Why Customer Feedback Tools Will Make You a Better Online Store
As a Shopify merchant, efficiency is key. We not only want you to have efficient customer feedback tools, but we also want to make sure your research is as efficient as possible.
The following guidelines are strictly limited to giving you what you need to get the right tools for your website.
- First, you need a strategy
- Then, you need to find the right tools based on your strategy
- Then you need to deploy your tools in the right location
Because your online store relies on customers to stay standing, you need feedback to make sure you are meeting customer needs.
To get started, you want to establish feedback layers. The layers are based on a minimum viable feedback loop.
Layers are ordered based on automation. This forces you to only require manual intervention if the other layers aren’t working. This will do two things:
- Prioritize your time
- Enact an automation-first culture for data
There are tons of tools, but let’s focus on what everyone can do with each layer.
In this layer, there are questions from the website and Google Analytics.
When collecting questions from your website, products like ChipBot or site search can provide insight on what users want to ask before buying your product. Alternatively, you can also field these questions once the user receives the product.
On Google Analytics, session time, bounce rate, and behavior flow are the 3 indicators that can help determine whether visitors care about what you’re offering.
In this layer, there are surveys, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and contact forms. These all allow your customers to communicate with you without you having to reply.
You can deploy surveys through email and NPS specifically when the buyer receives their product. With contact forms, the user expects the recipient to not reply—it could lead to 2-way communication but oftentimes doesn’t.
Some types of 2-way communication for customer feedback are:
- Live chat
- Modern-day Forums (Clubhouse, Reddit, Facebook groups)
- Social Media
- Phone (for businesses that support this)
- All tools from Layer 1
- 1 tool from Layer 2
- 1 tools from Layer 3
For stores with 100-500 orders a month:
- All tools from Layer 1
- 2 tools from Layer 2
- Email, Social, and 1 other tool from Layer 3
You need email and social media because you’re meeting the customer where they live and operate. Most likely, you targeted them from social media via paid or organic marketing as well.
For stores with 500+ orders a month:
- Take advantage of Layer 1 and Layer 2 as much as you can
- 2-3 tools from Layer 3 (keep an eye on customer support bloat)
Not all customer feedback tools are created equal, but they all have important uses.
Some of these tools are also more than just feedback tools, they can provide support and reassurance to wavering customers.
We won’t cover email, phone, or Google Analytics, as these tools are usually commonplace.
ChipBot is a support bot that lives in the bottom corner of your website (on every page). It falls under Layer 1 of support, so it is very important for customer feedback.
Every question asked through ChipBot is collected. The more questions that are asked, the more feedback you get.
By collecting questions, ChipBot allows you to monitor the behavioral aspects of your customers. It reports on user questions and has built-in contact forms for users.
ChipBot is free to try for however long you want and it works with Shopify.
Surveys, questionnaires, and polls allow you to collect information from customers as quickly and easily as possible.
You can create custom questions for your customers so that they can relay their experiences to you. Typeform allows you to completely personalize your surveys with images, videos, and brand content. You can even create questions based on user data, like the user’s name.
Surveys are best deployed in a follow-up email after the user has received the product. That way, the user has experienced your product and is more inclined to fill it out (with accurate information).
A Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an indicator of how helpful your product is. Customers can click what emotion matches with how they feel about their experience with your product.
Most likely, the best strategy for deploying this tool would be to put it in an email after they’ve received the product. Using this tool any earlier doesn’t give your customers enough time to form an opinion or give you an accurate score.
NPS can be especially useful because it provides a range of relatable options—sometimes a blank form can be intimidating for a user, and they’d rather choose an emotion that matches. In the same vein, however, sometimes NPS can be limiting when a customer’s feelings aren’t accurately represented within the options given.
Forums can be interesting places—people can ask questions, leave comments, and have discussions all of their own accord.
On a forum, you can get loads of information without having to deploy specific questions or support. Customers can interact with both you and other customers, and questions can turn into discussions that give you valuable feedback.
However, there is such a thing as too much information—forums can get cluttered and stray from the topic. The main problem with them is that they require maintenance, and no one will use them if there isn’t already an active base.
But, you can establish a presence and a following on Clubhouse and Reddit to allow customers a base where they can interact with you and each other and ask questions.
Live chat can be really helpful to customers, most of the time.
If customers want to leave comments or feedback, they can contact live chat. But what if you’re not around? How do you collect feedback?
When you have the budget to have someone manning the chat around the clock, this could work for you.
Feedback is useless if you don’t act on it.
Weigh which feedback is most meaningful for your business based on patterns or customer insight. Then, create a plan and execute it to deliver on that feedback. Reuse these tools to measure the impact of that plan, and get going!
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