One thing is certain.
The goal for your business is always growth.
Isn’t that what you have in mind as you adapt and tweak the many aspects of your ecommerce set up? But of course!
To stand out among competition and make profits in this crowded online marketplace you need strategies that give your client not just an excellent product, but also the best customer experience possible. Don’t let this overwhelm you!
Luckily there are many customer data and touch points available to help you understand their behaviour, needs and requirements in order to serve them better. Now all you need to do is learn how to leverage them to the fullest.
One such important touch point is a post purchase survey with your customers. Have you started doing this yet?
If you are not already doing so, it’s time to get started as this can be a revelation!
Read on to understand why….
Once a customer has completed a transaction at your ecommerce store, you know you don’t want it to be his last. So you go about building a relationship that allows you to communicate a little longer. An after-purchase chat so to speak.
Did the product meet your expectations? How was the overall customer experience? Would you care to do a quick review of the product? Would you recommend the brand to friends and colleagues? And so on. You get the idea.
How Does Such Feedback Help?
It Provides Insight to Improve
The post purchase feedback you receive from the customers can help you in consolidating and improving all areas of your operation- from the product/ service itself, to growing sales and revenues. It also throws light on the efficacy of the marketing channels being used, satisfaction related to customer support and service matters.
Feedback on how you can improve or what the customer is looking for from the product can lead to product improvements of existing ones or even lead to a new product development. Your action based on such feedback can go a long way in improving customer satisfaction and containing their complaints.
Such insights are equally useful in improving efficiency in other areas of the business like user friendliness of the website, efficiency of processes and operations matters and the support / service provided by customer service agents. All this makes it an invaluable input for any business that is striving to improve, innovate and grow.
It Gives a Better Customer Experience
An exemplary customer experience at your ecommerce store can well be your competitive advantage!
Post purchase feedback provides merchants with actionable data points on the customers’ journey through their store and allows them to implement positive changes to improve the overall customer experience across the board.
Moreover, the queries also show that you care about them and your commitment to providing a better customer experience. Not only does this help build and strengthen the brand relationship with the customer, it can also help improve conversion rates at your website.
It Helps You Grow Sales
Every ecommerce merchant is aware of the fact that it is easier to market and sell to an existing customer as compared to attracting a new customer. Listening to what the customer is saying is helpful for the merchant and can give you a sense of customer loyalty and future sales.
The good customer experience at your website will likely make them buy more and bring in more sales and revenues. A satisfied customer experience also holds the key to good old word of mouth recommendations of the product to friends, family and colleagues.
All this ultimately helps in building brand loyalty and longer term relationships with your customers along with sales and revenue growth.
A Few Points to Remember
Time is precious and the customer is doing you a favour- so it is important to keep your survey/ feedback short and sweet and ask critical questions only in a friendly and conversational manner.
Feedback forms can be sent to the customer through email or chats right after the product has reached him or after he has had a chat with your customer service representative (in case you are seeking feedback on the customer service delivered). The forms should be easy to fill out.
Always remember to thank the customer for their time and effort in providing post purchase feedback for your brand. As a token of your appreciation, you could perhaps reward them with a discount coupon for their next purchase for providing you with this feedback.
Ways To Collect Customer Feedback
Survey Forms
Surveys can request customers to rank their experience on a numerical scale of say 1-5, depicting an unsatisfactory to average to excellent experience. This is a very common and effective method of collecting feedback that most users find easy to reply.
Such numerical rankings can also be used to ask if they would recommend the brand to a friend, family or colleague- this helps you gauge their loyalty to your brand.
You could also set up a few multiple choice questions in the feedback form where the customer just needs to tick his preferred answer.
A couple of open ended questions at the end of the survey might help you get more insights regarding the feedback but the customer may or may not oblige always.
Other options
There is a possibility of a one-on-one outreach where you could reach out to a loyal customer and get additional insights through follow-up questions that can be very helpful for you, but again, such obliging clients are not always easy to find.
Feedback to understand the pulse and mood of the customer can also be collected at the website itself through feedback boxes, pop-forms or even live chats and chatbots.
Apart from this, there is social media like Facebook, Instagram etc where the customers are likely to share their comments and reviews about a product that they have recently purchased. Close monitoring of such channels will also allow you to gauge the level of customer satisfaction and their overall sentiment.
Common Questions to Ask
- Did the product/ service live up to your expectations?
- Did the overall customer experience meet your expectations?
- Would you recommend it to others?
- How did you come to know about us?
- What is your preferred method of connecting with us?
- Is there anything that we could do to make the experience better?
This list is hardly exhaustive. But we strongly recommend keeping the survey short as answering too many questions can be annoying and time consuming for the customer. Also, highlighting to them that such feedback only helps to serve them better is recommended.
Post purchase customer feedback can be another powerful tool in your arsenal to improve the customer experience at the webstore along with sales and revenue growth. If you don’t have it as yet, it’s time to start using it and you will surely be reaping its benefits soon!
For more on customer reviews, you could check out
https://blog.goshopmatic.com/collect-customer-reviews-theyre-invaluable/
