What is customer feedback?

Customer feedback comprises the ideas, opinions and suggestions that customers have about an organization and its products or services. Feedback can be reactive, meaning it follows a service or support interaction. Or it can be proactive, meaning it was not driven by an interaction. It can also be positive, negative or neutral, depending on a customer's experience with the brand.

For many organizations, customer feedback now pertains to service or support interactions with human agents and customer-facing AI agents. Nearly 60% of companies measure the performance of their human agents against AI agents, according to a global Metrigy CX study. Among those companies, the assessments most often come via customer feedback surveys. Half of companies are collecting customer feedback for this purpose.

Why is customer feedback important?

Customer feedback is important because it provides insights that organizations can use to improve their business. This data encompasses customer-facing interactions, agent experiences, AI agent optimization and product development. It also helps brands better understand customers, so they can more easily create personalized experiences.

Personalization is now critical as it relates to a growing CX trend, namely proactive engagement. The evolution from reactive customer service to proactive engagement is a strategic shift for nearly 60% of businesses today, according to Metrigy's research. By extracting insights from customer feedback, AI can make proactive outreach more timely and personalized.

Types of customer feedback

Customer feedback can be qualitative or quantitative. Those categories break down as follows:

• Qualitative feedback comes from customers' open-ended comments. Organizations can collect this information in focus groups, surveys, online reviews, social media posts and, increasingly, through AI applications. Today, surveys are the top way to track customer satisfaction, but a close second is interaction analytics, which gathers insights from customer feedback. At 59.2%, surveys are the top method, followed by interaction analytics at 53.2%, according to Metrigy research.
• Quantitative feedback comes through numerical ratings, such as one to five stars. Increasingly, companies are using inferred sentiment to determine customer ratings rather than relying on fickle customers themselves to click on a star, so to speak.

Inferred sentiment uses AI and large volumes of data to estimate what a customer's level of satisfaction is on every call. AI can detect sentiment and word choice and assign a rating, based on actual customer feedback for similar customers. The result is a customer sentiment score for every call -- some actual from the customers, some implied via inferred sentiment.

Nearly 40% of companies are using AI-enabled inferred sentiment today.

What is a customer feedback loop?

A customer feedback loop comprises the request for information, data analysis, actions taken based on the analysis and letting customers who shared feedback know what changes resulted from their input. This final part shows customers that organizations appreciate their feedback and that it can make a difference.

Feedback loops are continuous. Organizations should always assess customer feedback and, based on insights from that information, adapt as necessary. However, Metrigy's data shows a significant execution gap: Though 78.8% of companies gather customer feedback, only 59.1% act on it. Interaction analytics can help businesses close this gap by analyzing transcripts, recordings and conversations to discover issues and trends in near real time.

5 methods to collect customer feedback

Collecting customer feedback can happen at any touchpoint and is often simple and straightforward. However, some methods may need to incentivize customers to get results.

1. Use qualitative and quantitative feedback. Organizations can gather feedback from interactive, responsive and implicit mechanisms. Those break down as follows:

• Interactive feedback comes from one-to-one interviews either in person or over video, focus groups and live chats. This option lets customers share their opinions and ideas about set topics, such as new products or services, changes in pricing or new interaction channels.
• Responsive feedback means customers share how they feel about customer service interactions through a survey, SMS polls, online reviews, social media comments or ratings.

• Implicit feedback requires organizations to analyze statistics, such as website visits and call data, and apply advanced technologies like natural language processing and sentiment analysis to gain insights from recordings. This analysis can uncover trends and get ahead of issues before they escalate. AI-enabled inferred sentiment represents the biggest gap between successful and unsuccessful companies today. This technology enables brands to get ahead of issues before they escalate.

2. Request feedback immediately after an interaction. If organizations deliver a survey or feedback request form in the moment, customers can more accurately convey their sentiment. They can better understand and relay their feelings at the time of the interaction rather than providing feedback later. Additionally, gathering feedback right after an interaction correlates to increased business success, according to Metrigy.

3. Add surveys at various touchpoints. This strategy can maximize the potential for gathering feedback, as customers can contact a business in any way they choose. Survey requests can be at the bottom of a receipt, through an SMS poll or at the end of a call.

4. Offer a reward for completing surveys. Even a small incentive can trigger responses from customers. Rewards can include a discount, a free gift or an exclusive promotion.

5. Request feedback from everyone -- not a select few. Organizations shouldn't let agents select who receives a post-interaction survey. Thanks to AI, businesses no longer have to rely on small, manual samplings. Tools like AI-enabled inferred sentiment can evaluate the words and sentiment of all customer conversations to provide an accurate reflection of human and AI agent performance and overall customer satisfaction.

If agents self-select customers, they may choose people who had positive experiences. This can lead to an inaccurate reflection of an agent's performance and overall customer satisfaction.

How to use collected data

Using data from customer feedback requires organizations to analyze it and identify what actions to take based on the intelligence gained. The vast majority of companies Metrigy has studied now consider customer interaction data either vital or important for improving business metrics. Some examples of how to use this data include the following:

• Adjust sales and marketing strategies based on trends discovered.
• Advise product development to determine updates and revisions that will meet customer demand and improve revenue.
• Help executives make strategic decisions using customer feedback data.
• Craft proactive engagement strategies and deliver personalized outreach using insight from customer feedback.
• Analyze and compare the effectiveness of AI agents vs. human agents, which companies rank as the most valuable use for customer interaction analytics.
• Share feedback with service and support agents so they understand what they do well, or not so well, during customer interactions. Couple this with AI-based training to identify coaching opportunities.
• Determine which interaction channels are most successful and which customer-facing technologies to use.
• When a customer leaves a positive rating, such as five stars, ask them to share an online review.
• If a customer expresses dissatisfaction or other negative sentiment during an interaction, use AI to offer a discount or credit in real time, or follow up proactively to solve the issue before it escalates into a viral social media complaint.
• Integrate customer feedback into marketing automation tools.

Collecting customer feedback is essential for understanding experiences and improving business practices. Customer feedback drives product improvements and enhances customer satisfaction. Using multiple collection methods, including surveys and social media, is essential for gathering diverse insights.

Beth Schultz is vice president of research and principal analyst at Metrigy. She focuses her research on unified communications, collaboration and digital customer experience.