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Go beyond the one-question survey with these unique methods to understand customer satisfaction.

• Multiple customer feedback methods give businesses more insight and context
• 5 unique ways to collect feedback:

1. 1. Polls
   2. Live chat
   3. Social media
   4. Website forms
   5. Direct outreach

Surveys are one of the most effective ways to gather customer feedback, whether through an extensive questionnaire or just one revealing question. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) and other one-question survey strategies give companies a good look into how customers perceive their brand and can feed overall metrics like the customer satisfaction score (CSAT). 

There are many other ways to collect customer feedback on top of the traditional survey. Using these other methods in conjunction with your surveys will give you a holistic picture of customer satisfaction at a given time with a greater insight into the person behind the metric.

Here is why differentiating customer feedback methods is so effective and five unique approaches you can implement now.

Why use more than one feedback method?

There is no denying that customer surveys are effective, especially when they only have to answer one question that sums up their experience. However, these surveys don’t always give your business the context you need to fully understand the positives and negatives.

By asking customers to rate their experience on a scale from 1 to 10, you get that CSAT metric, which puts things in perspective on a big-picture level of overall customer satisfaction. But it doesn’t give you much insight into what each individual customer is feeling and thinking, or what led to the score they gave. 

Thus, it’s important to implement additional feedback-gathering tactics that help you dig deeper into the “why” behind the rating — pairing the customer’s emotion with a specific interaction or negative experience with a product or service.

How do you collect feedback in new ways? Let’s walk through five creative ideas to broaden your approach and insight.

1. Polls

Polls engage audiences quickly and can be fun and exciting. You can post a poll on social media, send it in a marketing email, or post it on your website, and it takes audiences a second to select their choice. You can set up polls for any topic related to your products or industry, just make sure the question will help you understand your customers better and provide data to make better decisions about marketing or customer service.

Polls are great tools for identifying consumer priorities and trends, which can change in an instant. Be sure your poll is clear and concise with short answers for customers to choose from.

2. Live chat

More and more brands have adopted live chat support on their websites. This feature gives visitors and customers instant answers to their questions. It can also be an effective way to gather more customer feedback. 

Website visitors may use the live chat feature to get help, ask a question, or provide details about a negative experience they had with your business. These chat transcripts can be saved and analyzed later by the team to help understand the most common questions your customers have and what causes their grievances.

3. Social media

Social media has opened up completely new avenues to interact with audiences. You can share news with your supporters instantly and promote content related to their interests. Social media platforms are also great networking opportunities for brands, and you can keep tabs on what competitors are doing. 

In regards to feedback, social media does a lot of the work for you. While you post questions and polls and respond to customer comments directly, you can also step back and simply observe the behaviors of your customers. What are they liking and commenting on? Which kinds of content most engage them?

You can also ask customers to leave reviews on Facebook and follow up with anyone who expresses dissatisfaction. Followers also can send you direct messages, which is a great way to gather feedback and interact with them directly.

4. Website forms

Use your website to its fullest by including a feedback form on important pages. Visitors can comment on things like website functionality, available information, whether they found what they were looking for, and other issues they may become frustrated with. This is a great option to gather feedback about minor negative experiences that may add up for your customers. 

These are issues that they wouldn’t go out of their way to talk to you about necessarily, but creating a space right on the page to give feedback helps you keep improving. It also helps them feel like they’re being heard and that what they think matters to you.

The easier you can make your feedback options, the better. A simple form at the bottom of a website page is the perfect way to let customers send you a quick note as they’re going through an experience in real-time.

5. Direct outreach

Reaching out directly to customers via email or telephone can be a much more personal, effective way to gather feedback — as long as it is used at the right time. Consumers probably don’t want to be contacted by you completely out of the blue. However, if they have completed a one-question survey after making a purchase, and they rated their experience pretty low, it could be the perfect opportunity to follow up and ask what went wrong.

You could include an optional field after the survey question where they can provide their email or phone number if they’d like to participate in a follow-up conversation. If they take this step, you can feel even more confident that they want you to contact them. 

If you haven’t heard from a past customer in a while, reaching out with a personal phone call or email can be a great way to keep your brand on their mind and check in on what their current preferences are. Always make sure these interactions are genuine. They will be very direct and personal, so you never want to come off salesy or insincere. 

Collect better customer feedback with Crewhu

When you need a new approach to customer feedback collection, the Crewhu platform has you covered. Our one-click survey is linked to your team’s news feed in the Crewhu café, so everyone can see it, and the employee responsible for the great rating can be rewarded. 

Crewhu also gives you the tools necessary to recognize and reward employees in engaging ways that help you meet goals and measure performance. 

Download our NPS Framework and Starter Kit today to learn how the NPS survey program can improve your business.