Ecommerce Encyclopedia

‟Ecommerce is a powerful means to connect the unconnected to global trade” - Arancha Gonzalez

What is customer feedback management (CFM)

Customer feedback management (CFM) could be defined as web applications or portals which were originally designed for businesses to take ideas from customers feedback and bring them into reality in form of future products and/or developments. In this way, customers indirectly play a part in the first steps of the product development process. This customer-centered approach can help businesses grow.

CFM is an organized and central way for businesses to take customer complaints, ideas, suggestions or requests into consideration and develop new products based on them. The main goal here is to expand services and products in a way that is likely to appeal to customers by means of customers’ feedback. In this case, CFM software will collect, organize and analyze every feedback, which allows businesses’ ability to respond to market changes as well as to meet customers’ demands.

Key Characteristics of a Good Customer Feedback System

If your company is interested in a customer feedback application/system, it is better consider those following qualities and characteristics beforehand:

1. COMPREHENSIVE

In terms of features, customer feedback systems vary in types. Some of them are designed mainly for monitoring customer feedback and/or social media listening, while others are made exclusively for surveying customers.

The best and most extensive systems/applications are both versatile and scalable. They help companies capture, manage, and connect multiple types of customer feedback and data across every possible touchpoint, platform, and channel.

2. TIMELY

In today’s digital world, it is important to keep in mind that customer feedback is updated rapidly in real time. Therefore, there must be a certain feature of your customer feedback system that should be able to instantly deliver all the data that you need and notify you of any potential high-impact customer experience issues at any time. 

3. ENGAGING

The right customer feedback system should be able to unite everyone in the workplace by guiding them towards one big goal. Everyone has an important role to play in your business’ customer experience, they could be working in the marketing, product development department or customer support. Therefore, it is essential that the system that you opt for should be able to unite everyone towards the main goal of understanding customers better.

4. INSIGHTS-DRIVEN

Another important point to note is that customer feedback systems should not only be assessed by the amount of data they collect but also by the type of insights they come up with about your customers.

While some systems feature flashy user interfaces with colorful data reports and robust data collection technology and such, the one you actually have to choose is the one that could help you gain a better understanding of customer feedback and, from it, gather truly actionable insights.

Making a strategic investment in the most suitable customer feedback system for your business and leveraging data directly from your customers, it is totally possible for you to deliver greater experiences for your customers and set yourself riding high in this intense competition.