MCH Blog

Informal customer feedback provides an alternative way to listen to your customers, and is just as powerful and insightful to your organisation as feedback gathered through more structured feedback solutions.

But what exactly is informal customer feedback?

Informal customer feedback is essentially unprompted feedback, whether positive or negative, that a customer or client of a business gives to an employee or to the company itself. This varies from ‘formal’ or more structured feedback that is commonplace in a VoC programme, such as online surveys or telephone interviews which follow a set series of questions.

As informal feedback is given voluntarily by customers, it’s important to bear in mind that an average to satisfactory experience is far less likely to be talked about by a customer on social media or on a review website.

Here are our 5 top ways to gather informal feedback from your customer base:
1. Social Listening- Listening to informal customer feedback on social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Social media provides an open platform for customers to communicate directly with a brand – or just talk about them publicly. Many customers prefer this type of communication to a more formal approach, and monitoring across all sites will help you pay attention to what is being said. While still valuable, this form of feedback may not provide the depth of input that you can receive via a formal customer survey where we can explore a range of issues and probe further into the customer’s experiences.

2. Rating and reviews- Similarly to social media, many customers voluntarily leave feedback on review websites, such as Trustpilot, often giving a score out of 5 and leaving written feedback. Search engines such as Google now give customers an opportunity to leave comments, more than 45 million public customer reviews can be found on Trustpilot, and TripAdvisor has had over 455 million unique visitors – to name but a few! Use Google or any other popular search engine, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, review platforms, forums and communities which your customer demographic are most likely to interact on. . For example, customers are likely to leave feedback on TripAdvisor after a visit to a hotel or restaurant but may use specific forums to review a technological item, such as sites like Techist or CNET. Each industry will have its own individual review sites, so it’s worth spending the time to research and identify the websites that are most relevant to your organisation.

3. ‘Leave feedback’ button on your website- A ‘leave feedback’ button placed on your website gives customers the opportunity to voluntarily provide feedback about their experience at any time. The purpose of the form is to make it really easy for users to tell you when something isn’t working quite right or to leave a compliment – simplicity is key! Make sure you move the form around the page to see where you get the best response without interrupting the journey the customer is on. A feedback button can also form part of a more structured VoC programme approach, where customers can select the button and a form can appear with customised questions. Either way, keeping it simple and concise will yield the best results.

4. Ask your staff- Staff are on the frontline every day talking to customers and can be one of your greatest sources of knowledge. Schedule regular feedback sessions with your employees, whether it’s one-to-one or with separate teams within your organisation. Make sure to highlight the importance of their feedback and the value it gives to your business to encourage participation. If you’re having trouble getting your employees to open up, you can begin by offering them the option to give feedback anonymously such as through an online suggestion box or anonymous feedback apps.

5. Blogs and media- While not specific to individual customers, popular blogs and news can provide endless information about general customer trends in your industry and what your competitors are up to. The importance of being educated on the latest industry updates cannot be underestimated – businesses that are not informed of the latest industry updates also risk losing out to competitors by failing to deliver to consumers what they want. The more informed you are with the latest industry updates, the more likely you are to spot potential opportunities in your sector, such as new niches that companies have yet to explore. You’ll also be better prepared to see possible opportunities for growth in your existing business, as industry knowledge lets you identify changing buying habits, changes in styles and preferences or to see an increased demand in a specific area. Consider whether there are any published studies that will provide additional context to your customers’ feedback – e.g. benchmarking results.

As with ‘formal’ feedback, it is vital to ensure you respond to the informal feedback you receive, across all channels. Depending on the size and nature of your organisation, a person or team in place to handle social media queries is a must, and today’s customers will expect a fast response. We recommend using a Closed Loop Feedback process to ensure that issues are logged, responded to and learnings taken forward to improve future customer experience.

All of these forms of informal feedback can be easily integrated into our open-source VoC dashboards, and sit alongside formal feedback provided through more structured surveys to provide a holistic review of customer experience.

To find out more please contact Mark Barrett at MBarrett@watermelonresearch.com.

We’re all familiar with the animated classics that fill our television screens but how can this fun and creative process benefit your charity or business? There are many reasons why you should incorporate animation into your marketing plan, some of which we will explore in this blog, and we have helped countless clients use the latest techniques to make animation a useful and powerful campaign tool.

With over 40 years of combined experience, UP have created numerous online video campaigns incorporating motion graphics, character animation and CGI, often with live action integration.

Here we reveal a few reasons why you should consider an animated video…

Turn visits into real engagement

Research shows that the average user spends 88% more time on a website with video, and 1/3 of all online activity is spent watching video. People can be intrigued by an animation unfolding on the screen or a well designed infographic that can give impact to those figures and stats! Also an animated video can bring a potentially dry subject to life, like this animation about ethical investment.

Boost your link juice

As well as boosting traffic, incorporating an animated video into your website and social channels is also a great way to boost search engine optimisation (SEO). As well as attracting more links from other sites, video has been shown to be 50 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google than text-only webpages, whilst keywords can be added to the title and description to make your video and the brand behind it even more findable and sharable.

Go viral

Going viral is considered the Holy Grail of online marketing, and whilst there is no formula for viral marketing success, putting a creative video out there is a great place to get started. Other factors include timing, catching the zeitgeist and understanding your audience’s sharing habits. Our team of animated film makers work with you to develop a concept that works for your company and its audience, whilst adding a creative twist that has the potential to hit the viral high notes.

Within 24 hours, our video for The Vegan Society went viral with over 32,000 views which has since rocketed up to 137k views. Watch here

And finally, another key advantage of using animation for your website and social media channels? It is often cheaper than live video.

Wanna get inspired… look no further than here: helloup.co.uk

Or call / email Kate for a no-obligation chat:

kate@helloup.co.uk / 0207 251 6787

You probably know about the many benefits of using promotional products for your brand image, perception, awareness and promotion. They help convert prospects into customers and promote your brand; and also encourage customer loyalty.

Promotional products often serve as a business card and even formal representation. So, when selecting promotional products, at least one of the questions you should ask should be – How would I like our brand to be perceived?

Our thanks to the British Promotional Merchandise Association for information used in this article.

Quality and price.

Promotional products vary in terms of functionality, quality and price. However, not all promotional products are equally effective.

Generally, the cheaper and lower quality the products used, the more difficult it can be to make the branding elements when applied to the product look good!

What goes wrong?

When promotional products don’t perform, it’s very often down to them being poor quality. Here at Purple Promotions we focus on high-quality, but come across a lot of poor-quality products from other suppliers and think these are the top three issues:

1. The visual quality of the branding imprint or print is noticeably poor.
2. The colours don’t match those of the brand.
3. The product is flimsy, obviously cheap and tacky and the expectation is that it will probably break after a short while.

Top Tip.

Where you need to work to a budget – and who doesn’t, our top tip is, where possible, to buy fewer high-quality products than a higher quantity of poor-quality products.

No need to sacrifice quality for cost.

Clearly, you need your promotional products to convert well, to deliver a fair return on investment and oil the wheels of doing business with your customers. Consider the statistics from a recent study conducted by Promotional Products Association International (PPAI).

• 52% did business with an advertiser after receiving a promotional product.
• 55% kept their promotional products for over a year. (The products were probably high-quality).
• 1% reported that their impression of an advertiser was more favourable after receiving a promotional product.

These statistics show that you should carefully select the products you use to promote your business – from the higher-quality end of what’s available, because it’s unlikely that success can be achieved with cheap, low-quality promotional products.

The strength of a planned and sustained Press/Public Relations campaign is its ability to communicate, inform and educate through the perceived impartiality of the press.

A creative PR campaign will also reach audiences that cannot be reached cost-effectively through advertising. In short, PR will make a positive contribution to the promotional effort by reaching the parts advertising cannot.

These aspects of PR are important to reach and influence the widest possible audience. And the content generated via a press campaign can be used for so many other marketing acitivites including your website, email marketing, social media, etc.

Clearly your promotional objectives will not be achieved by simply issuing press releases. Yet with a great deal of information to communicate to a large number of people, PR should be an important part of your promotional strategy. To influence the widest possible audience and reach the broadest possible range of publications, PR must:

• Be planned and carefully targeted

• Present your messages in greater depth

• Challenge conventional solutions

• Stimulate

​Planned Targeted and Tailored Press Releases

Hundreds of press stories, features and releases are submitted to the media every day. To ensure that every press opportunity is fully exploited, the story should be immediately identified by the editor as relevant for his/her publication. We make sure that each press release is carefully targeted and tailored by making it relevant to each candidate media sector.

Pro-active PR for In-depth Editorial Coverage

PR planning at Cantillion King means regular contact with editors, journalists, bloggers, etc. to change press release opportunities into extended features. The stories are offered on an exclusive basis in advance of press releases. Meetings are arranged with important editors. Suggestions for articles are presented for consideration.

Challenging Conventional Solutions

Where possible press relations should be used to challenge conventional solutions in key product or market sectors. This helps to differentiate and provide positive reasons for customers to buy.

Stimulating Product PR

We will ensure that the PR programme is carefully regulated and that news releases are never dull! Each item should be newsworthy, stimulating and genuinely interesting. Photographs and applications information will be used to add interest to product stories and ensure that quality enquiries are generated.

Originally postedon cka.co.uk – https://www.cka.co.uk/approach