The process of capturing customer feedback is an essential part of most modern companies. It's something that regardless of field or industry, brands always seem to have in common. So, considering customer satisfaction is such a key aspect, it’s strange that it so often seems to be something that is largely ignored. Customer feedback is kind of the extended family member, the 6th cousin twice removed of the professional world.
It’s there because it has to be – companies have to be seen to be listening to their customers, but it often seems undervalued, and almost always seems irrelevant to the style of the brand.
Short on time? Grab our eBook: How to Put the Fun Back into Customer Feedback...
Changing the way you think about Customer Feedback...
Companies work hard to ensure that their marketing teams come up with creative and engaging concepts and ideas to promote their products and services, but all too often feel as though this needn’t be the case for customer feedback. Why shouldn’t we be seeing feedback as a creative element? Marketing departments aim to encourage and grab the attention of potential customers, and customer feedback aims to do the same with current customers.
Surely they should be using much of the same tactics?
It is as a result of this lack of cohesion that all too often the Voice of the Brand is lost in a company’s standard Voice of the Customer programme. Everything from style to language and even channels of communication that define the way a company usually markets and sells themselves (the things that absolutely define them) are no longer present when they start asking about customer feedback.
A young and dynamic company with a colloquial customer communcation style and regular text alerts suddenly asking consumers to fill out a lengthy paper survey just seems strange – because it is.
This idea of bringing your brand into your feedback requests opens up a much bigger question: is your Voice of the Customer aligned with your Voice of the Brand?
In terms of getting creative, here's an example of how this could work. Consider the subject lines on feedback request emails, usually they follow a similar format such as "We'd love to know your thoughts" or "Your feedback is important to us". Whilst this is straight to the point, it doesn't grab your attention and is likely to be lost within the recipient's inbox. Instead, start thinking about how you can start to introduce personalisation into the email subject line, use elements of your brand so that the subject line is specific to your brand and helps to establish a dialogue.
Feedback can be fun, it can be dynamic and it can incorporate every aspect of your brand into it. It’s yet another way to sell yourself and demonstrate your company ethos, so why let it pass you by? Modern companies deal with modern customers, and modern customers use digital channels every single day.
So why aren’t your feedback channels allowing for this? Will I fill out a three page survey or will I simply take a picture of my experience and send it straight to you? It’s not rocket science, but it’s all too often neglected by companies.
The type of communication a company builds with their customers when requesting feedback can be as imaginative, thought provoking and creative as any other aspect. Lets bring feedback back in the frame, it’s a great opportunity to really showcase a company’s creative potential, all while demonstrating just how important customer feedback is to you as a brand.
The feedback of yesterday was the black sheep, but the feedback of tomorrow can most certainly be the Godfather.
Now you know about the importance of creative customer feedback, what else can you learn?
