Including Customer Voice in Your Data
Truly understanding your customer is the key to reaching your business goals. It’s a simple equation, by knowing what your customer wants, you can deliver more value, increase loyalty, and acquire more customers.
In digital, user data is a key source of customer understanding, but clicks, opens and conversions only tell marketers so much. The rest of the story comes from the voice of the customer.
In digital, user data is a key source of customer understanding, but clicks, opens and conversions only tell marketers so much. The rest of the story comes from the voice of the customer.
So how can add you add this essential voice to the data your using in your marketing strategy?
As with all things digital marketing, there’s always a way. So, let’s take a closer look at how you can gather customer voice, and how to gather customer feedback directly from your website into Google Analytics reporting.
Data, Data Everywhere...
User data is a wonderful gift for marketers and we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of it per day (Marr, 2018). It helps brands understand what customers do on their websites, where those customers come from, and what content they like. The next piece of the puzzle is going beyond data, like visits and conversions, and hearing directly from your customers about what’s important to them.
Think about it. A single statement from a customer could tell you that a form’s instructions aren’t clear. Plain as day, no analysis needed. Now, combine that direct customer feedback together with more intricate insights, like how long it takes for customers to complete that same form, and you’ve got a great formula for validating the need to revise that form and improve your customer experience.
For example, fast food giant McDonalds used the voice of the customer to make a menu change. In 2015 the chain launched an all-day breakfast menu. Where did that idea come from? Customers asked for it. For years, people that showed up just after McDonalds’ breakfast hours faced a rejection when requesting a breakfast sandwich. But through a voice of customer survey process, McDonalds learned that the need was real and the time had come to make it so. The results? The quarter the program launched earned McDonalds a 5.7% jump in same-store sales in the U.S. (Pemberton, 2017)
Methods for Gathering Customer Voice
The benefits of listening to the customer voice are many, and so too are the sources of that voice. McDonald’s menu update came from customer surveys, but that’s just one of the ways a company can learn about what their customers want. Hubspot pulled together a comprehensive listof 12 different sources for gathering this feedback. They include:
1. Customer Interviews
2. On-Site Customer Surveys
3. Live Chat
4. Social Media
5. Website Behavior
6. Recorded Data
7. Online Reviews
8. Off-site Surveys
9. Net Promoter Score®
10.Focus Groups
11.Emails
12.Dedicated Feedback Form (Sharma)
Resources like customer interviews, live chat, and social media monitoring (Sharma, 2018) all provide great listening posts. These sources can tell you why customers need you, how to help them, what they’re looking for, and their interests and behavior patterns (Sharma). Voice of customer information can also be used to improve your customers’ satisfaction with the various touchpoints in their journey, better understand why they reached out to customer service, and the chances that they’ll recommend you to a friend (Pemberton). You can also assess your brand’s reputation, improve retention and loyalty, and gain insight into the market and competitive landscape, so you can take advantage of trends and buying preferences (Pemberton).
On-site Surveys
Let’s focus in on one voice gathering approach you can use: Hearing directly from your customers with on-site surveys. This method of gathering feedback can help you understand if your customers are getting what they’re coming for when they use your website. What’s essential is that these surveys aren’t intrusive and have carefully crafted questions (Sharma).
First, let’s get something out of the way. When customers come to your site, they’re there to browse around or complete some of kind of action, like make a purchase or research your brand/products. They did not come to your site to complete a survey
So, if you want your on-site surveys to earn customer responses, you’ll need to think through your questions carefully. Start with thinking through what questions you want to ask users, how many questions a user will be asked at a time, and how you’ll serve the survey (pop up or permanent button or both). Then follow these tips from Constant Contact for creating your questions:
1. Keep your questions simple – Make it crystal clear what you’re asking about, Did you find what you’re looking for?
2. Use words with clear meanings – Avoid vague terms like mostor many, use a majority ofor almost all.
3. Limit the number of ranking options – Keep the list short and try to rank no more than six items
4. Don’t overlap options in multiple choice questions – Like “18-25, 25-34,..”etc.
5. Don’t ask double barreled questions – This is actually asking two questions in one, like “Do you like stay at hotels with a pool and a beach?”
6. Give respondents an opt out for questions that don’t apply – Use this for when it’s unclear if a person has had this experience
7. Avoid offering too many options – long lists are not fun, so much like tip #3, keep it short
8. Make recall easy – ask people about recent experiences, ideally you’ll be asking them about the experience they just had on the site
9. Keep the survey short – one question is great, five is the maximum (Charest, n.d.)
There are several applications that you can use to create on-site surveys. The king of this game is Survey Monkey, but for purposes of this article, I’ll focus on applications that are Google Analytics Partners. These tools all integrate with GA so you can integrate your survey results and site user data.
Allows site administrators to use pre-created and custom surveys, and also offers a feedback forum. The feedback forum has voting capabilities so you can see which recommendations are most desired by users. This application is free, but a premium, paid version is available.
Provides preformatted surveys that you can place on a website, customization is also available. The tool has advanced features like exit intent triggers and audience targeting and also integrates with GA. Cost is free with upgrades available as a business scales up.
Survey tool that offers templates and GA integration. The Foresee tool can also offers features that replay user sessions. A paid product that offers access to other tools beside surveys.
Provides surveys to capture user feedback across multiple channels, like websites, social media, and contact centers. The tool also integrates survey data with web analytics and session recordings. This is a pay-only tool but the feature set is robust and highly customizable.
A Final Thought
User feedback is a critical component in the choices you make for your business. When done correctly, it can give you a faster path to satisfaction, a well-managed brand, and a clear understanding of both the customer and competition. The path to that understanding comes from well-constructed surveys that aren’t intrusive. When joined together with your web analytics data, customer feedback helps you construct a clear picture of what your customers want so you can deliver value that builds loyalty and grows your business.
References
Charest, D. (n.d.). How to write good survey questions. Constant Contact. Retrieved on November 5, 2018 from https://blogs.constantcontact.com/how-to-write-survey/#
Marr, B. (2018, May 21) How much data do we create every day? The mind-blowing stats everyone should read. Forbes. Retrieved on November 4, 2018 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#407ff12360ba
Pemberton, C. (2017, February 27). Use Voice of Customer Data to Improve Customer Experience Analytics. Gartner. Retrieved on November 4, 2018 from https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/use-voice-of-customer-data-to-improve-customer-experience-analytics/
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