Customer feedback management services

Customer feedback management (CFM) online services are web applications that allow businesses to manage user suggestions and complaints in a structured fashion.

Methodology

There are different approaches, or methodologies to feedback management used by various services on the internet. The methodology behind each service has an important impact on the nature of the service itself, and is the main differentiator between them. Here are the main feedback management methodologies:

Feedback analytics

Feedback analytics services use customer generated feedback data to measure customer experience and improve customer satisfaction. Feedback data is collected, then, using key performance indicators and feedback metrics, turned into actionable information for website improvement. Feedback analytics services provide website owners with the ability to create feedback forms that can be customized to fit the website and placed on all pages. This allows the website’s users to submit feedback when they encounter a problem, have a feature request etc. A feedback button is visible at all times on each of the site’s pages. Feedback analytics provide a page level and website level actionable data, and enable a website owner to read and manage feedback, as well as to get back to the users. The feedback is only made accessible to the website owner. This means that websites using feedback analytics are not exposed to the potential harm to their brand that feedback made public may cause. Feedback collection can be either passive – using a feedback button, or active – using a feedback form set to appear in certain conditions, or both. The ability to choose the location of the button, as well as the frequency and conditions of the pop-up make feedback analytics a relatively non-intrusive approach from the website user’s point of view. Due to its measurable nature, feedback analytics data can be integrated with Web Analytics data, this allowing website owners to understand what their users are doing on their site (using web-analytics) and why they do it (using feedback analytics), in one single interface.

Surveys and polls

Surveys and polls provide websites with a high level understanding of user behavior on their site. By asking users a set of pre-defined questions using a pop-up questionnaire (sometimes criticized by website users for being an annoyance), surveys can provide a statistical review of their answers. Surveys and polls are also characterized by their focus on the “site-level”, providing answers about the users’ experience on the site as a whole and the website’s general performance. With answer to questions such as “Where did you hear about our site”, “What are you looking for” or “How old are you”, website owners are able to get a high-level understanding of their site’s users, though not to find and fix specific issues at the page-level. Since survey data is statistical, it is a methodology that works best for large websites with significant traffic, meaning that not all lines of businesses can benefit equally from it.

User management

User management systems allow website users to suggest ideas, report problems, vote for other users’ ideas and have them made publicly available to all. Resembling a live forum, and displaying open discussions between users, user management systems are very helpful to reduce support efforts, allowing users to share their common knowledge, and know when a problem or a solution has been reported previously. The user management approach may also be useful for businesses looking to have their users to publicly vote for their next development steps. The fact that discussion are posted publicly make this solution more vulnerable to problems such as brand damage, when, for instance, users’ complaints are displayed on a regular basis.

See also

• Enterprise feedback management
• Interactive customer evaluation
• Customer experience

References