Continuously collecting customer feedback, which solution is best to use?

At the same time, years of research by Blauw among organizations in the Netherlands have shown that the value of feedback is far from always being put to good use: the majority of organizations in the Netherlands do not get any further than the maturity phase "Analyze.

High time to go back to basics for a moment: retrieving customer feedback. Which customer feedback method produces the most valuable response? And how do you get steering information in a smart way to continuously improve the customer experience? We list four options.

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1. The fastest customer feedback tool: online reviews

Facebook has it, Google has it, Bol.com and Coolblue have it ... an online review facility that allows you to indicate in up to five stars how you rate an organization, product or service.

This way of collecting customer feedback can be of great help to organizations to improve the online image and conversion of products or services. But online reviews are not the way to get a handle on the overall customer experience. A nuanced picture is often missing here, because there is a high risk that only the extremely satisfied and dissatisfied customers (via open review platforms) fill in a star rating.

In addition, unfortunately it still happens that organizations only ask for a good review or only publish the positive reviews. This is of course very damaging to customers' trust in online reviews and their willingness to fill out such reviews themselves.

2. The standard way: an online questionnaire by e-mail

One tool that offers the organization a more complete picture of the customer experience is the also very popular online questionnaire with invitation by mail. This has been the standard way of collecting feedback for many organizations for years. You know them, those emails with subject lines like:

• Give your opinion on the services provided by X
• How did you like your visit to X?
• Help wanted! Your experience is important to us.

Online questionnaires give you the opportunity to gather more in-depth and complete customer insight than star ratings do. However, customers are less and less willing to participate these types of questionnaires. Fortunately, there are solutions to this that maximize response rates:

• Take a personal approach in the invitation email: by mentioning your client's name you create trust.
• Keep your email short and ask your first question directly in the email. Provide an inviting question that customers are quick and happy to answer.
• Create a short and relevant questionnaire. Your customers' time is precious. Ideally, completion time should be no more than 2 minutes, which amounts to about five questions. Do you want to ask more questions? Then test well in advance with customers how relevant these questions are to them.
• And most important for a good response: in the invitation e-mail, state what you have done with customer feedback before. For example, say, "Over the past year, based on our customers' feedback, we have changed X and X in our services." This motivates customers to continue giving their opinions as well.

3. The oldskool approach: the telephone questionnaire for business audiences

Finally, the last "tool. Okay, it may sound a tad old-fashioned to pick up the phone and call customers to participate in a survey. Still, in addition to all the online tools, the telephone survey is a very valuable way to gather customer feedback. Especially when it comes to B2B customer feedback (difficult online business audiences), this method shows good results. Go figure, if an organization mails 400 business customers and asks them online for their opinions, chances are that the amount of feedback will be disappointing.

Business customers are often busy and hard to reach er mail, but have a relatively high customer value. By calling and having trained interviewers ask the right questions, a telephone interview will ensure a higher response rate that is substantially higher than online. Moreover, it does justice to the business relationship you have built. Your customer appreciates the fact that your organization takes the time to ask him/her their opinion. This method of telephone research gives your organization useful insights to improve yourself and strengthens the customer relationship as an extra contact moment.

4. Totally contemporary: conversational feedback in the moment

If you would like to measure your customer feedback ín the moment and be even more in conversation with customers, a suitable method is 'conversational feedback'. Instead of a standard review form or questionnaire, there is a short chat conversation with the customer. The conversational method features a chat interface where it feels to customers like they are talking to someone. The questions are designed so that customers can hardly resist answering them. It is a very approachable way to collect customer feedback and it produces a lot of valuable response.

The conversational questionnaire:

• Helps you gather feedback with conversations in a conversational interface;
• Asks 1-for-1 questions to the customer, your customer's answer determines what the next question will be;
• Generates a higher response rate;
• Ensures fewer dropouts while completing the questionnaire;
• Delivers you quality feedback;
• Can be used for all channels: in apps, mobile and on your website.

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Which customer feedback solution will you go for?

We are happy to help you make the right choice for collecting customer feedback for your organization. There is always a suitable solution within Blauw's Voice of the Customer program. It gives you real-time insight into the development of the customer experience and makes your organization step by step more customer-driven.

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