Customer Feedback: All Types and Tools for Gathering Great Insights
Gathering customer feedback is essential for businesses. It helps them figure out what they're doing well and what they need to work on. When businesses listen to their customer base, it helps build a strong relationship between them.
We're sure you want to bring your users the best customer experience you can provide, otherwise, it could mean losing a lot of customers.
In fact, just one bad review could make your business lose up to 22% of your potential customers, and four bad reviews could make 70% of potential customers decide not to do business with you, according to Moz.
Heavy stats isn't it?
That's why it's so important for businesses to pay attention to what their customers are saying.
Of course, implementing changes based on customer feedback can be a challenge, but the insights gained from this process are priceless!
There exist some feedback tools in the market. Trackey allows you to collect feedback from your users in real time through perfectly tailored surveys.
These surveys allow your business to know what are the real needs of your users and achieve product market fit like never before!
Let's delve into the concept of customer feedback, examining its various forms and how Trackey can assist in obtaining a comprehensive overview.
The importance of customer feedback for your SaaS product
The importance of customer feedback to your SaaS lies in the fact that loyal customers are what boost a business faster than sales or marketing.
If you never ask for customer feedback, you'll never understand what drives customer satisfaction, and if you don't know what drives satisfied customers, it will be impossible to create customer loyalty.
Let's take a look at some facts on the importance of collecting feedback:
- Consumers are 2.6x more likely to purchase more from a company after a 5-star experience according to Qualtrics.
- A good customer service experience heavily impacts positive recommendations for 94% of consumers.
- Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by between 25% and 95%
The correct customer feedback strategy helps your SaaS understand what you're doing right, and what you're doing wrong, and it is your best copy to use.
Use your customer's words and opinions to fuel your homepage or landing page copywriting, as it can best connect with what other customers may be looking for.
Customer feedback also makes for great content marketing, and you can repurpose it for blog posts, Q\&As, and even knowledge base articles. It all starts with gathering customer feedback, and before we talk about how to do that, let's unpack some types of customer feedback.
Types of customer feedback
There are two main categories of customer feedback: explicit and implicit.
Implicit feedback is collected through analytics or session recordings and is indirect.
Explicit feedback is collected through direct questioning of users, but may not always be accurate, so it's important when and how you deliver your survey questions.
To fully understand users, both types of feedback should be collected and analyzed with the right tool.
The different types of feedback in these categories include:
Implicit feedback 101:
Implicit feedback refers to the information or signals that are indirectly and passively provided by users while interacting with the software, without explicitly expressing their preferences or opinions.
Unlike explicit feedback, this is derived from user actions, behaviors, or usage patterns.
Can be collected and analyzed to gain insights into user preferences, satisfaction levels, and engagement with the SaaS product.
It helps software providers understand how users interact with their products, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance user experience.
Let's see some examples!
Usage Patterns:
Monitoring user activities such as the frequency and duration of logins, feature usage, or click-through rates can indicate the level of engagement and interest in specific product functionalities.
Churn risk:
It is crucial to identify users who are likely to leave. Acquiring a new user costs five times more than retaining an existing one, so it is essential to analyze the behavior of users who are at risk of churning and determine the possible reasons.
Trackey offers an overview to keep track of when and where users are most likely to leave.
If you want to learn the fundamentals of churn and how to improve your SaaS performance on churn rates, we suggest you read this fantastic article!
Time Spent:
Tracking the time users spend on different pages or sections of the SaaS product can indicate the areas that capture their attention or those that might need improvement. This will show how your SaaS is performing on user stickiness.
The user stickiness ratio is calculated by dividing the daily active users (DAU) by the monthly active users (MAU). This ratio indicates the percentage of users who have been active in the last 30 days and are active again on the day of the test.
A user stickiness ratio of 100% means that all users are using the product or service daily, but this is unlikely to occur. Calculating it can be time-consuming, so Trackey will do it automatically for you.
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Generally for SaaS businesses, 15%-30% user stickiness is desirable.
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Error Rates:
Monitoring the occurrence and frequency of error messages or user-reported issues can highlight areas of the software that need bug fixes or usability improvements.
It is highly likely that your product will experience churn if it has a lot of bugs, as customers cannot benefit from it if it does not work properly. This can range from minor UI glitches to the entire site being offline.
To address a bug report, the first step is to confirm the issue by asking about the user's experience and attempting to replicate it.
Make sure to focus on fixing bugs that are impacting your most important customers or the ones who are likely to upgrade to your paid plan.
It's not uncommon to have a few users who are extra particular and tend to find and report many of your bugs. Try to build a good relationship with them and show them that your team is responsive.
Social Signals:
Analyzing social media interactions within the software, such as sharing or collaboration activities, can reveal the value users derive from collaborative features and their overall satisfaction.
It's really important to keep an eye on what people are saying about your product on social media so you can either check it manually or set up notifications that tell you when your brand is mentioned.
This kind of feedback is super helpful because it lets you know what customers like and don't like about your product. Plus, it gives you a chance to address any issues and create valuable feedback loops.
Explicit feedback 101:
We are sure you've been told about Net Promoter Score before. That is just one of the customer feedback surveys that your business can use to gather insights and improve customer service.
Explicit feedback is an incredibly valuable tool that allows users to directly and intentionally communicate their opinions, preferences, and satisfaction levels regarding the software.
It involves users taking explicit actions to convey their feedback or evaluations of the product, making it an essential aspect of software development.
Customer loyalty metrics
These are used to determine how loyal customers are to a brand and how likely they are to promote it. Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback surveys are the most common way to ask your audience directly, but there are also other key metrics for monitoring feedback analysis.
Retention Rate:
This metric measures the percentage of customers who continue to do business with a company over a specific period. It is calculated by dividing the number of customers at the end of a period by the number of customers at the start of the period and multiplying by 100.
A high retention rate indicates strong loyalty from your customer base, which helps improve customer churn rates.
Customer Satisfaction Score
Examines how satisfied customers are with a brand's products, services, and other interactions. This feedback looks at both functional and emotional metrics and can be collected through comment boxes, pop-up forms, and post-purchase forms. Some of the most common ways to gather customer satisfaction feedback are Customer Effort Score (CES) and CSAT.
Sales Customer Feedback for Product Improvement
This allows customers to share their experience with a brand's sales team and sales process. This feedback is critical to improving sales reps, training, and leadership and can be collected through direct, post-purchase phone, or email surveys, as well as through follow-up with prospects who didn't close.
Customer service or support feedback
By collecting customer feedback you will examine the customer experience with a service or support rep. This product feedback helps to improve the customer service and support experience and can also provide unique insights for teams regarding design, functionality, and use cases.
You can collect customer feedback through phone or email surveys following customer support tickets.
Customer preference feedback
This tells a brand what products or services their customers prefer, including those of competitors. This information is helpful in understanding how to better position products and better target customers.
Some of the best ways to collect customer feedback are by browsing online forums, holding focus groups, and monitoring purchase activity and trends.
Demographic information
With the right feedback tools you can track insights such as geographical location, which can be important for improving sales and customer experience, as well as how products are positioned and advertised.
Demographic information may include location, gender, education level, marital status, and more.
Collecting customer feedback related to this will be easy if you use website pop-up forms and post-purchase or post-service surveys like Trackey's ones.
The customer feedback loop
The 'loop' is an exciting and dynamic process that involves gathering feedback, taking action based on what you've learned, and then seeking feedback once again.
This journey is circular, leading to continuous improvement that never truly ends.
Feedback loops are crucial in understanding how customers perceive your business. Without them, you would be flying blind, making decisions based on guesswork and assumptions.
This process should be ongoing, as there is always room for improvement. To ensure that you are continuously improving, it is important to ask for feedback again and again.
We've written an article about the best loops for your SaaS before! Check it out here!
Negative customer feedback and how to deal with it
Gathering negative customer feedback can be tough, but it's actually a fantastic opportunity to grow and improve your product, customer service, and marketing.
Don't take it personally!
This is especially true for SaaS companies, as handling negative feedback the right way can lead to major growth and customer acquisition.
The best companies understand that negative feedback is an opportunity to learn. They take the time to listen to customer complaints and identify areas of improvement. They also use negative feedback as a chance to build relationships with customers, responding quickly and with empathy.
This helps create an environment of trust and loyalty, setting them up for success in the long run.
Customer feedback tools for your SaaS
Introducing Trackey - the real-time survey tool designed specifically for data-driven startups looking to capture accurate and actionable user feedback.
Obtaining accurate customer data is essential for the success of any online business. However, traditional user analytics tools often fail to provide insights into users' thoughts, while enrichment APIs only offer basic demographic data with low hit rates.
Long-form surveys and chatbots have low response rates and can result in low-quality data if the wrong questions are asked at the wrong time.
Trackey provides micro surveys that capture customer data while providing a great user experience. With Trackey, you can easily analyze user feedback, correlate it with other data sources, and gain new insights to make informed decisions.
Integrations allow you to turn survey responses into real-time actions, such as enriching CRM records, triggering personalized campaigns, and alerting sales and customer success teams.
Isn't it so cool? Check it starting your free trial now!