Empathica’s recent Consumer Insights Panel of more than 6,500 U.S. consumers found that despite a high desire to provide feedback, consumers are disenchanted by brands’ lack of responsiveness.
Key findings of the panel:
- Eighty-five percent of consumers have provided come form of feedback to retailers, yet only 46% believe this feedback is used to make constructive changes to the customer experience.
- Only 52% believe that feedback is shared with individual locations even though the majority (81%) of consumers feel that feedback should be shared with local managers as well as all of the employees.
- Eighty-three percent of consumers “agree” or “strongly agree” they would be more loyal to a brand if they knew a brand would act on their feedback. Feedback is currently one-way while consumers want a two-way dialogue. They want to know their feedback is being acted upon in ways that will drive meaningful changes to the customer experience at location they frequent.
- Two-thirds of consumers prefer to provide feedback online while only 13% want to provide feedback in person. Engage with customers where they prefer to engage. Any feedback is better than no feedback.
- Eighty-two percent of consumers are willing to provide feedback to locations they visit more often.
- Seventy-five percent of consumers are interested in seeing the feedback others provided about their brand experiences — hence the popularity of sites like Yelp. My wife and I recently attended a conference in Miami Beach. We based all of our dinner choices on Yelp and it worked out great.
A lot of retailers are failing to create the transparency, or even a dialogue, customers desire.
By empowering your employees, you encourage them to create a dialogue, put a face on the company and create and emotional link between your company and the customer.
What are you doing to promote a dialogue with your customers?
Are you using customer feedback to improve the customer experience?
Do you thank customers for their feedback and let them know what you are doing as a result of their input?
