Feedback evolution

Since ancient times, any entrepreneur was particularly keen on the issue of receiving feedback from their customers. And this is not surprising, because it is customer reviews that form the optimal path for the development of the company and identify problems that periodically arise along this path.

And in order to understand and analyze the objective picture of the state of their affairs, companies use completely different ways and methods of obtaining feedback. In this article, I decided to put together all the main methods, identify their pros and cons, and eventually conduct a certain evolutionary process “From” and “To” in this area.

Let's start with the most elementary and primitive ways.

1.1. Personal communication with the client

The easiest way to get valuable feedback is to directly ask the client what he thinks about you, your company and some of its aspects. Ask a question - get an answer, everything is simple.

But here a number of problems immediately arise:
- The client may be ashamed to tell you an unpleasant truth in person and will “get rid” of you with wordings such as “Everything is good”, “It will do,” etc.
- It is difficult to keep hundreds of different reviews in your head, and it is even more difficult to bring them into a single objective picture. And one individual review does not mean anything because of its subjectivity.

So a slightly modified process arose:

1.2. Anonymous customer communication

This is when the founder of the company or manager pretends to be an ordinary employee or the client himself and talks with his customers on an equal footing. There is no constraint, and the client says everything as it is in reality. As a result, the company receives valuable information.

For example, while developing a taxi service, I myself called a car through it and talked with the drivers working with us, as if I were a regular customer. They themselves told me all the pros and cons of the service, working conditions and what customers come across. Golden information!

But here there are problems:
- Personal time. It is very small, especially among managers, so collecting feedback in this way is most expensive, because for any self-respecting leader, personal time is the most expensive asset. And business is created mainly not only for the sake of interest and high goals, but also in the end to gain freedom, and not work even more than hired work.
- Also, the question of how to structure a huge amount of information in your head and identify some patterns and priorities does not disappear.

1.3. “Email us”

A free, simple and harsh method of interacting with a client. It’s only suitable for completely beginner projects that do not have an extra couple of dollars for some kind of software or at least to create a neat and simple feedback form.

It’s possible to get some kind of feedback, but it’s obvious that not everyone wants to write a letter. And to structure all the wishes sent into something objective is almost nothing easier than sorting through handwritten reviews.

And based on these problems, feedback has evolved a bit into something more objective and perfect:

2.1. Survey forms

Companies began to distribute to their customers various questionnaires, which are usually proposed to fill out in their free time and bring on the next visit. For example, I was given such a survey at a bank where my company’s current account is serviced. But by the way, I threw out this questionnaire :)

This is just one of the problems of this method - people are just too lazy to fill out all these forms. They are already frightened from afar by the presence of many fields and questions. An image of himself arises in his head, sitting with a pen and painfully answering all this. Yes, and personal time is very pathetic.

In addition, another problem (but the manager’s problem already) is to collect all these leaflets in one pile and try to structure everything into one picture. It is long and rather difficult, especially if the questions do not imply answer options, but a free-form answer.

Faced with such problems, companies came up with new forms of feedback:

2.2.1. Quick polls

This is an option when the questionnaire is short and involves a quick response right on the spot. In this case, it becomes much easier for the client to leave an opinion and the percentage of reviews left increases. However, you have to sacrifice significantly that you will find out much less information on much smaller aspects of the company.

2.2.2. Telephone Surveys

Answering a question verbally is much easier than writing. Especially if this happens in the context of a client contacting a company.
For example, a customer called those. support, they helped him solve the problem, and at the end they asked one or more questions.

With this option, you can get even more reviews to make up an even more objective picture. But in order to really compose it, you will have to try: gather a meeting, listen to all the operators, listen to the recording of conversations if necessary, etc. This is extremely difficult.

In addition, there are still serious expenses - the wages of operators, software, and the necessary equipment for the whole process.

Since this is too difficult and costly a way to get feedback (although it’s already quite effective), the companies went further and came up with something better.

2.2.3. Electronic polls

It is much easier to answer an electronic survey than its written counterpart. Clicked the mouse here and there and clicked “Finish”. It is not necessary to write something diligently and look for where and to whom to leave the results of your overwork.
This is a big plus for the client. And for the company too - you can make a survey so that its results in the database themselves are structured and presented in the form of a finished table with the results.

However, there are some problems.
- Few of the clients are eager to genuinely help the company, having given 15 minutes of their already busy life to the survey.
- To make a whole system of convenient and enjoyable survey with summing up and statistics is a rather long and costly undertaking.

So another kind of feedback appeared:

2.2.4. Paid Surveys

There are special sites where you can create your own survey and pay to everyone who answers it. Moreover, the survey is offered not to everyone, but only to a certain group of people according to certain criteria.

Examples: anketka.ru , avtoopros.ru , etc.

Obviously, for some companies this method will be preferable. After all, you don’t have to create the whole polling system yourself, it is already ready-made on the side of the intermediary - the polling service.
And people already have the motivation to take this survey, exchanging a piece of their life for a certain amount of money.

But, unfortunately, not everything is smooth in this scheme either:

- Not quite the target audience of the survey. For the most part, these are people who simply want to earn extra money, and specifically your company, they, in general, do not care. Therefore, from these services, real benefits can be drawn by creating general social polls rather than narrow and specific ones.

- It’s very expensive to pay everyone for the answers. The amount spent can not always justify itself. And it is good if the results of this paid survey show a really more correct way of development, and not vice versa - they will lead away from it.

But despite the emergence of new problems and the unsolved old ones, the evolutionary path did not come to a standstill, but began its new phase 3.0! And this is what it is.

3.1. Online consultants

Not so long ago, special services appeared that provide software for communication between site visitors and a real live consultant.

Examples: pr-me.ru , consultsystems.ru , talkdriver.ru , onlinesaler.ru , etc.

A good plus here is that the software can do a lot - record and structure both questions and answers, collect the so-called “question base”, where the client can find a ready-made answer, etc.
In addition, this form of interaction with visitors kills two birds with one stone - it allows you to collect feedback and answer questions. And this is already very, very good!

Many problems are really fixed here. Online consultants can communicate with several clients at once, and it’s very effective due to various “tricks” of the software itself. Therefore, you do not have to pay as much as telephone operators, as well as for the telephone service itself.
Nevertheless, you still have to pay. And this amount is only possible for already established medium and large companies, especially if the goal is to provide round-the-clock support and break into the lead among a huge number of competitors.

Besides this disadvantage with costs, the obvious minus is the delay in responses. An online consultant is not a robot, but a living person, so he can’t give an instant answer, especially if he has left, I’m sorry, to pee.
Nobody likes to wait, and waiting is also very annoying for many, which is a drawback of this method. And you don’t particularly structure reviews here, because they are mixed up with questions, and we still have to disassemble, analyze, structure ourselves. Those. time is not saved.

Another problem of some (but not all) solutions in this area is the explicit imposition of a question form on the client. She literally jumps out of the corner and rushes right in the face, blinking obsessively with her animation. Very annoying.

However, the inventive spark of man moved on and reached ...

3.2. Robot Consultants

The idea of ​​such a consultant is that a certain database of answers is compiled and the robot gives the user an answer from this database.
The advantage is an instant response and huge savings on the salaries of living people.
But these pluses, unfortunately, fade and dissolve in one big minus: a robot, there is a robot. A dull, soulless creature that can answer complete nonsense. And in the matter of communicating with customers, this is a rather miserable solution that can scare customers.
Of course, a lot here depends on how carefully to compile a database of answers, but nevertheless, it is too difficult to model live communication and such “savings” can only do harm - you will lose customers.

3.3. Feedback forms

Recently, you can notice on many sites somewhere on the side of the button “Feedback” or “Leave your feedback”, etc.
When you click it, a form opens where you can report a problem, ask a question, offer an idea or express your sincere gratitude to the company for its work and products of this work.
The supplier of such a solution are several dozen companies at once and offer, in fact, the same thing, with slight differences in price and functionality.



Examples: userecho.ru , reformal.ru , copiny.com

Such a solution allows you to save money for the company, and your time for customers - after all, using this form is easier than looking for where and to whom to write an email or call. And this pleasure is very modest - from a freebie to several tens of dollars, depending on the necessary capabilities, such as integration with social networks and personalizing the form.

A distinctive feature is also that you can support your voice with other people's problems and suggestions, thus prompting the company to what you need to pay attention to first. Those. partially resolves the problem of prioritization in the wishes of users.

But solving some problems, such a service creates others. For example, it is very dangerous to keep valuable ideas of your customers (and even with priorities set), their problems and comments in the face of competitors. In fact, this exposes and makes predictable your future path. So, there is a risk that one of the competitors will overtake you, and also find your weaknesses.

In addition, in order for the client to express their opinion, it is necessary to log in, which many, of course, are too lazy. Digging into a huge database of answers, ideas, questions and suggestions - even more so. Perhaps, only ardent fans of the company are capable of this.

Also, as the owner of my company, I would like to somehow separate the feedback flows on different aspects of the company, as this greatly facilitates the analysis. But these tools do not know how.

However, the evolutionary process continued further.

4. Voting slider

This method allows you to create a slider of any color, size and with any question.
You can create different sliders with different questions for each aspect of the company and hang them on different parts of the site. On the main page you can ask about how interested the service is, and somewhere in the client’s personal account you can ask to evaluate the functionality.
As a result, reviews will be collected separately - for various aspects of the company and stored privately, under a password, away from competitors.

The client does not have to go through authorization and open many links. I just saw the slider and expressed my opinion in a few seconds. You can’t imagine any easier way.
A quantitative assessment is also assigned to the response and graphs of the average opinion and its dynamics are formed - it rises or falls. Thus, it becomes very convenient to analyze all the reviews and looking at the chart to look for the reason for the ups and downs of your company.

Example: uppza.com

True, and this method is not without cons:
- Sometimes inadequate reviews come across, because no authorization required. Although they can be removed so that they do not callus eyes and do not affect the statistics.
- You cannot answer a response by continuing the dialogue, as in software with online operators, so the solution is exclusively for the narrow task - to collect, structure and analyze reviews, and nothing more.

Nevertheless, at this stage of evolution, a significant step has already been taken: the client can easily and quickly leave his opinion, and the company will no longer suffer from the difficulties of analyzing reviews and prioritizing, because software does it himself. In addition, you no longer have to incur large costs to collect feedback, which is also a very good evolutionary achievement.

If to summarize, then in each method there are pros and cons. Nevertheless, today, each of the methods continues to be in demand. And perhaps the best solution is their smart and economical combination. And which one depends on the specifics of the company. Knowing all the ways and their pros / cons, each leader can choose the best option and strategy for himself.