Data is the new oil, but unlike oil, data can be acquired, produced, and reused infinitely.

Clive Humby

Statistics showed that real-time customer analytics helped 53% of businesses improve their customer journey maps and customer experiences. Furthermore, 58% say their companies have seen a significant increase in customer retention and loyalty as a result of the use of customer analytics.

Do you know how we know this state? We know this because of big data and data analysis. So let’s start with the basics.

Big data and Data analytics

Everything is data. But we cannot call every bit of data a big data. 

Criteria to be a big data

There is a checklist to be called as big data. A dataset has to check at least these 5 Vs for this title to be achieved.

1. Volume

Volume is the first criterion. Hance, big, refers to the volume of the data. The volume of the data has to be large. For example, 204 million emails are sent every minute. This is big data.

2. Veracity

It refers to the quality of the data. Not only has to be big, but it must also be reliable. It depends on the source of the collected data and how it’s collected. 

3. Variety

It refers to the nature of the data. A data set might be structured, unstructured, or even semi-structured. In modern days, data has even more varieties. such as photos, videos, emails, and audio, are new forms of data. For a fresh approach to visual data, make use of an AI-powered editor. This can help you effortlessly refine and reshape your media content.

4. Value

If the different varieties of a data set don’t add any value, then that’s not good big data. Every variety must have significant value.

5. Velocity

It refers to the frequency of data generation. How fast new entities are adding to the data is important. And is it meeting the demand?

Data analysis vs analytics

We often confuse these two terms, thinking they are the same word. However, they are two completely different words.

Data analysis is used when referring to discovering insights and useful information from data.

On the other hand, data analytics is used to gain insights into a particular topic, such as the performance of a support team, customer retention, or market leads.

Why big data analytics is important

To put it in simple words, it is so important that 91% of company founders have increased their investment in data collection and analytics.

Here are a few benefits of data analytics:

1. Reducing costs

Big data can help understand unnecessary expenses. Also, it will help you figure out more effective and efficient ways. And the result is a cost reduction.

2. Making faster, better decisions 

When you have the full picture in front of you, it will help you predict future trends. Hance, faster decision-making

3. Developing new products and services

Data about the products will help you understand the gap in your service. This will create service and product ideas to extend your business.

4. Developing a new marketing strategy

By conducting a big data analysis, you will know what strategy is working and what is not. So, a faster, more reliable decision can be made in terms of marketing strategy.

5. Improved customer service.

Finally, with big data analytics, you can provide better customer service.

We will deep-dive into this part.

Data analytics to improve customer experience

If you cannot improve your customers’ experiences, you cannot survive. It sounds a bit hard, but it’s true. Big data analytics are the key to creating a better customer experience.

1. Identify customer needs

A large dataset will let you know what your customers are asking for. You can figure out the gaps. As a result, you will be able to list out the customers’ needs.

Unstructured customer survey data can give you new feature ideas or service ideas to work on. Eventually, you will fulfill the customer’s needs.

2. Monitor product usage

Data on product usage is vital. This will tell you the functionality of your product. This data will show you how user-friendly your product is. Or how easy it is to get your service to a customer.

These data matrices will help you improve your product’s usability or service. Because of this, your customer experience will be better.

3. Track customer pain points

From different levels of survey data, you can determine the touchpoint status of a customer with your business. You will have a clear picture of all the pain points your customers go through.

By listing out all the pain points, you can work on them. As it’s big data, it will also help you understand how it will work. And you can bring down customer churn and improve the number of loyal customers.

4. Increase customer retention

A large set of data will reveal a customer’s behavioral pattern. This will tell you how customers are converting. Based on that data, you can design a solid conversion funnel.

This will not just ensure better lead conversion but also increase customer retention.

5. Monitor customer satisfaction

How satisfied are you? This is not a simple question. You can learn a lot from its data. By the way, this type of survey is called NPS, or net promoter score.

A satisfied customer will become a loyal customer. And loyal customers are your free marketers. They are active brand advocates for your brand.

Data analytics will help you understand what percentage of customers are happy with your service or product. This will open up the scope for improvement for a better customer experience.

How to create big data

For big data, collecting data is a continuous process. The data builds over time through various methods. The reports generated by various software, such as helpdesk plugins, customer relationship management systems, or Google Analytics data, could be used for this purpose.

Data could also be collected via surveys. Surveys like customer feedback or customer support data are highly effective in understanding the customer experience.

If you are trying to find the usability of your product, then dark data can be very handy for this. This is also a large-scale data set that is being ignored because of its vastness.

Let’s say you have collected a huge amount of data. Now what? You have hundreds or thousands of numbers or words written on a spreadsheet. You need to find the right information from this.

How analyze big data

Large-scale data needs specialized tools or programs to analyze. Your regular, simple use of Google Sheets is not going to be rough for this.

First, you have to make the dataset more understandable. Because usually it might look like this.

You have to start by cleaning the data. The data cleaning process begins with deleting duplicates. Then next, you have to figure out which entries are useless. A large data set like this might have a lot of incomplete entries. Those need to be deleted.

Next, you have to decide what information you want to find out from this big data. After fixing that, you have to select what you specifically need from this data set. Extract those into a different file.

Finally, start finding patterns in the data. These data patterns can be visualized in tabulated form or in different graphs.

Different tools for data analytics

There are several data analysis tools for this job. Different tools have their advantages and disadvantages. The use case solely depends on your expertise and the purpose of the data analysis.

1. Microsoft Excel. Commonly used tool in cases of simple to mid-level data analysis.
2. Python. It’s a programming language with extensive power. It is fast, highly flexible, and can handle any size of data easily. Python can be used to develop software as well.
3. R. It is tailored programming only for data analysis. As it is also a programming language, it is fast, highly flexible, and can handle any size of data easily. 
4. Jupyter Notebook. It is a web-based computing platform. You can use a variety of languages, like Python or R, to compute larger data sets.
5. Tableau. It is a more advanced version of Microsoft Excel. This tool has dynamic features to create multi-layered data visualizations.
6. Google Sheets Add-ons. Google Sheets, though often seen as a lightweight tool for managing data, can be significantly enhanced through specific Google Sheet add-ons. It can handle tasks such as connecting to APIs, performing statistical analysis, or even automating workflows.

To use all of these, you need to go through some level of learning curve. But once you master any of this, you can handle any type of data like a magician.

Resources of open source data

Open-source data is very useful. If you do have data by yourself or just want to see the external status of your market, open source data can be very handy.

1. Google Public Data
2. Registry of Open Data on AWS
3. Kaggle Datasets
4. U.S. Government’s Open Data
5. Yelp Dataset
6. World Bank Open Data
7. Open Data Monitor
8. WHO Data
9. Unicef Data

But besides that, if you are looking for a bit of specific data analytics to improve the customer experience, then you can search for it. Google has a special search page for that.

Final thoughts

Big data analytics is a powerful tool that can be used in many ways. This can provide insights into customer behavior, needs, and, most importantly, pain points.

You can personalize interactions at different touch points by analyzing big data. By improving customer service and developing new products and services, you can extend your business.

In today’s competitive marketplace, businesses are investing to build personalized data. Data science is integrating with the business world.

Because the whole industry is running on data. So, the key to a sustainable business is the use of data analytics to improve the customer experience.

The post Big Data Analytics to Improve Customer Experience appeared first on Fluent Support.

I am not even exaggerating; it’s true. 

But many companies ignore this. They don’t have a system of feedback forms and use it to collect feedback from everyday customer interactions.

Customer feedback helps you to improve your products, minimize problems and establish yourself as a customer-centric brand. Feedbacks play a huge role in understanding trends and customer psychology. You’ll know what your customer wants and where you lack in fulfilling their needs.

What is the best way to design a good feedback form that works? Most small business owners fail to create a good feedback form. In this blog, we’ll cover what is a good feedback form and how you can write one. After reading this blog, you’ll learn how to create a feedback form from scratch with minimal effort.

To enhance your client support strategy—download our comprehensive FREE eBook and build a high-performing customer service team.

The form can be filled in the actual website url.

What is a feedback form?

A feedback form is a simple way to collect people’s opinions or reviews about your company, service, or products. 

It is as simple as that. 

Feedback form is an effortless system to learn about customers’ perceptions of your business. It also helps you know about your company’s overall customer experience.

You can clearly understand customer relations from your feedback forms data. Feedback forms can help you with 3 key areas:

1. Where your efforts are producing great results and your strength.

2. Customers’ pain points and where you should focus.

3. Improving customer relations across all channels.

What are examples of feedback forms?

A company can collect customers’ feedback in different ways best on their internal needs. There are many ways you can collect customer feedback.

1. Emails 

Email is one of the most personalized feedback systems companies use. It is the oldest communication form, fast and effective.

If your customer communication is all done by email, you can use email to collect customers feedback. You can design your email feedback forms using simple HTML, but they may not exceed basic sections and confuse customers. Instead, go for a responsive HTML builder to collect their feedback.

2. Standalone forms  

These kinds of feedback forms are gaining popularity among businesses. You can use basic templates for these forms, but there are many types. You can use single questions, questionnaires, or in-depth answer fields.

Standalone forms are easy to design and extendable. You can share these forms anywhere with a public link.

3. Pop-ups  

Pop-ups are a new kind of attention-grabbing system. It is mostly used on websites, but app developers now use it to gain more exposure.

The cool thing about pop-ups, you can integrate these with your standalone forms. You can embed a standalone form in your pop-up and grab your customer’s attention after a certain action. It is a good way to collect specific feedback regarding features, touchpoints, or problems.

4. Chatbots 

Chatbot is a new cool thing that can help you elevate customers’ experience through personalized interactions. Chatbots are used for general queries widely. Suppose you can train your chatbots to learn from customers’ questions and set specific questionnaires to deliver. This way, it can collect customers’ feedback automatically.

Use of these feedback forms depends on what kind of feedback you want to collect and where you want to collect it.

What are the types of feedback?

Different ways of customer feedback also depend on what types of feedback you are collecting. To use a feedback form, first, you need to select what type of feedback you wish to collect. There are many types of feedback businesses collect from their customers these days.

Here are some most common types of customer feedback:

1. Customer satisfaction survey

A satisfaction survey tells you whether a customer is satisfied or unhappy with your products or service. It helps you understand the overall customer experience, what customers need, where you are missing out, what a customer expects from you, and how you can deliver a great experience.

2. User experience survey

This type of survey is a bit different from CSAT surveys. While CSAT focuses on overall customer satisfaction, this type of feedback collects data about user experience using certain service or app features.

You can ask 2-3 questions after certain tasks or about a feature, and customers can quickly share their opinions. These feedbacks focus on how the features benefit customers, what is missing, and what customers want from it. 

It is widely used by software companies to beta test their products before launching to the mass market. You can use this model on your customer onboarding journey and collect data about customer interaction at different touch points.

3. Net promoter score

Net promoter score asks a specific question – how likely are your customers to recommend you to their family and friends?

The options are given on a 1-10 scale, and customers can choose from them. The numbers are calculated as a percent when data collection is closed.

NPS forms give you meaningful data about your company’s overall performance. You can determine how your business performs in a certain period or know the whole situation at once. You can find out how many of your customers will be your brand promoters. Customers who picked the highest number in NPS feedback forms are your most loyal customers who are most likely to recommend you to their networks.

4. Customer effort score

Want to know how your customers are treating a task or event?

Use customer effort score feedback forms. These types of forms help you understand how difficult a particular task is.

You can use CES feedback forms to determine your customer onboarding touchpoint’s difficulty or use it to learn more about customer experience. You can ensure your product quality or customer service experience by using optimized CES feedback forms.

5. Customer information form

These feedback forms are highly optimized for current events or customer touch points. They help you collect data about your customers after their onboarding. You can use these feedback forms to learn more about your customers.

The more customer information you gather, you will be one step ahead of your competitors. These customer information feedback forms collect data that helps create your buyer persona. If you have a perfect buyer persona, you can easily target them with engaging copywriting and marketing campaigns.

6. Problem identifier feedback forms

I know the name may sound confusing. Let me explain. These forms are useful to collect data on single interactions instead of a full product experience.

It will help you find out what is working and where customers are facing problems most. If you can integrate these forms in every touchpoint and automate their functionality, you can collect customer feedback on every bug. You can fix them before a customer contacts your support.

Problem identifier feedback forms are highly convenient for proactive support operations. It can help you identify problems before they arise or can mark problems you are unfamiliar with.

How to write a good feedback form?

A good customer feedback form will give your desired data. But how can you write a good feedback form that gives you perfect results every time? Feedback forms have to be unique based on the needs of different industries.

Research your customers’ behavior, understand what they want, and ask them questions. Feedback forms will help you understand what makes a customer happy. Writing feedback forms that work follows certain principles no matter what business it serves.

You can write good feedback forms following these guidelines:

1. Offer a personalized & seamless experience

The first rule of a good feedback form is – make it seamless for your customers to use.

Your customers do not have time to spend on lengthy or difficult feedback forms. They don’t have time to change one channel to another to share their reviews unless they want to. Make it easy for them to write or send your survey or feedback.

Make sure your feedback forms align with your brand identity. Put your brand logo, colors, and font the same as other places in feedback forms. This way, customers will recognize & remember your brand while communicating with your feedback forms.

Use personalization to influence customers to click and fill up the form. If you already have customers’ basic data, prefill those data in the form, so customers don’t have to fill them up again. You can use the customer’s name to call out in a survey sentence to attract attention.

2. Make it short & simple

Keep your feedback short & simple. A feedback form with too many questions can turn your customers away. Use simple sentences and use your words wisely. You want your customers to understand your questions, don’t confuse them. They will leave the form before hitting submit. Know what to ask and when!

Design your feedback forms to have a clear impact on customers. White background & Black fonts are ideal for feedback forms because they cut most distractions. But you can use other colors related to your brand color. Always follow a consistent format & structure in your feedback forms.

Conditional logic is an awesome way to ask certain questions to certain demographics. Depending on customers’ “yes and no” answers, you can show a certain feedback form field. This way, you can keep your form short and engaging.

3. Offer it at the right time & place

How can you get the most value out of a good feedback form?

By offering it at the right time & right place.

Customer feedback varies from time to time. Know when to send feedback forms or show popups because feedback results & customer engagements depend on it.

Revisit your customer’s onboarding journey. Find out where feedback forms will get the best engagement & set up workflow automation. Automations will trigger your feedback forms based on customer input. This way, you will get better engagement and results.

Showing the right feedback forms at pivotal customer interaction moments is vital to improve overall customer engagement.

4. Give customers freedom

Most times, companies design customer feedback forms to collect data they think is important. That’s why feedback forms constantly have the same options and multiple-choice fields. This leaves customers with few options.

Customers usually give up after a few form fields. Do not force your customers to select generic fields. Give them options with “I don’t know” or “Maybe.” This way, you will know which questions are important to your customers. You can edit your survey forms and add the most used fields for good engagement.

Give your customer the option to speak their mind freely. Use open text fields so customers can share their personal experiences and suggestions if they want to share. Make your customer feedback forms about them, not solely you.

How to create a feedback form?

Creating feedback forms on WordPress sites is very straightforward. You use a form plugin connected to your WordPress website to make a feedback form.

There are numerous form plugins you can choose from WordPress respiratory. We’ll use Fluent Forms to show how to create feedback forms. We choose Fluent Forms because it has a deep integration with Fluent Support helpdesk plugin for WordPress.

If you don’t have Fluent Forms, install and add it from your plugin area. Activate & go to the dashboard.

You’ll see a blue “Add a New Form” button. Click it, and a new window will open with Fluent Forms pre-made templates.

You’ll find lots of variations in these premade templates. From basic to marketing, finance, education, product, and more.

We will choose survey & feedback forms from these categories. Let’s say you are in marketing and want to create a feedback form for a customer satisfaction survey. Click “Client satisfaction survey” from the marketing category.

A new window will open with a form editor.

Here you can edit your form, add and remove general fields and use advanced options like conditional logic or direct payment blocks.

Conditional logic is a useful feature to deliver short feedback forms to customers with hidden custom fields only for targeted customer responses.

From the form setting, you can set up your forms as you wish:

• You can set up confirmation types with custom messages.
• Change the layout as you choose.
• Add scheduling and restrictions to your specific needs.
• You can also set advance form validation to prevent spam.

There are many features available in Fluent Forms you can use and customize to your specific needs. You can also use their conversational forms to create feedback forms that look more conversation-like.

Fluent Forms comes with pre-built templates, drag & drop features, great survey reports with cool visuals, and you can easily export your data anytime. Without any coding knowledge, you can create a feedback form like this!

Want to share your feedback forms outside your WordPress site? You can do that too!

Fluent Forms directly integrates with the helpdesk plugin for WordPress – Fluent Support. You can easily integrate your forms with Fluent Support from the integration tab.

You can send your form data from Fluent Support forms to the Fluent Support dashboard with seamless integrations.

Feedback forms format you should follow

Crafting your feedback form in a good format is necessary for better conversions. Feedback forms may be different from industry to industry. But you can follow these basic form formatting to create a feedback form—

• Don’t mark any fields required. Give customers the option to choose whether they will answer it or not.

• Offer open text so customers can write their answers rather than choosing yes and no. This is a great way to collect customer suggestions or frustrations in detail. Customers may want to share their individual stories with you. It can help you to connect with customers on a deeper level.

• Use conditional logic to personalized fields for better customer engagements. You can get better customer results and feedback if you integrate conditional logic on your form fields.

• Choose fields targeting your customers’ needs rather than self-serving. Always think of the customer first when adding form blocks.

• Stop using “I don’t know,” “Maybe,” or “Others” in your answer fields. These options do not provide greater results.

• Do not ask two things in one question. Always focus on one. Keep your questions different to maximize engagement.

• When using a rating scale, always use the same scale in all fields. If you use 0-5 in one, do not use 0-10 in the next field. It will only confuse customers, and you will not get the answer you are looking for.

Feedback forms templates you can copy

If you want inspiration to create your customer feedback forms, here are some form templates by Fluent Support. You can use these pre-built templates or take ideas and make your own.

Comment & Rating Form Template

These forms focus on collecting customers’ ratings and feedback on individual products. You can edit, add or remove these fields as you need.

Brand Awareness Form Template

Want to know if your target audience is aware of your brand? Use this form template. With this form template, you can find out what customers think about you, what impression you have on your customer demographics and collect data about your marketing strategy.

Polling Form Template

Polling forms are the best way to engage with customers. You can get direct answers and make decisions faster in specific areas.

Website Feedback Form Template

Want to redesign your website? The best way to do it is to collect and implement feedback from your visitors. Use this type of feedback form template to collect suggestions on how to improve your website.

Market Research Survey Form Template

Need data for a marketing campaign? Use this conversation-style market research survey form template to collect data from your customers.

Client Satisfaction Survey Form Template

These types of feedback form templates are best to understand what your customers want. Ask specific questions, collect data on what’s working and where you need to improve. Use this template to start and remove or edit fields on the go.

Product Survey Form

Best way to learn what customers think of a product and where you lack it is to impress your buyer.

Customer Service Form

Want to evaluate your customer service or support team? Use these templates to understand how customers react to your service and support agents’ interactions.

Software Survey Form

Simple feedback form to collect data about software. You can add or edit fields as your software farms need.

Online Shopping Behavior Form

Knowing an individual’s perspective about your brand is necessary. This feedback form template helps you identify that and help you know your overall brand recognition.

You can find and choose more types of form templates from the Fluent Forms demo page.

Feedback forms examples

We talked about a good feedback form and how to format one. We also showed you the best feedback form templates you can copy. 

But how are companies using these templates in real life? 

We have the answer too. 

Here are a few examples of good feedback forms used by real-life companies:

1. Glassdoor

Glassdoor’s feedback form follows a simple design. It is short and asks exact questions it wants to collect from users.

2. Airbnb

Airbnb follows a simple feedback form page route. 

They use conditional logic to show the next question filed based on individual user input.

Airbnb allows users to share their experiences without limitations.

Here is how they approach users in email for surveys.

3. Apple

Apple has a dedicated feedback page for each product category. Their feedback form is straightforward.

Here is what the iPhone feedback form looks like.

4. Zoom

Zoom simply follows a basic format while focusing on questions that matter.

5. McDonald’s

McDonald’s feedback form focuses on specific individual food experiences. You can use this example to know what customers think about your specific service rather than the whole brand experience.

Conclusion

Customer feedback is essential for your business’s success. How you collect feedback and use it to improve your service or products tells a lot. Successful businesses invest in collecting customer feedback data, analyzing and measuring it to increase the efficiency of their service or make good products.

Good customer feedback form plays a huge role in these operations. Experiment with your feedback forms format & templates to get better results. Consider what you want to achieve from your feedback forms. Create a form on top of that and act on the collected data. Honest customer feedback can help you understand customer behavior, your failings, and how you can provide what customers want.

The post How to Create a Customer Feedback Form That Actually Works appeared first on Fluent Support.