What Is Customer Feedback Management? A Complete Guide

Customer feedback management (CFM) is the process of systematically collecting, analysing and acting on feedback from customers to improve products, services and customer experience. CFM uses various channels and tools to gather insights, identify trends and make data-driven decisions to enhance customer satisfaction.

Understanding and addressing customer needs is more critical than ever. Our research finds that 65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences. That’s why customer feedback management is key.

This guide breaks down everything you need to know about managing customer feedback effectively.

Customer feedback management refers to the systematic process of collecting, analysing and acting on feedback from customers. You gather insights through various channels about customer experiences, preferences and areas for improvement. CFM helps you to improve your products, your customer experience and even your customer service operations. Ultimately, it helps you better serve your customers.

Customer feedback management includes:

• Collection: Gathering feedback via surveys, reviews and direct interactions, as well as via unsolicited comments on social media and review sites.
• Analysis: Reviewing feedback to identify trends and areas for improvement.
• Action: Implementing changes or improvements in response to feedback.

Customer feedback management offers a host of benefits:

• Higher customer satisfaction: Addressing issues and implementing suggestions enhances your customer experience. Our research finds that 80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.
• Higher customer retention: Responding to feedback is an important aspect of great customer service. Our research finds that 88% of customers say good customer service makes them more likely to purchase again.
• Lower customer churn: Engaging with customers and acting on their feedback helps you to retain customers who might otherwise leave.
• Better products and services: Customer feedback helps your business uncover its weaknesses and develop a stronger product offering.
• A strong brand reputation: Listening to feedback shows you care about your customers. This leads to positive word-of-mouth.

To effectively manage feedback, it’s essential to recognise the various types:

• Direct feedback: This is when a business asks customers to provide explicit opinions. It’s often collected through surveys, interviews or focus groups.
• Indirect feedback: Opinions customers offer without being asked. This includes social media mentions, reviews and product usage data.
• Quantitative feedback: Numerical data from ratings, scores and metrics that offer measurable insights.
• Qualitative feedback: Descriptive comments and suggestions that provide deeper understanding beyond just numbers.

You can collect direct feedback across various service channels. For example, you might deploy AI-powered surveys on your email, chat and messaging platforms. To get indirect feedback, you might use AI to analyse customer behaviour during service interactions. Or you might read comments about your company on social media and review sites like Google or G2.

There’s a lot of data to collect - which is why you need an effective customer feedback management system and strategy.

It can be easy to miss - or lose track of - customer complaints and suggestions without a cohesive feedback system in place. Follow these steps to create an effective customer feedback management system:

1. Define your objectives: Clearly outline what you want to achieve. Do you want to improve customer service, enhance products, increase customer satisfaction? Decide how you’ll measure success. Metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, net promoter scores, customer churn rate or customer retention rate are all valid ways.
2. Choose your collection methods: Will you deploy surveys, hold focus groups or conduct interviews? Consider software that automates feedback collection with dynamic, AI-powered surveys. How will you capture indirect feedback? Tools like AI sentiment analysis for your service channels can turn customer expressed emotions - think all caps text or frustrated language - into insights. This analysis can show you where you need to improve.
3. Automate. Manual customer feedback collection is inefficient and prone to errors. Service Cloud Feedback Management automates the process, with tools built right in your CRM. Service reps see each customer’s satisfaction score or NPS, right in the flow of work. Prebuilt reports and dashboards help service managers quickly glean actionable information from all the feedback.
4. Train your team: Have a clear process for service reps to follow when a customer is unhappy or has a low NPS score. Give them latitude to remedy as many issues as possible, for fast case resolution. Our research shows that 81% of customers expect faster service as technology advances. Connect your service reps with other teams, since often the root of an issue lies with departments like product development, engineering, marketing or accounting. {{product.slack} is a great tool for collaborating across departments.
5. Take action. Once a customer's pain point is clear, act on it. Do you see a repeat issue across multiple service calls? Work across your company to solve the problem. Always update the customer about the action you took to resolve their concern. This shows you value their feedback.
6. Monitor your results: Customer feedback management isn't a one-and-done effort. Regularly review your results to pinpoint areas for improvement. Monitor the effect of any changes you make. Did you achieve the desired outcome?

These 5 approaches to collecting and analysing feedback will help you to get the best, most actionable results.

1. Be timely. Collect customer feedback shortly after a service interaction to ensure relevancy and accuracy.
2. Use the power of automation and AI. Leave manual surveys behind with automated, AI-powered surveys customised for your unique industry and business goals.
3. Survey across channels. Deploy surveys on every service channel, so you can gain insights from wherever you serve your customers.
4. Unify feedback with CRM data: Feedback is confusing without context. You need a full, 360 view of the customer to make sense of it and respond appropriately. Salesforce’s Feedback Management allows you to thread feedback into existing customer records in your CRM, at every step in the customer journey. No complex integration process with another technology platform required.
5. Review service dashboards: Prebuilt feedback management reports and dashboards like those available with Salesforce’s Feedback Management help you to keep tabs on key metrics like CSAT and NPS. You can slice the data by customer lifecycle to identify areas to improve along each phase of the customer journey.

The following are some common issues with feedback collection that you should be aware of. Make plans to address these as you implement your system.

• Low response rates. Let’s face it: not every customer will fill in a survey. To improve participation, keep surveys concise. Consider incentives for filling in feedback forms - offering discount codes or gift cards might help.
• Data overload. Having a large volume of customer feedback data is a great problem to have. But you need a clear way to parse it. AI-powered analytics can streamline the process of turning reams of data into valuable insights.
• Bias in feedback. Survey language and survey design matter for avoiding biased responses. Also, you want to ensure responses represent your entire customer base and not just a particular segment. If they don’t, trouble-shoot why that might be.
• Implementing change. Your structured feedback effort may yield a lot of areas to improve - possibly more than your service team can take on at once. If that’s the case, work with leadership to prioritise the various issues that arise. Then tackle them one by one.

The right feedback management software can make a big difference in customer satisfaction. To find a solution that meets your needs, consider the following:

1. Ease of use. Opt for software that’s simple for your team to use. Look for intuitive navigation, customisable dashboards and straightforward reporting.
2. Integration. Be sure your feedback management solution integrates seamlessly with your existing technology stack.
3. Scalability. Your solution should be able to handle your current feedback volume and scale with future growth.
4. Analytics. Prioritise solutions that help you quickly make sense of your data. Dashboards that serve up your performance metrics on a single screen are invaluable not only for service managers, but also company executives.
5. Customisation. Does the solution allow you to tailor surveys and dashboards to your unique industry and needs?
6. Cost vs. ROI. Consider not only the price tag of each solution, but also the value you’ll get for your investment. Evaluate how each option might improve customer satisfaction and drive business growth.
7. Customer support. Reliable support is crucial. Choose vendors that offer timely assistance, comprehensive training resources and regular software updates. A strong commitment to support will help you with implementation and beyond.

It’s well worth your time to listen and respond to customer feedback. Investing in the right customer management system will help you to do so more effectively - and boost customer satisfaction at the same time.