11 Ways to Get High Quality Customer Feedback


positive customer feedback

Your customers are your most valuable source of information when it comes to product design and user experience. That’s why we asked members from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question:

“What’s one method you use for getting high-quality customer feedback?”

Here’s what YEC community members had to say:

1. Follow Up

“Many, many more people are willing to give reviews than will actually bother to leave them. Asking nicely for them, usually in a follow-up email after service has been completed, works surprisingly well for generating reviews. No one is going to fault you for asking, and every new one is worth its weight in gold.” ~ Adam SteeleThe Magistrate

2. Use a Net Promoter Score

“Ask your customer the ultimate question: “From a scale of 0 to 10, How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a colleague or friend?” Followed by: “Why did you rate us that way?” It does not waste your or your customers’ time and it is measurable, actionable and allows you to compare how you do over time.” ~ David Henzel, MaxCDN

3. Ask Them Often

“Ask often and in the right places. Remind customers about the ability to leave reviews across multiple platforms and at a variety of times during their client experience. For example, we send convenient email reminders for feedback after each tutoring session. ” ~Chuck CohnVarsity Tutors

4. Send Emails

“This is an obvious option, but it’s often overlooked in favor of more contemporary approaches such as social media. Since the customer is communicating one-on-one, they’re less likely to put on a show (as they would on social media) and are more likely to give quality feedback.” ~ Andrew Namminga, Andesign

5. Ask for the Good and the Bad

“Every one of the 4,000-plus people who have traveled with us received a survey at the end of their trip. It’s easy to fill out and explicitly asks them what was we did well, but also what we did not do well. Especially as a founder, it can be hard to ask people what they don’t like about your company. But you absolutely must, because you’ll learn the most from the tough love.” ~ Cedric Hodgeman, UBELONG

6. Get Feedback on Third Party Sites

“We are an IT company and ask our clients to leave feedback on third party sites like Clutch.co, Greatagencies.com, Upwork.com, and Appfutura.com. These sites call or email clients and get a thorough feedback and publish it online. They ensure that feedback is authentic and high quality. Once published online, our prospective clients can read it. In addition, we get video testimonials.” ~Piyush JainSIMpalm

7. Connect With Key Customers

“Conduct both focus groups and one-on-one executive briefings for your key customers. We host ours over lunch so we can build enough trust and dialogue to cut through superficial feedback and really understand how to serve them better.” ~ Christopher KellyConvene

8. Use Anonymous Surveys

“We tend to shy away from social media for user feedback. It doesn’t give us the metrics we’re desiring to improve our business operations, and it can be an easy outlet for customers whom are vocal, but not necessarily constructive or helpful. Using surveys to ask specific questions has greatly improved our feedback loop and allowed us to improve our customer experience with much greater accuracy.” ~ Blair Thomas, EMerchantBroker

9. Ask the Right Questions

“It’s important to get honest and helpful feedback from customers, but you have to pose the right questions. It’s important to know what you’re doing right as well as what you could be doing better. You can ask pointed questions in emails, phone conversations and on social media. You may have to prompt customers. Ask what they do or don’t like about specific products/services.” ~ Shawn PoratFortune Cookie Advertising 

10. Create a Public Slack Group

“When I first started using Slack, I was impressed with such a useful product for team communication. However, I thought there would be more value in hacking the product to be an open forum for people outside the company. I asked my most active users to join the group to discuss topics related to the business in an open forum with custom integrations. I now have direct access to valuable feedback.” ~ Scott Weiner, ClosingBell

11. Train Your Customer Service Team to Have an Open Dialogue

“We train our customer service team to have an open dialogue on incoming calls with customers. This allows us to get raw, unfiltered feedback that helps us improve our product.” ~ Daniel LambertBoardVitals

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The Young Entrepreneur Council The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

4 Reactions
  1. Sometimes, customers will not act unless you ask them. So it is very important to constantly remind them to give you a review. This is the only way to get your testimonial.

  2. Have you tried giving an incentive for feedback? I am not so sure if it works though but it can encourage some people to give feedback.

  3. Stealth Translations

    This is very useful information.
    All of the methods mentioned above for gaining this type of feedback from customers are great. Some of which seems oddly simple but at the same time are key to ensuring that a business receives accurate insight and thus knows where to make changes if need be. Number eleven is an important one. By having a dialogue which open towards customers, this will help make clients feel at ease in order to share their thoughts about the service provided to them. A number of these helpful tips will be noted when requesting customer feedback in future.

    Thanks for posting.

  4. Great points! We found a major factor is reducing the friction in accepting the feedback. Make it easy for customers to share feedback and you will see a spike!