There are a plethora of websites gathering reviews about your business, and since they don’t need your permission to do so, it’ll be happening without you knowing. A good way to find out where your customers are sharing their thoughts about you is to search online for your business name, as review sites tend to rank high. For example, “[your business name] reviews”.
Some people prefer sharing their thoughts this way as opposed to giving in-person feedback, as it’s less confrontational and they’ll feel more comfortable sharing negative feedback and constructive criticism. Direct surveys generally have a good response rate too — Yonder customers typically experience 34-45%
of customers sharing feedback through them.
Another type of direct feedback that is sometimes forgotten is verbal feedback, often given to places with a reception desk or checkout counter. It can be heard
by staff either face to face, by phone or email. This is often where the gold is, but since it’s not in a structured format, and it needs to manually be recorded or noted down somewhere, it’s easily missed or forgotten. A manager of a holiday park was describing the situation of complaints about wifi given to staff at the front desk. However, they struggled to recollect how complaints they’d received, or maybe their memory was skewed by one particularly disgruntled customer. Therefore, capturing this feedback can be a significant way to complete your picture of overall feedback and business performance.
We know some businesses using alternative methods to gather feedback, in part due to client preferences but also because they’ve been in a situation that’s allowed them to get insights and information from their customers
→ Paper forms.
→ Tablets/stations.
→ Staff placed around a location to survey customers during service or experience.
