DYK # 22 (B): Did you know that your digital channels are vital to capturing interaction feedback?
The month of September is all about interaction feedback best practice in our “Did you know…” series, and we’re drilling into the feedback capture mechanisms that fuel your CX continuous improvement program. Specifically, we’re exploring the best ways to capture feedback on interactions.
Those interactions can be online or in person, with your products, frontline staff, etc. Any type of interaction a customer (or prospect) has with you, creates an experience, and an opportunity to identify what works well, and what we can do better.
In our DYK # 22(A) earlier this month, we explored why the post-call survey is ripe for a revamp. Today, we’re looking into digital channels to capture and understand interaction feedback, in our DYK # 22 (B) "Did you know that your digital channels are vital to capturing interaction feedback?"
Let’s start at the beginning. What is interaction feedback?
Interaction feedback refers to customer feedback that we collect after an interaction between a customer and your company took place. Traditionally that would happen via a survey, e.g. a post-call survey or a digital intercept, but these days we can also tap into unsolicited feedback sources.
Let’s discuss what capturing feedback in your digital channels actually means. This can be confusing, as there’s a strong overlap with your traditional customer services and support activities.
If you’ve been following us for a while, you may have noticed that we started to use some real life examples of CX failures to illustrate our DYKs. And today, we’ll tab into those again by looking at some examples:
Digital feedback surveys and forms
Digital intercepts
Unsolicited feedback from digital channels
1. Digital feedback surveys
Similar to the post-call survey, we often get presented with a feedback survey after an interaction online. I previously spoke about my experience with a well known ride sharing service, and the somewhat unpleasant experience I had (DYK # 21).
Long story short, I wanted to provide feedback on the overall experience, and the fact that I was charged more than originally indicated, but the only feedback I could provide in the app was specific to the driver. I didn’t know if it was the driver’s fault, or the company’s fault, so I didn’t want to rate the driver low on something that’s out of their control. But I couldn’t do that, so I ended up choosing another channel, social media, to enquire about the charges and share my feedback.
If you’d like some guidance on how to revamp your post-interaction surveys to not lose out on feedback and improve the quality of feedback you receive, check out our earlier DYK, where we explore exactly that.
2. Digital intercepts
Digital intercepts must be the single most futile survey type. Not because they’re not important, but because they’re typically ill-designed.
Think about visiting a website and within 5 seconds being asked “How likely are you to recommend our company based on your website experience?” I’m sure we’ve all seen those. There are so many things wrong with this approach, it’s astonishing they still exist.
From asking the wrong question and using the wrong metric (tNPS), showing the survey so soon that the customer wouldn’t have had time to actually view the website, disrupting the customer in their flow, etc. Those tNPS intercepts are typically used for one reason: Someone is tasked with capturing a NPS metric. It has nothing to do with understanding customer experiences.
Of course, there are other types of intercepts as well, which are far better designed.
If you’d like to learn more about the pitfalls of tNPS, stay tuned! It’s coming up in our DYK series later this year.
3. Unsolicited feedback in the digital channel
That leads us to example 3), the unsolicited digital feedback. Think social media (like in the example above), or your website, chat bots, etc.. A place where customers go to ask questions and seek support. During that process, they’re going to share feedback with you! That’s what we call unsolicited feedback.
In the first example above, I went to social media to get my query resolved, and it worked just fine. That’s a valuable source of customer feedback for the ride sharing service to understand the experience I had with them, without using a survey (well, the survey was ill-designed in this case).
In another example I went to a hotel website to enquire about an unknown credit card charge and was left stranded, with no option to enquire about the charge or provide feedback on exactly my issue. There was no email address or chat available, and the options to leave feedback or enquire about something were very narrowly designed, mainly focused on lead-gen rather than support.
So again, I went to social media, with mediocre success this time, as that channel wasn’t monitored well. I really didn’t get the chance to provide feedback on my experience and enquire about the issue.
And that simply isn’t good enough in this day and age.
But what happened here?
When designing those feedback capture mechanisms, in particular interaction specific ones, I often stumble across some very common pitfalls:
Surveys:
Website surveys, forms or intercepts that ask the wrong questions and use the wrong metrics (tNPS or employee feedback are classic examples here)
They limit a customer’s ability to share their perspective
Non-survey feedback mechanisms:
Not offering options to contact the company and leave feedback
Clunkily forcing customers into another channel
Offering feedback options on very specific topics only
The digital channel is particularly interesting as we’re starting to cross over into the customer service landscape, and we need to design contact and feedback options with that in mind.
So how can we do it better?
I give you the same answer as in our previous DYK:
When designing feedback capture mechanisms, make it about your customers, not about you.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But what does that mean?
Here are 4 tips to revamp your digital channels to get more valuable, accurate and actionable customer insights:
Redesign your digital intercepts and website to include support options WHILE capturing feedback
Ask the right questions, use the right metrics, and give customers the option to say what they want to say or enquire about
Deploy intercepts at the right time
Monitor all channels and share that information with the right teams (aka act on it!) - frontline for immediate service recovery and other teams who need to address the root cause.
And remember, CX is a Team Sport! I just mentioned that the digital experience is particularly interesting as it crosses over with customer support. Plan for that accordingly.
As always, get in touch for any questions!
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