What is Customer Feedback Management (CFM)?

As businesses take on new challenges in the marketplace and face off against staunch competition, the importance of choosing their strategies wisely becomes more obvious. Missteps that alienate customers or otherwise displease them can contribute to a company losing valuable market share, expending excessive capital on plans that do not pan out and watching profits plummet. That’s why customer feedback management is vital.

Gleaning invaluable information directly from the people your business serves can help you to avoid such pitfalls while driving lasting change within your organization. However, the process of soliciting feedback from consumers, analyzing their answers and creating strategies that align with their needs can prove to be complicated without proper tooling and clear protocols. Simplifying this very process is precisely what Customer Feedback Management (CFM) is all about.

For additional information on Customer Feedback Management, download our white paper, 6 Ways Customer Engagement Analytics Can Go Beyond the Survey

What Customer Feedback Management Means

Customer feedback management is the increasingly technical process of sourcing feedback from customers and using it to inform your business decisions.

Tools devised to assist in managing customer feedback provide functionality to simplify surveying customers and condensing their thoughts into actionable insights.

CFM Tools Automate the Feedback Management Process

The Customer Feedback Management process centers on four cyclical steps. These are as follows:

Asking

Customers are asked specific questions relating to a given product or service in this step. The answers your customers provide should be stored carefully and securely to ensure they can be parsed and analyzed relatively quickly in the next step.

It is important to pay special attention to the types of questions you present your customers with at this stage; avoid leading questions (questions that imply a preferred answer) as well as irrelevant questions for better, more honest answers.

Analyzing

Once captured, your customers’ thoughts and opinions are assessed and categorized. This step yields actionable information derived directly from the answers your customers have given you.

Depending on the tools you have chosen to use, this step may involve generating a detailed report or simply tallying up percentages.

Acting

Taking action serves as the logical next step after discovering what would best benefit your customers and your company alike.

Information derived from the previous step should be distributed among relevant internal teams and deliberated on. Tweaks to internal operations and new development plans can be devised and implemented at this stage.

Following Up

Personalized responses to the people who have completed a survey or provided feedback in some other way is one excellent option to make the most of this step in the process. Doing so demonstrates your company’s commitment to getting things right and keeps lines of communication open for future outreach.

The Importance of Customer Feedback Management

Customer Feedback Management tools help even giant companies stay in tune with their customers’ wants and needs. CallMiner Eureka, for example, is a powerful software solution that analyzes every customer interaction using automated scoring and sentiment analysis and combines that data with data from chat interactions, customer surveys, email and tweets, providing a comprehensive view of the customer.

With valuable insights into customer sentiment, customer effort and other essential customer satisfaction metrics, companies can more accurately predict customers at risk of churn and take swift action to increase customer retention and improve overall customer satisfaction. The following benefits of employing a development strategy enriched by CFM software prove how powerful a tool it can be for any growing business:

Budgeting

CFM toolsets allow you to consult with consumers on their interactions with all public-facing parts of your organization. Harnessing such functionality allows you to determine where your resources are best allocated to better the customer experience without resorting to guesswork.

Vetting New Products and Features

Asking customers to chime in on their experiences with brand new releases from your company highlights your commitment to keeping them happy with your offerings. This approach also provides you with useful information on the weak points your product or service has early on.

Adopting such a strategy using CFM solutions makes it possible for your business to pivot quickly, minimizing unintended lapses in the customer experience.

Reducing Customer Churn

Through the use of CFM software, companies can quickly implement survey strategies to determine whether or not they are meeting their customers’ expectations.

Issues can and will arise as any organization develops. However, CFM tools give you the opportunity to solve your customers’ problems in using your products and services as they arise, potentially keeping them from jumping ship in the process.

Loyal customers are lead-magnets and are often cited as the best sources of new business. Should you manage to act quickly enough on the information you glean from a dissatisfied customer, it may be possible to salvage the relationship your business has with them and even convert them into an ardent supporter.

Customer Feedback Management is extremely important for channeling the concerns of the people your organization serves to better shape its long-term growth.

How does your business handle customer feedback management?