ul><li>A poor mobile experience</li><li>Compulsory text fields</li><li>Minimum character limits on text fields</li><li>A long survey with lots of questions and multiple pages</li></ul><ul><li>Having to input phone numbers, email addresses or names</li><li>An unclear journey</li><li>A survey that’s not optimised for a customer’s device</li></ul>Ask clear and concise questions — Think about what you need to get out of the customer feedback and try not to get bogged down with questions about every element of their experience with you: prioritise based on what’s truly important. When using rating scales, make it clear what each end of the scale means. Here are a few examples of questions to include in your feedback surveys:<ul><li>How satisfied are you with our product/services?</li></ul><ul><li>Would you buy this product/service from us again?</li></ul><ul><li>How easy did we make it for you to solve your issue?</li></ul><ul><li>Did you find all the information you needed online, or did you need to speak to us?</li></ul><ul><li>Would you still buy our product if it cost more?</li></ul><ul><li>What would you like to see in our future product ranges?</li></ul><ul><li>What would you change about your experience with us if you could?</li></ul><ul><li>How did you hear about us?</li></ul>

Create an incentive for completion — One of the best ways of encouraging customer feedback is by creating an incentive for them to fill out the survey. This can include:<ul><li>Entry into a prize draw</li><li>A discount code for their next purchase</li><li>Money off their next purchase: £5, £10, £20 for example</li><li>Free shipping</li><li>An invitation to an exclusive VIP group</li></ul><ul><li>A free gift</li></ul>Try to discourage neutral ratings — Neutral reviews don’t always give you the best insight into how you can improve, or the specifics of a customer’s experience with you. Use even numbers in rating scales to discourage these: ratings on a scale of 1-10 make 5 a negative (1-5), and 6+ are positive (6-10), while ratings on a scale of 1-9 give 5 as a perfect neutral.Be clear about the expectations before customers start — When you’re inviting customers to get involved, tell them how long it will take and/or how many questions there are. This sets a clear guideline that the customer is almost agreeing to when they click to get started.&nbsp;Demonstrate to the customer that their voice will be heard — Often, customers don’t take the time to give businesses their feedback as they think it’s pointless or no one will respond to their feedback. To show the customer that their feedback is valued:<ul><li>Explain why you’re collecting feedback and how the data will be used</li><li>Allow them to speak to someone</li><li>Create a follow-up process</li><li>Respond to reviews left on your website and third-party websites</li></ul><ul><li>Answer customer comments on social media</li></ul>Use Net Promoter Score (NPS) – NPS is a generic customer feedback metric that helps you measure your level of customer loyalty, quickly resolve issues, and gain an overall view of customer satisfaction. The NPS question is standardised across all businesses, and is as follows: “How likely are you to recommend [business] to a friend, relative or colleague?”This is answered on a scale of 1-10 where the following bands apply:&nbsp;<ul><li>Score 0-6: Detractors. Unhappy customers who are likely to go elsewhere and possibly damage your brand with word-of-mouth</li><li>Score 7-8: Passives. Satisfied customers but could be swayed by the competition. Not necessarily brand loyal</li><li>Score 9-10: Promoters. Loyal customers who will continue to buy from you and refer your brand to others.</li></ul><h2>Start collecting customer feedback today&nbsp;</h2>Obtaining customer feedback should be an ongoing process and a vital part of your marketing strategy. Online review websites are a powerful marketing tool for customers to share what they like and for others — both customers and businesses — to listen.&nbsp;Our team at Feefo are happy to answer any questions you may have and show you how your business can make the best use of your customer reviews. Get in touch with us today to learn more.&nbsp;

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A guide to customer feedback: how to use feedback to better your business

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A Guide to Customer Feedback: How to Use Feedback to Better your Business

Responding to reviews, both positive and negative, can help to strengthen customer relationships, improve retention rates and promote your business to others.However, there is some room for improvement when it comes to businesses responding to customer feedback. <a href="https://www.feefo.com/en/business/resources/reports/navigating-the-negative">Our own research</a> shows that close to half (43%) of consumers feel that companies have been less than effective at dealing with critical reviews.Meeting customer expectations when it comes to responding to feedback isn’t as simple as providing a ‘copy and paste’ reply. Your response puts your brand’s customer service in the spotlight. While a great review provides an opportunity to thank your existing customers and attract new ones, a negative review can offer the chance to turn a potentially damaging situation around.Opening a channel for honest feedback can seem daunting, but dealing with your negative feedback effectively can actually improve your reputation. This guide will help you and your team put together a solid strategy for responding to both positive and negative reviews, so you can provide the best possible customer experience and ensure you’re making the most of your customer feedback.<h2>Positive reviews</h2>Positive review writers are great promoters of your business. These people are likely to use your business again, and they’ll be making sure they tell their friends and family about you, too. By responding to your happy customers, you’re showing appreciation and extending their great experience with you long after they’ve received your product or used your service.<h3>The importance of replying to positive reviews</h3>It’s important to respond to your positive feedback – responding to reviews from happy customers can have a huge impact on both your customer relationships and your brand reputation, turning good experiences into great ones. Here’s how.<ul><li>You’re speaking to your biggest cheerleaders</li></ul>Positive reviewers are likely to be loyal brand advocates, who are more than happy to recommend your business to others. Interactions with these customers will strengthen these valuable relationships and ensure that these advocates speak highly of your business – both online and by word-of-mouth.<ul><li>You have an audience of potential customers</li></ul>All reviews are public – as are your responses. It’s important to show you acknowledge satisfied customers as well as those with an issue, to prove that you’re not just interacting with your customers when there’s a problem being aired publicly.<ul><li>There’s always room for improvement</li></ul>Positive reviews can still contain an opportunity to address an issue, however slight. Opening a direct line of communication with your loyal customers is an excellent way of discovering exactly how your business is doing, down to the minute details.<ul><li>It encourages more feedback</li></ul>Openly acknowledging and appreciating your customers’ reviews can encourage them to leave more feedback in the future, and more feedback means more insight for your business.<h3>How to reply to positive reviews</h3>An effective response to a positive review requires more than a simple ‘thank you’. Keep in mind that this customer has taken the time to say something great about you and your business, so your reply should reflect your appreciation.1. Thank the customerPerhaps the most important part of your response, your reply should open with a genuine thank you to the customer for both using your business and for taking the time to share their feedback. It sounds obvious, but appreciation goes a long way.2. Identify opportunitiesPull out the positives from their review: whether it’s the fantastic service, the quality of a product or the assistance of a member of staff. It shows you’re listening, and not just giving an automated reply.3. Leave a lasting impressionShow you value their review by telling them you’re taking action. Whether replying to say you will relay their comments to the team, or suggesting similar products they might like, this will assure your customer they did something worthwhile by giving you feedback.4. Show your human sideSign off with your name to make the response as personal as possible.

<h3>Positive review response examples</h3>Your responses to positive reviews will, and should, all vary. There’s simply no ‘one size fits all’ response to use when it comes to replying to your feedback, but using a similar format for each of your responses – no matter which member of your team responds, or the usual tone of voice of your company – will ensure that each one of your customers is receiving the best experience you can offer.Here are some examples of effective responses to positive reviews.Example 1:‘Fantastic service, quick delivery. Perfect!’I was really happy with the price, and the delivery arrived the day before the estimate. Ordering was hassle free, and I’ll definitely use you again.“Thank you for your wonderful review. We’re delighted to hear you were happy with your purchase and that it arrived quickly. I’ve passed your comments onto the team, and we look forward to assisting you again in the future. Chris, Customer Service Manager.”Example 2:‘Aside from a website problem, everything else was great’I kept running into an error when booking through the website which was frustrating, but a quick call to Rachel sorted everything out. She was polite, professional and booked my flights in no time – thank you!Thanks for your review, Peter, and highlighting the problem with the website. Our technical team have now resolved the issue – sorry for any inconvenience. We’re delighted that Rachel could help – I’ve passed on your comments to her and the team. We’re looking forward to helping you with your flights in the future. Adrian, Head of Customer Success.”<h2>Making the most of your positive feedback</h2>Every positive review you have from a customer is an opportunity when it comes to your marketing activity. Negative reviews may highlight what areas of your business need some improvement, but positive reviews identify what you should promote. Whether it’s adding a testimonial to a social media post, a page on your website or on a paid ad, using feedback from your own customers is one of the easiest and most effective ways of promoting your business to new customers.<h3>Negative reviews</h3>No business can get it right every time, and sometimes situations beyond your control can result in an unhappy customer. Fortunately, if they have left a review, this is your opportunity to turn the situation around.<h3>The impact of negative reviews on your business</h3>Negative reviews can feel like the ultimate risk to your brand reputation and having them visible on a public platform might seem daunting, especially when potential customers tend to seek them out before committing to a purchase. While customers do sometimes search for bad reviews, it doesn’t mean they’ll be put off by them. <a href="https://www.feefo.com/en/business/resources/reports/navigating-the-negative" target="_self">A third (32%) said that seeing few or no negative reviews would make them delay their purchase</a>, and a further 22% would be suspicious of all reviews about that company.Customers are realistic and know that sometimes, things can go wrong. What makes the difference, though, is how businesses respond to those reviews from dissatisfied customers. <a href="https://www.feefo.com/en/business/resources/reports/navigating-the-negative" target="_self">Almost seven in ten people (69%) are happy to continue their purchase with a brand if they can see that a company has acknowledged a poor review</a>, apologised and offered a solution. Here’s how to do just that.<h3>How to respond to negative reviews</h3>Having a plan in place that outlines the procedure for handling negative feedback is essential. Make sure that all staff are trained to use the relevant process and are prepared to respond in a calm and effective way.1. Accept the review and take actionThe initial reaction to receiving negative feedback is often to remove or ignore, until it’s out of sight. However, there are no hiding places online, and acknowledging your bad reviews shows complete transparency to your customers. Do not remove negative reviews from your site, unless they’re inflammatory or obviously unrelated to your product or service. As we’ve mentioned, if customers believe your reviews are genuine, they’re more likely to trust your brand. Conversely, they’ll be suspicious of businesses that only display positive reviews.Ignoring a customer who has taken the time to leave a negative review or complaint will only make the situation worse. Rather than leaving the review unaddressed and the customer dissatisfied, responding to their feedback could stop the customer from telling other people about their negative experience with you.2. Respond quickly and appropriatelyAddress the review as quickly as possible outside of the review platform. That way, when you come to respond to the review, you can discuss the solution – not the problem. The quicker you contact your customer about their issue, the faster you can respond to their feedback. You also reduce the risk of the customer venting their frustration through other channels, such as social media.The initial review should guide how you respond. Whether formal or informal, make sure you mirror your customer’s tone in your reply.3. Thank them for their feedbackAcknowledge their review by thanking them for leaving it. This shows you appreciate all feedback, whether positive or negative, and take it seriously.4. Identify and empathiseShow you appreciate their concerns by highlighting the issues they have raised. Empathise with their situation and acknowledge their frustration. If they have provided incorrect information, correct them respectfully.Always respect what your customer has to say, and no matter how much you disagree with them, it is important to leave out any feelings of frustration or anger. Be polite towards your customer and try to put yourself in their shoes to understand why they may be feeling that way.5. Take actionIf your business is at fault, apologise. If not, explain what has happened – but do not make excuses. Highlight any attempts to get in contact via phone or email, to demonstrate to other customers the lengths you are taking.6. Leave the right impressionDemonstrate the steps you have taken to resolve the issue, and provide any further action that either you, or the customer, should take.7. Learn and improveAs well as a chance to build customer loyalty, criticism is an opportunity to enhance your offering. Identify what went wrong, why, and make changes to prevent it happening again. Review your handling of the customer, and depending on what you find, either praise your service team or reevaluate your process.

<h3>Negative review response examples</h3>By following these guidelines, you can provide an effective and respectful response to any negative feedback you receive. Here are some examples of how you can put these guidelines into practice, just remember, every response you provide should be completely unique to the situation at hand.Example 1:‘Rubbish. Order never arrived and customer services didn’t care.I was initially impressed by the price and selection, but despite saying the order would arrive in 2-3 days, it never did. Customer services couldn’t trace the order and all I could do was cancel it. Complete waste of time.’I am sorry to hear that your order never arrived, and that our customer care team couldn’t trace it. As discussed on the phone, this was due to a system error that did not alert you to the fact that the item was out of stock. I’m glad we were able to reorder, and I can confirm the problem has been resolved. Please do get in touch with any further questions. Alan, Customer Care.”Example 2:‘Only contains one, and it’s not as big as it looks.The quality of the product is pretty good, but it only comes with one, and it’s not very big. It looks much bigger in the picture. Disappointed.’Thanks for your time on the phone earlier. I’m glad you’re happy with the quality, although appreciate you thought you would get more than one. It does state the size and the quantity on our website, but as mentioned on the call, we will look at making this information more prominent. Please feel free to get in touch if we can help any further. Jane, Customer Services.<h3>Dos and don’ts</h3>As long as you keep these guidelines in mind, you can be sure you’re doing all you can to keep your responses professional, respectful and effective. Here are some other points to keep in mind when you respond to customer feedback:Do<ul><li>Use a standard salutation (Dear, Hi, Hello) and the customer’s name, if they have decided to display it</li><li>Try and keep your answers concise. Include all the details you need, but keep it brief and relevant</li><li>Ask questions if you need to, for example when a complaint is simply ‘not good’, or similar</li><li>Make it a dialogue. Reviews should be a two-way exchange of information, not a one-sided request</li><li>Make reference to any notes on the customer account that are relevant to the situation, demonstrating a unique response to their situation</li><li>When replying to positive comments, use your brand names and keywords where relevant to assist in search results</li><li>If a customer is untruthful, be sure to point out their inconsistency, such as if delivery has been attempted. Remember, other customers are reading</li></ul>Don’t<ul><li>Write a standardised reply to multiple reviews, or use any form of copy and paste text</li><li>Discuss events that have not happened yet, such as saying ‘I will call you shortly’, as opposed to ‘following our call…’</li><li>Say you are passing a complaint to another department or person. Instead, take responsibility</li><li>Fall prey to a personal exchange. Remain polite, professional and do not rise to counterproductive arguments</li><li>Appear overly formal, regardless of your brand. Consider how you would speak to the customer face-to-face</li></ul><h2>How to respond to reviews on Google, Yelp and Facebook</h2>Often, a customer’s first port of call in the decision-making process is a quick search of your online reviews on the most popular platforms. A search for your business name and the term ‘reviews’ won’t just bring up any existing customer feedback, but your responses too. It’s a good idea to make sure your strategy includes reviewing the feedback across these sites regularly, so that you’re keeping on top of what your customers are saying about you across the most visited platforms, Google, Yelp and Facebook.Ensure your team are prepared with the login details for each of your business accounts on these sitesand know exactly how to reply to customer reviews on each, so they can respond to all of your reviews swiftly.<h2>Google Reviews</h2>Google reviews show up in two places: Google Search and Google Maps. To respond to your reviews, sign into your Google Business Profile Manager account (formerly called Google My Business).Once you’re signed in, click the Reviews tab.To respond, click on the ‘Reply’ button below each review. When you submit your response, it will go live immediately, and the customer will be notified that you have responded with an email about five minutes after it has been submitted.<h2>Yelp</h2>To respond to Yelp reviews, you will need to have claimed your business page on Yelp already and be logged into your Yelp for Business Owners page. Once you’ve signed up, just click on the Reviews tab.From here, you will be able to respond to each individual review with a public comment or a direct message, which will be private. Although we would always recommend writing a response to your customer reviews, Yelp does include a feature that allows you to acknowledge the feedback instead via a Thanks button.<h2>Facebook</h2>Facebook reviews appear as an automatic feature on your page once you create your business account. You can respond to these reviews just as you would respond to a Facebook comment, or alternatively you can reply through your Facebook Business Manager account.<h2>How can Feefo help?</h2>To effectively manage and respond to your customer feedback, you need the following in place:<ul><li>A clear strategy and set of guidelines for managing feedback, and for addressing criticism as constructively as possible</li><li>The capacity to engage your reviewers in a two-way dialogue in which you can have conversations with your customers</li><li>A robust review verification process so you know the customer insight you’re acting on is real</li></ul>Feefo’s reviews and analysis platform supports you to treat your customers as individuals. From personalising review requests to responding to feedback directly, you can ask the right questions at the right time, so you can learn more about your customer, your business, and where you can improve.With Feefo, you can be sure that you only ever receive genuine feedback from customers who have actually used your business. We only send review requests to verified customers, so you will never receive, or act on, fake comments about your products or your service.To find out more about how Feefo can help strengthen your customer relationships and improve customer experience across every touchpoint, <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/enquiry/get-in-touch" target="_self">get in touch</a> with our team.