The Island Called Digital Customer Feedback: Is It Still an Island?
It has been a few months since my first blog, “The Island called Digital Customer Feedback”, where I talked about some of the findings and realisations that come up in daily practice. I left you all with the question: will Digital Customer Feedback take a step forward? I had my doubts, but thanks to our latest Benchmark survey, we now have some solid insights.
Fortunately and unfortunately…
Fortunately I was right and unfortunately I was right. Nearly six months ago, I predicted that there wouldn’t be much movement in terms of the growth (to maturity) of Digital Customer Feedback.
With this, I’m referring to the often amateurish setup of online feedback forms and the fact that many digital teams still work in organisational silos: the (drifting) island of Digital CX. In other words, digital teams are not thinking about the rest of the organisation when it comes to measuring, analysing and acting upon (digital) customer feedback. And this is not something the customer bears in mind. The customer sees one company and expects that this one company as a whole is responsible for the entire Customer Experience.
So upon further analysis – by means of our second Digital Customer Experience Benchmark Survey – my previous prediction is supported. Well spotted, but no cause for celebration. And while it’s nice to know my gut feeling hasn’t abandoned me, what does that really do for me? As the Dutch author of Ik heb altijd gelijk (I’m always right), W.F. Hermans says, “If you’re right, you’ve got nothing”.
Things are not always as they seem
It seems so simple – “just put a feedback form together”. But you’d be surprised. Let’s take a look at an example. During an evening workshop a few weeks back, we split up 15 online marketers and web analysts into small groups and asked them to outline a digital feedback program based on a (not too difficult) case study, including coming up with one or more concrete feedback forms.
What was interesting was after a few hours, it was evident that complete business strategies were being linked to one single feedback form. This is fine, of course, but it’s not quite as effective as a short and powerful form with a clear (at least for the website visitor) start and beginning. In any case, there were a lot of insights on what NOT to do, which gave us all a good laugh in the end.
Marketers working vigorously on their digital feedback programs
Lifting a corner of the veil
So what should be covered in ever self-respecting Digital Feedback Program? Well at least these two things:
- A structural understanding of Goal Completion Rate (GCR) – understanding the degree to which your visitor achieved his/her goal is key. A customer who cannot find their way around your website, will not be inclined to visit your website again (truck systems aside).
- The second metric is Customer Effort Score (CES) – a client shouldn’t just be able to reach his/her goal, but they should be able to reach it without too much trouble. If a customer has to make too much of an effort, they will be more likely to drop off your website, which is obviously not good for the position of your brand, especially when it comes to competitors who have a superior website/webshop functionality in terms of user experience.
In practice, these seemingly simple metrics are either not measured properly and not measured at all, resulting in impure data. So you can probably guess what this means for any decisions made within online marketing that are based on this data…
Equally as important, but often neglected is the manner in which a visitor/customer is asked to share his/her feedback. I’m talking about the technology behind the feedback form. Here you see a lot go wrong. This is also because many DIY tools (often offered at lower prices) only offer one-dimensional form solutions that are typically not very useful. What I have seen results in even less attention to the online feedback program, which completes the self-fulfilling prophecy.