Customer feedback is one of your brand’s most valuable assets. It gives you a pulse on consumer trends, it can provide valuable intel on how best to tweak your product range, and it keeps you ahead of the competition.
But first off comes the hard part: getting that feedback from users of your product in the first place. How can a CPG brand secure the type of reviews and opinions it can actually put to work? Here are some essential tips for feedback collection.
Unless they are really angry, customers are not going to actively hunt out ways to leave feedback. You need to make the process easy!
For a grocery retail, this means a simple, obvious ‘leave a review’ button on each product page. The same goes for your standard delivery of order email: if there’s a review button next to the image for each purchased item, it means customers can leave their feedback in a couple of clicks. For brands, it is not always that easy but there are options.
The best thing about surveys is the ability to focus on the specific areas you need feedback from customers on.
For instance, you could ask customers to tick their reason for purchasing from a list of possible answers, ask them to confirm what they liked and didn’t like about it, or even ask them to confirm what they prefer about your product compared to competitors’ offerings.
To maximize responses, keep the survey short (one or five questions). It’s also a good idea to follow up with a survey while the experience of purchasing your product is still fresh in their minds, which means right after they have received it or within a week. For a brand that does of course require knowing who they are. With our reviews program, this is simple as we have store receipts for every purchase.
Loyalty points, coupons, money off their next purchase: these can all help to spur customers into leaving feedback.
You might not regard Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as your primary feedback platforms, but customers may have other ideas. Make sure your social media team has the ability to pick up comments relating to specific products.
Also, don’t pass up the opportunity to engage with comments to open up the conversation. As an example, let’s say someone leaves a comment below a Facebook post “This is delicious”. As a response, you might want to ask them what prompted them to try it in the first place, or whether they prefer it to another named product.
Beyond your brand pages, it’s also useful to know what customers are saying about your products to each other. Tools such as Mention allow you to monitor your brand across the whole web and listen to your audience.