Feedback is crucial to understand where your business is going right and wrong. Across all industries, companies must identify improvement opportunities and take action to deliver the best possible customer/user experience.
Why does it matter so much?
- More than two-thirds of businesses compete mainly based on customer experience (CX)
- Companies excelling in CX grow revenues between 4% and 8% above their market
- 73% of consumers agree that a good experience is a significant influence on their brand loyalties
- 77% of consumers have a more positive perception of brands that actively gather, and take action on, their feedback
Feedback can benefit businesses by increasing customer loyalty and revenue, but it also has the potential to boost entire industries
Developing a better awareness of common customer and user issues empowers companies with the insights they need to create changes.
And those changes can become industry trends, providing audiences with a stronger experience across numerous brands.
But it’s not easy to devise an effective feedback strategy or refine your current one to achieve better results. There’s a lot to consider, from the feedback channels available to your audience’s expectations.
In this post, we’ll explore the main benefit of feedback in five industries to inspire you.
Web development industry
Websites are built to facilitate interactions, whether a visitor is ordering products, uploading content, watching a movie, or reading a blog post. And the site must offer a user-friendly experience to keep visitors engaged.
Otherwise, users can click back to the SERP and find an alternative within seconds. Some of the most common issues that can drive users away from your site include:
- Slow load times (the probability of bounce rises by 90% when page load times grow from 1 to 5 seconds)
- Poor navigation
- Excessive ads
- Too much video and audio content interfering with functionality
- Weak design and content
First-time visitors and loyal customers alike may notice the same design or functionality flaws repeatedly. These could affect their ability to find the products or information they need, and prompt them to try elsewhere. And you may have no idea why users abandon your brand if you don’t ask.
Gathering user feedback helps you pinpoint problems that have a tangible effect on customers, but you have to make the process convenient
Fortunately, you have more feedback options to choose from than ever.
One of the simplest and most effective is the feedback button, such as Saber Feedback’s customisable tool. You can add this to your site and provide users with an easy way to flag issues.
Customers can click on this to submit feedback with screenshots to show you what frustrates them, and answer relevant questions that help you understand how you can improve your website.
And details on the user’s operating system and setup can help developers address compatibility problems, so you can deliver a great experience across all devices.
Feedback forms should be designed to capture information without confusing or frustrating users. A clear, logical flow from one question to the next can do that. It also demonstrates that your business takes user feedback seriously enough to utilise quality tools. And this may make them feel more valued and increase their loyalty.
The more that website developers provide users with feedback tools, the more they’ll learn about the people they build their sites for. Over time, they can implement changes that influence others and become standardised — helping the entire industry to grow.
Healthcare industry
Healthcare providers should provide patients with multiple streamlined, user-friendly contact methods when they need assistance. Such as?
- Live chat
- Contact forms
- Booking tools
- Video calls
And websites must cater to patients of diverse ages and capabilities. For example, a user in their mid-twenties looking for information on a specific condition may manage to browse a poorly designed search index (even if it frustrates them). But someone in their seventies may struggle if they have little online experience.
A healthcare provider’s site may also fail to offer the functions and resources patients want. A visitor might expect to see an option that allows them to book an appointment with their doctor online, only to discover the site is a bare-bones setup with a single phone number to get in touch.
Collecting feedback opens the door to new opportunities to offer the services patients expect
Providers can increase satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty. And they can cater to patients better with more appropriate features that suit different needs.
Practices may integrate a variety of feedback methods onto their sites. For example, an emotion gauge or a quick questionnaire at the bottom of a page gives users a simple way to share their thoughts. They may see three emojis to choose from (happy, sad, indifferent), or be asked whether the page was “helpful” or “not helpful”.
Both methods take a second or two to use. But they enable providers to understand which pages on their site provide a positive or negative experience.
Similarly, websites devoted to training medical professionals entering the healthcare industry can leverage feedback tools to improve their services.
For example, Clinical Skills Pro is a website offering expert training (primarily video-based) for doctors taking a challenging postgraduate exam. This test is designed to assess their ability to talk to patients, make accurate diagnoses, and provide treatment.
It’s vital that Clinical Skills Pro delivers content that educates and satisfies students — which is why they utilise Saber Feedback.
Dr Edward Banham-Hall, hospital consultant, course director and web developer, said: “Saber Feedback is an absolutely essential part of our quality assurance and provides us with the perfect solution to maintain, enhance and optimise our site.”
Encouraging patients/users to submit feedback helps healthcare providers recognise where changes may be required to make sure the industry is more focused on people’s needs.
Finance industry
Research shows that more than half of financial services customers believe that providers treat them “unfairly” — and that firms are missing out on opportunities to collect feedback from 17 million people.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) stipulates how service providers should treat their customers. They need to “pay due regard to the interests of […] customers and treat them fairly”, and should collect customer feedback to identify where improvements may be necessary.
A key benefit of feedback for financial services providers is discovering how their services may fall short of expectations:
- Do they make it easy for customers to contact their firm or individual employees through the website?
- Is their live chat feature clumsy and unreliable?
- Can users access accurate, detailed information on key financial matters or do they need to try another site?
Firms should empower customers with fast, simple feedback tools that allow them to make suggestions and highlight technical issues while using the site.
Feedback in the finance industry in action
Furthermore, websites dedicated to educating the next generation of finance specialists should take advantage of feedback tools to ensure they provide students with the right resources and facilities.
And the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) does just that.
This is the biggest member association representing the accounting profession. Certified public accountants (CPAs) and management accountants from across the globe are members.
The Finance Leadership Programme is an online learning platform that helps students earn their Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) Designation. It offers various courses comprising text-, video-, and question-based content.
The AICPA uses Saber Feedback on each page in its Finance Leadership Programme, so students can submit feedback while learning. Users have the option to complete a form that auto-populates their email address and logs them into the program. And this form includes a text box for user comments and screenshots can be added.
The programme also provides a feedback button customised to display as a question mark icon: students can click on this to submit feedback. The AICPA uses a Jira integration to categorise all feedback generated.
Christopher Roberts, Learner Success Manager at AICPA, said: “Saber Feedback has definitely made our lives easier. It doesn’t take them more than a couple of seconds for students to give feedback, and it’s simple for us collecting that feedback in Jira.”
Investing in, and acting on, feedback can provide businesses in the financial industry to understand customer pain points and treat them more fairly.
Hotel industry
More than 80% of travellers want better digital customer service from hotel brands. And engaging customers and building brand loyalty are critical in an age when guests can book rooms through third-party sites (such as booking.com) rather than directly through a hotel’s website.
PWC research reveals the impact that third-party sites’ commission fees can have on a hotel’s income from a booking. They can take:
- 10% - 15% of revenue for large chains
- 18% - 22% of revenue for independent hotels and small chains
PWC argues that delivering a quality service will encourage customers to go to their favourite hotel websites directly to book rooms, instead of a third-party site. This would help them avoid the commission charges and keep more of the customer’s money.
But to provide a service that cultivates loyalty, hotel brands should collect feedback from users on their site
The majority of customers want better digital service, so sites should offer multiple communication methods — live chat, contact forms, email addresses and phone numbers for specific departments (e.g., front desk, complaints, restaurant bookings).
A feedback button allows hotel brands to learn more about the quality of their sites from the people who matter most. A hotel chain, for example, may be unaware that some customers are experiencing problems until bookings drop and complaints flood in on social media.
But providing a visible feedback button enables customers to show issues disrupting their experience — and brands can take action to address them sooner.
Delivering better digital customer service based on user feedback may give consumers a better perception of the hotel industry, and encourage them to stay at their favourite hotels more frequently. That’s perhaps the most important benefit of feedback.
Retail industry
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that internet sales accounted for more than 27% of total retail sales in 2020, a steep rise from 19% in 2019.
The pandemic had an obvious impact as it forced more consumers to shop online, but the value of internet sales to the retail industry has risen consistently according to ONS figures.
It’s a competitive marketplace, and companies must deliver the best possible customer experience to gain (and maintain) a strong presence.
They need to know which aspects of their sites work best and which need extra attention. Everything from the product catalogue to demonstration videos to the checkout process should be finely tuned to maximise satisfaction.
Retail brands can gather feedback in various ways. Visible feedback buttons are one of the most convenient for customers, as users can comment and include screenshots to clarity issues.
But companies can also distribute post-purchase surveys to gain actionable insights, such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Scores and Net Promoter Scores (NPS). These ratings indicate how happy customers are with their experience of a site and how likely they are to recommend the brand to others.
Listening to consumers and acting on their feedback gives retail companies all the direction they need to make important changes
Customers who experience better service and can purchase products with minimal (or ideally zero) hassle are more likely to stay loyal.
Brands can learn from mistakes, see how competitors react to feedback, and incorporate positive changes into their own processes. This could make the industry more customer-focused and stronger over time.
Ready to really listen to your users?
Businesses in various industries are learning the value of customer and user feedback. By providing consumers with the means to articulate directly what works and what doesn’t on a website, companies can make positive adjustments based on fact rather than assumptions.
It also reduces the risk of small issues becoming bigger problems that affect reputations, sales, and revenue.
Saber Feedback makes it easy to collect feedback from your customers or users. Add a customisable feedback button to any page on your site and start listening to what your audience really thinks.
Start your free 30-day trial with Saber Feedback to see how it works!