Listen to Your Customers Beyond the Ratings by Adopting an Online Review Management
It is a well-known fact that businesses who listen to their customers are able to stay ahead of the game and are able to build a strong pool of loyal and dedicated customers. Customers who feel they are being genuinely heard are often more likely to do repeat business with the company and even recommend the products/services and share their positive experience with others.
Customers nowadays expect remarkable services from every touch-point within the company they engage with, thereby setting the standards higher than ever. Also, in today’s competitive market where hundreds of companies are competing to grab the attention of the customer, it is hard to differentiate yourself from others.
Collecting and Evaluating Customer Feedback
Most companies follow the process of acquiring customer feedback analysis to understand how the experience of the customer has been, thereby gathering suggestions that can help in improving the quality of the product/service. There are different methods that companies adopt in order to understand the customer sentiment analysis, such as feedback form, live chat sessions, email surveys, feedback call to customers, and post-purchase online feedback on e-commerce websites.
Engaging the customer in the correct way, at the right time, and via the appropriate channel is helpful in keeping pace with the ever-changing demands of today’s digital-savvy customers. Irrespective of what the method is, all these mechanisms measure customer satisfaction and help companies determine whether they meet, fall short of, or surpass the customer expectations.
Gauging Customer Experience through Rating Mechanisms
Procuring customer experience data through rating matrices has been the trend, and companies rely heavily on one or more of these metrics. However, in spite of getting a 5-star rating, these matrices sometimes show discrepancies between the feedback acquired and the business performance.
When someone gives you a star rating, they are still writing something in the comment that they want you to see.Check out this video to see how you can truly listen to your customers.
There is also confusion regarding whether companies should rely on transactional or relational measures and depend heavily on the results shown from top-line metrics. Properly collecting, analyzing, and acting on the feedback received can also pose a problem.
Social Listening Matters
In this day and age, where the ecosystem has taken a turn towards digital, social media has altered the archaic method of collecting customer feedback. This is because everything is changing! Social networking platforms are rapidly growing in popularity, resulting in more informed and engaged consumers, and an opportunity for customers to voice their opinions freely on social networking sites.
Social listening eliminates guesswork, and companies can confidently get unadulterated feedback and, in turn, solve customer queries more promptly.
On the other hand, however, not paying attention to customer queries on social media can tarnish a brand’s image, as statistics prove that a poor customer service experience on social media is shared by twice as many people. This one negative experience, shared on social media, can nullify up to five positive experiences and cause significant damage to the business and its reputation.
It has been proven time and again that social listening is a win-win for the business and the customer. Research shows that handling customer requests on social media is 12 times cheaper than handling the same requests on phones.
McKinsey & Co. highlights that attending to customers on social media can reduce cost per contact by as much as 83%. Social listening also gives businesses a competitive advantage, as research shows that 76% of brands do not participate in social listening, and from the ones who do participate, only a paltry 38% actively respond to customers.
Here are some ways in which brands can participate in social listening:
1.There are a number of social networking sites. However, brands must be careful to choose the ones on which their customers are most active.
2.It is advisable to choose only the best social listening platforms from the ones that exist. Tavam, for example, offers a fully integrated and robust online review management portal that can help brands identify the hidden emotions and sentiments of the customers.
3.The next step is to set up alerts. This can be done by adding your brand name, product or service identity, campaign name, keywords, and other commonly used industry buzzwords to identify what the customers are talking about.
Every time someone mentions anything about a brand, the business gets an alert on their dashboard, and can then proceed to respond to the comment or just take note of it. Sending out an appropriate response to the customer queries in real-time works in favor of the brand.
Listening to your customers carefully and beyond just the ratings is the way to go! Tatvam is dedicated to providing companies with a superior customer experience management ecosystem that supports customer listening, monitoring in real-time, and accepting and acknowledging the customers’ point of view. Tatvam helps brands make social listening a priority, giving them a chance to gain a competitive advantage and build a healthy reputation in the market.