Support Tools Archives | Customer Happiness Blog All things about improving customer happiness Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:05:46 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Customer Satisfaction Survey Tools: Our 13 Top Recommendations  https://www.nicereply.com/blog/customer-satisfaction-survey-tools/ Tue, 03 Oct 2023 08:07:34 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=18525 Measuring customer satisfaction is more than just a metric — it provides insights, drives improvements, and can cascade positive effects on nearly every facet of a business. Engaging customers through feedback can make them feel valued and listened to, deepening the relationship and fostering a partnership. Let’s review a list of customer satisfaction survey tools […]

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There’s a strong correlation between customer satisfaction and a company’s financial performance. Satisfied customers tend to purchase more, return more often, and bring in more revenue.

Measuring customer satisfaction is more than just a metric — it provides insights, drives improvements, and can cascade positive effects on nearly every facet of a business. Engaging customers through feedback can make them feel valued and listened to, deepening the relationship and fostering a partnership. Let’s review a list of customer satisfaction survey tools to help you understand clients’ needs.

Why it is crucial to measure customer satisfaction?

Measuring customer satisfaction is essential for many reasons, and understanding its importance can drive businesses to focus on customer-centric strategies. Measuring customer satisfaction provides invaluable feedback on what’s working well and what needs improvement. It can highlight specific product, service, or interaction issues that might be overlooked without direct customer input. To effectively gauge consumer happiness, businesses around the globe are investing in the best customer satisfaction survey tools available.

There’s a strong correlation between customer satisfaction and a company’s financial performance. Satisfied customers tend to purchase more, return more often, and bring in more revenue. According to statistics, 84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report increased revenue.

Why do businesses need specific software for customer satisfaction surveys?

Why do businesses need specific software for customer satisfaction surveys?

By utilizing the services of customer satisfaction survey companies, businesses can identify areas where they excel and aspects needing enhancement, ensuring customer loyalty and retention. Let’s explore why the best way is to consider investing in dedicated tools:

  1. Reach flexibility. Businesses can ensure they reach them effectively depending on where the customer engages most. For example, an eCommerce site might use email post-purchase for customer survey questions, while a mobile app might use in-app notifications.
  2. Consistent brand image. Dedicated customer survey software often allows businesses to customize the look and feel of the survey to align with their brand, ensuring a consistent experience.
  3. Integration with business systems. Customer surveys can be triggered based on specific actions, like closing a support ticket, to gather timely feedback. Insights from satisfaction surveys can inform sales and marketing strategies, allowing for more targeted campaigns.
  4. Engagement and user experience. Surveys can change in real-time based on responses, ensuring irrelevant questions are skipped and making the survey feel personalized.
  5. Automated feedback collection. The best customer satisfaction survey tools not only provide insightful data but also help in formulating strategies to boost customer contentment and retention. Automation ensures that every customer or a representative sample can provide feedback without fail. Automated customer surveys can be triggered by specific events, ensuring feedback is collected when experiences are fresh in the client’s mind. 

Customer satisfaction survey tools free up resources and time, enabling businesses to focus on making necessary improvements based on the feedback gathered.

Key features to look for in customer satisfaction survey tools

Relying on customer satisfaction surveys companies can free up businesses’ internal resources, enabling them to focus on implementing improvements and innovations based on the gathered data. When you’re on the lookout for optimal survey software to gather feedback from customers, certain key features become critical to ensure that you capture accurate, actionable insights:

  • Ease of use — the tool should be user-friendly for the person designing the survey and the respondents. Many online platforms offer a customer satisfaction survey template free, making it easier for companies to design and distribute their surveys without additional costs.
  • Customizability — you should be able to design surveys that match your brand’s look and feel.
  • Advanced analytics and reporting — real-time feedback collection and visualization tools.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS) capability — If you’re looking to gauge customer loyalty, the tool should be able to facilitate NPS surveys.
  • Follow-up mechanisms — the ability to set up automatic follow-up actions based on survey responses, such as sending a thank-you email, promotional offer, or even triggering a support ticket.

By focusing on these features and aligning them with your specific business needs and goals, you can identify the customer satisfaction survey tool that’s best suited for your business. Always test a few options to get a hands-on feel before committing to a particular solution. Companies on a budget can still receive crucial customer feedback by utilizing customer satisfaction survey tools free of expense.

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13 Top Customer Satisfaction Survey Tools

Nicereply

A dynamic customer satisfaction survey tool, Nicereply empowers businesses to gauge customer feedback seamlessly. Designed with user-friendliness at its core, this platform facilitates the integration of satisfaction surveys directly into emails and support tickets. By leveraging its robust analytics capabilities, businesses can delve deep into feedback, identifying areas of excellence and potential improvement. Whether you’re keen on measuring Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), or Customer Effort Score (CES), Nicereply offers an all-encompassing solution to make feedback-driven decision-making an integral part of your business strategy.

 

Nicereply customer satisfaction surveys

Google Forms

An intuitive and versatile free tool, Google Forms offers a straightforward approach to creating customer satisfaction surveys. Its user-friendly interface allows businesses to craft custom surveys quickly without specialized knowledge. With a suite of question types and design options, it caters to diverse feedback needs. Seamlessly integrated with other Google services, analyzing and sharing data becomes effortless. While it might not have the advanced analytics of dedicated survey platforms, Google Forms provides a cost-effective solution. When businesses utilize customer satisfaction survey tools free of charge, they can effortlessly collect feedback and understand their client’s needs and expectations.

Usabilla

Survey tool offers businesses a nuanced approach to gathering customer insights. Software customer satisfaction survey questions should be structured to gauge both the strengths and weaknesses of the product, offering a holistic view of the customer experience. Specializing in real-time feedback, this tool seamlessly integrates into websites, apps, and emails, enabling enterprises to capture the pulse of their user experience. With its visually-driven feedback mechanism, users can pinpoint specific elements on digital platforms, facilitating precise and actionable insights. Coupled with robust analytics and reporting capabilities, Usabilla stands as a holistic solution for those aiming to elevate their customer satisfaction metrics in the digital domain.

SurveyMonkey

The best customer satisfaction survey tools offer comprehensive analytics and insights, helping businesses of all sizes to continually enhance their customer service efforts and product offerings. As one of the leading platforms in the survey domain, SurveyMonkey offers an expansive toolkit for businesses keen on diving deep into customer satisfaction. Its intuitive design interface and a vast library of templates allow for quickly creating tailored feedback forms. The platform stands out with its advanced analytical tools, ensuring that businesses gather feedback and derive actionable insights from it. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, SurveyMonkey’s scalability and integration capabilities make it an indispensable ally in the quest for enhanced customer experiences.

SurveyMonkey

Qualaroo

As a specialist in contextual feedback, Qualaroo shifts the paradigm by delivering targeted survey prompts at pivotal moments in the user journey. This tool’s strength lies in its ability to seamlessly integrate with websites and apps, allowing businesses to solicit feedback without disrupting the user experience. Enhanced by AI-powered analytics, Qualaroo ensures that insights are gathered and intelligently interpreted, enabling actionable decision-making. For businesses eager to understand the ‘why’ behind user behaviors and preferences, Qualaroo emerges as an invaluable asset in the landscape of customer satisfaction survey solutions.

Typeform

Revolutionizing the survey experience with its engaging and interactive design, Typeform transforms the way businesses collect customer feedback. Its unique conversational approach to questionnaires ensures higher response rates, capturing the attention of respondents in a human-centric manner. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, Typeform offers a suite of powerful analytics tools, making the interpretation of feedback a breeze. Gathering feedback through software customer satisfaction survey questions is a strategic move for software companies aiming to increase customer loyalty and build a stronger brand reputation. Perfectly suited for businesses that value both form and function, Typeform stands as a beacon in the realm of customer satisfaction survey tools, ensuring every interaction leaves a lasting impression.

typeform lead generation forms

GetFeedback

Bridging the gap between feedback collection and actionable insights, GetFeedback is a premier customer satisfaction survey platform tailored to modern enterprises. Its intuitive interface allows for rapid survey creation, while its integration capabilities, especially with Salesforce, enable businesses to align feedback directly with customer profiles. GetFeedback is especially adept at real-time feedback capture, ensuring companies can swiftly pivot in response to customer sentiments. With its focus on providing a seamless and responsive survey experience across devices, GetFeedback positions itself as an invaluable tool for businesses keen on fostering genuine customer-centric growth.

 

SurveySparrow

Infusing the traditional survey experience with a conversational twist, SurveySparrow redefines how businesses approach customer feedback. Effective software customer satisfaction survey questions cover various aspects of the customer experience, from ease of use and reliability to customer support and problem resolution. Mimicking the fluidity of real-life conversations, its platform engages respondents in a dialogue-styled interface, leading to higher completion rates and more authentic feedback. Beyond its innovative design, SurveySparrow boasts robust analytical tools, providing businesses with insightful dashboards and actionable metrics. Its multi-channel support, from websites and apps to email and social media, ensures a holistic understanding of customer satisfaction. For businesses eyeing a blend of engagement and insight, SurveySparrow offers a refreshing take on the feedback collection paradigm.

Medallia

Renowned as a heavyweight in the experience management industry, Medallia offers a comprehensive platform tailored to unearth deep customer insights. Designed for businesses that prioritize customer-centricity, Medallia excels in capturing feedback across varied touchpoints, from digital interactions to in-store experiences. Its advanced analytics engine seamlessly transforms feedback into actionable intelligence, enabling organizations to anticipate and respond to customer needs with agility. With its commitment to real-time feedback and ability to integrate many data sources, Medallia stands as a beacon for enterprises aiming to elevate customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics.

Medallia dashboard

Qualtrics

Touted as a leader in the experience management domain, Qualtrics offers an unparalleled solution for businesses seeking profound insights into customer satisfaction. Beyond mere survey creation, the platform provides a comprehensive suite of tools designed to measure, analyze, and act upon feedback across multiple touchpoints. Qualtrics empowers organizations to proactively address customer needs and pain points with robust analytical capabilities, including AI-driven insights and predictive analytics. For businesses aiming to lead with a customer-centric approach, Qualtrics serves as an indispensable partner in harnessing the power of feedback to drive tangible improvements.

Feedbackify

Catering to businesses seeking a straightforward and focused approach to feedback collection, Feedbackify offers a no-frills platform that prioritizes ease of use. With its simple interface, companies can quickly set up targeted feedback forms, encouraging customers to share their experiences and suggestions. While it might not boast the extensive features of some competitors, its strength lies in its directness and efficiency. Feedbackify provides an intuitive category-based feedback system, ensuring businesses can rapidly identify areas for celebration or improvement. For those desiring a streamlined solution to tap into customer sentiments, Feedbackify emerges as a refreshingly uncomplicated choice.

Satmetrix

Positioned as a pioneer in Net Promoter Score (NPS) solutions, Satmetrix offers businesses a specialized platform to gauge and elevate customer loyalty. With a foundation rooted in data-driven insights, this tool provides a holistic view of the customer journey, identifying key touchpoints and areas of improvement. Its robust analytics and reporting capabilities transform raw feedback into actionable intelligence, empowering businesses to enact customer-centric strategies with precision. For enterprises aiming to lead with a loyalty-focused approach and foster enduring customer relationships, Satmetrix is an instrumental partner in pursuing excellence.

Jotform

As a versatile online form builder, JotForm extends its capabilities into the realm of customer satisfaction surveys with ease and finesse. Known for its drag-and-drop interface, JotForm simplifies the process of crafting tailored feedback forms to capture the essence of customer sentiments. Beyond surveys, its adaptability allows businesses to create various forms, from registrations to order forms, all under one umbrella. With a rich set of integrations and customization options, JotForm ensures that feedback collection remains a seamless part of any business’s digital ecosystem. For those seeking a blend of simplicity and functionality, JotForm presents a compelling choice.

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Implementing Feedback into Action

Customers will likely remain loyal to the brand when their opinions matter and lead to fundamental changes. When you build a system where customer feedback is collected and analyzed, it emphasizes the company’s commitment to customer satisfaction.

Once feedback is collected and analyzed, various departments within a company need to collaborate and decide on actionable steps.

  • Sales: they can adjust their pitch and understand potential leads better by recognizing what current customers love or dislike.
  • Product Development: uses feedback to tweak features, remove bugs, or even innovate new solutions the market seeks.
  • Customer Support: they can proactively address common concerns, enhance their FAQ sections, or adjust their training based on recurring issues.

 

An iterative improvement process involves making continual small changes to a product or service based on feedback instead of infrequent, more extensive overhauls. It’s easier to make small changes and tweaks based on timely feedback rather than waiting for a significant issue to pile up. Implementing software customer satisfaction survey questions in post-purchase or post-interaction surveys enables businesses to continually refine and enhance their software offerings based on real user feedback. Regular, minor adjustments reduce the risk of big mistakes that might alienate the customer base. If an iteration isn’t well-received, it’s easier to revert or adjust again. 

In conclusion, while generic survey tools might suffice for basic feedback collection, the nuanced needs of businesses — especially those with a significant customer base, varied channels of interaction, and specific branding requirements — make specialized customer satisfaction survey software an indispensable asset. A customer satisfaction survey template free of cumbersome language and complexity ensures that customers can easily provide their feedback, leading to more responses and more valuable insights.

Remember to evaluate each tool based on your specific needs, budget, and technical capabilities. It’s a good practice to take advantage of free trials or demo versions to get a feel for the platform and determine if it fits your requirements.

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7 Best Customer Feedback Tools for Websites in 2024 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/best-customer-feedback-tools/ Thu, 01 Jun 2023 06:22:00 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=18011 Customer feedback tools are essential in today’s competitive digital landscape for improving user experiences and driving business growth. These tools enable you to gather feedback directly from your website visitors, understand their needs, identify pain points, and make informed decisions to enhance your products or services.  Fortunately, numerous customer feedback tools available in 2024 can […]

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Discover the 7 customer feedback tools for websites in 2024. Enhance user experiences and drive business growth.

Customer feedback tools are essential in today’s competitive digital landscape for improving user experiences and driving business growth. These tools enable you to gather feedback directly from your website visitors, understand their needs, identify pain points, and make informed decisions to enhance your products or services. 

Fortunately, numerous customer feedback tools available in 2024 can help you collect, analyze, and act upon valuable insights from your website visitors. 

In this article, we will explore some of the best customer feedback tools for websites, highlighting their key features, benefits, and how they can add value to your business.

Why Should You Use Customer Feedback Tools?

First, let us discuss what a customer feedback tool can do for a business. It is widely known that being customer-focused is a major key to business success. 

A Deloitte study found a customer-centered organization may have 60% higher profits than its competitors. With customer feedback tools, you can achieve this customer-centric goal easier.

Let’s say you run an e-commerce website that sells clothing and accessories. You have been in business for a while and have a steady customer base, but you want to improve your website’s performance and increase customer satisfaction. 

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Understand Customer Needs

You integrate a customer feedback tool on your website, allowing customers to provide their opinions and suggestions regarding your products, services, and overall shopping experience. Through the received feedback, you discover that many customers are looking for more variety in sizes and colors, and they also express a desire for faster delivery options. Armed with this valuable information, you decide to expand your product training, range and partner with a reliable shipping service to meet customer demands better.

Identify Pain Points

The feedback tool helps you identify pain points in the customer journey. Customers frequently mention difficulties navigating your website’s search function and checkout process. 

With this knowledge, you make targeted improvements to streamline the search feature, simplify the checkout process, and remove any unnecessary steps. As such, customers find it easier to find and purchase products, leading to a smoother user experience.

Make Data-Driven Decisions

By analyzing the feedback data collected through the tool, you notice a recurring theme among customers—many express dissatisfaction with the website’s loading speed. Armed with this quantitative data, you decide to invest in optimizing your website’s performance, focusing on reducing page load times. 

As a result, customers experience faster and more responsive browsing, positively impacting their overall satisfaction and engagement.

Enhance Customer Satisfaction

Through the feedback tool, you actively seek and address customer concerns and suggestions. By promptly responding to their feedback, you demonstrate your commitment to their satisfaction

Customers appreciate your responsiveness and feel heard, leading to increased loyalty and positive word-of-mouth referrals. This strengthens your brand reputation and attracts new customers to your website.

Improve Conversion Rates

The feedback tool provides you with insights into user preferences, pain points, and areas of improvement. Armed with this information, you make strategic changes to your website, such as optimizing product descriptions, simplifying the checkout process, and adding customer testimonials. 

These improvements increase the overall user experience, making it easier for customers to find what they want and complete their purchases. As a result, your website’s conversion rates improve, leading to increased sales and revenue.

By utilizing customer feedback tools, you have gained a deeper understanding of your customer’s needs, made data-driven decisions, enhanced customer satisfaction, and improved conversion rates. These benefits have helped your e-commerce website grow, attract new customers, and increase profitability.

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How to Choose the Right Customer Feedback Tool?

When selecting a customer feedback tool for your website, consider the following factors:

Features

Look for tools that offer a wide range of feedback collection methods, such as surveys, polls, and user testing. Also, consider features like analytics, reporting, and integration options that align with your business needs.

Ease of Use

Ensure the tool has a user-friendly interface and intuitive survey builder that allows you to create and deploy feedback campaigns without extensive technical knowledge.

Targeting Capabilities

Choose a tool that allows you to target specific visitor segments or demographics to gather relevant feedback for informed decision-making.

Integration Options

Consider tools that integrate seamlessly with your existing systems, such as help desk software or project management tools, to streamline feedback management processes.

Pricing

Evaluate the pricing plans and subscription options offered by different tools to find one that aligns with your budget and provides the necessary features for your business.

When Should You Use Customer Feedback Tools?

Customer feedback tools can be utilized at various stages of your website’s lifecycle. Here are a few instances when you should consider using these tools:

Website Redesign or Launch

When revamping your website or launching a new one, customer feedback tools can provide valuable insights into the user experience, design, and functionality. By collecting feedback during this stage, you can address any usability issues or concerns before the website goes live.

Product Updates or Feature Enhancements

If you’re planning to introduce new features or make updates to your products or services, customer feedback tools can help you gather input on the proposed changes. This ensures that you’re meeting customer expectations and making improvements that align with their needs.

User Experience Optimization

You can use customer feedback tools to continuously gather feedback on the user experience of your website. By regularly collecting feedback, you can identify areas for improvement, make data-driven decisions, and ensure that your website provides a seamless, intuitive experience for your visitors.

Customer Support and Issue Resolution

Feedback tools that integrate with customer support systems can help you address customer issues and provide timely resolutions. By collecting feedback through support tickets or feedback forms, you can identify recurring problems and take proactive measures to improve customer satisfaction.

Post-Purchase Feedback

After customers make a purchase on your website, gathering feedback about their experience can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your sales process, checkout flow, and overall satisfaction. This feedback can help you refine your processes and optimize the post-purchase experience.

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7 Best Customer Feedback Tools

With all the factors mentioned above, we now give you the eight best customer feedback tools for websites in 2024.

Nicereply

Nicereply is a comprehensive customer feedback tool that enables businesses to measure customer satisfaction and gather feedback through various channels, including websites. With Nicereply, you can create and customize customer satisfaction surveys, feedback forms, and rating scales to collect actionable insights. 

nicereply feedback tool

The tool also provides real-time analytics and reporting features that allow you to monitor customer feedback trends and make data-driven decisions. Nicereply’s seamless integration with popular help desk software makes it a versatile solution for businesses of all sizes.

Qualaroo

Qualaroo is a user research and customer feedback tool that helps you understand the motivations and expectations of your website visitors. By utilizing targeted surveys and in-depth analytics, Qualaroo enables you to gather valuable insights about your customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points. 

With its advanced targeting options, you can present surveys to specific visitor segments, such as first-time users or returning customers, to gain a deeper understanding of their experiences. Qualaroo’s intuitive interface and customizable survey templates make it easy to set up and deploy feedback campaigns on your website.

Hotjar

Hotjar is a popular customer feedback and behavior analytics tool that offers a comprehensive suite of features to understand how users interact with your website. Its feedback collection features include on-site surveys, feedback polls, and customizable widgets that can be placed at strategic touchpoints to gather user opinions and suggestions. 

Hotjar also provides heatmaps, session recordings, and conversion funnels to visualize user behavior and identify areas for improvement. With its user-friendly interface and powerful analytics, Hotjar is a valuable tool for optimizing your website based on user feedback.

UserTesting

UserTesting is a user research platform that enables you to gain valuable insights by conducting remote usability testing with real users. This tool allows you to create tasks and scenarios for users to complete while recording their screen and audio feedback. 

UserTesting provides an extensive panel of testers who can provide feedback on your website’s usability, design, and overall user experience. By observing users’ interactions and listening to their feedback, you can uncover usability issues and make informed improvements to your website.

Usabilla

Usabilla is a customer feedback and user testing platform that helps you collect actionable insights to optimize your website’s user experience. Its feedback solution allows you to create custom surveys, feedback forms, and NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys to gather specific feedback from your website visitors. 

Usabilla’s visual feedback feature enables users to highlight specific areas on your website and provide detailed feedback, making it easier for you to understand their suggestions or concerns. The platform’s real-time analytics and reporting capabilities help you track customer feedback trends and prioritize areas for improvement.

Typeform

Typeform is an interactive survey tool that offers a unique and engaging way to collect customer feedback. Its sleek and conversational interface allows you to create visually appealing surveys that feel more like conversations than traditional questionnaires.

Typeform provides a wide range of question types, including multiple-choice, open-ended, and rating scales, enabling you to gather specific feedback from your website visitors. The platform also offers conditional logic, which allows you to tailor subsequent questions based on user responses, providing a personalized feedback experience.

With its seamless integration options and robust analytics, Typeform is an excellent choice for businesses looking to gather feedback in an interactive and visually appealing manner.

UserVoice

UserVoice is a comprehensive customer feedback and product management tool that helps businesses collect, prioritize, and analyze user feedback. With its feedback collection features, such as idea boards, feedback forums, and customer support ticketing, UserVoice enables you to engage with your website visitors and gather valuable insights.

The platform allows users to vote and comment on feedback, fostering a sense of community and collaboration. UserVoice also offers integration options with popular project management tools, allowing you to seamlessly incorporate customer feedback into your product development processes. With its robust analytics and reporting capabilities, UserVoice provides actionable insights that can drive meaningful improvements to your website and products.

Enhance Customer Insights and Drive Business Success with the Best Customer Feedback Tools

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, customer feedback is vital for businesses to understand their customers, improve their products or services, and drive growth. And if you’re wondering what you can do with a communications degree, leveraging customer feedback tools is one valuable application.

By utilizing the tools above, you can gain actionable insights, make data-driven decisions, and enhance the user experience on your website. This is particularly relevant for individuals with a communications background, as they possess strong skills in interpreting and effectively communicating customer feedback.

Remember to choose a tool that aligns with your specific business needs, offers robust features, and integrates seamlessly with your existing systems. With the right customer feedback tool in place, you can build stronger customer relationships, drive customer satisfaction, and ultimately achieve business success in 2023 and beyond.

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Unlocking the Power of Popup Surveys: A Guide to Improving Your Customer Effort Score https://www.nicereply.com/blog/ces-popup-survey/ Thu, 11 May 2023 15:20:01 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=17837 Popups are those annoying little windows that cover your viewing area of a website you just visited. Yeah… annoying. So why should anyone use them? Most of you have heard Sir Winston Churchill’s “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” It is a bit of a similar situation. Are popups […]

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A Little Bit About Popup Surveys: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Popups are those annoying little windows that cover your viewing area of a website you just visited. Yeah… annoying. So why should anyone use them? Most of you have heard Sir Winston Churchill’s “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” It is a bit of a similar situation. Are popups the best? No. But do we have anything better? Not really.

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The Good

Though you need a bit of technical knowledge or support to put them on your site, they are still quick and easy to implement. If you are handy enough, they allow you to gather data while customers are still engaged with your website or product. Their response rate is unparalleled. Depending on the tool you are researching, popup surveys perform easily two, three, or even more times (ranging from 10-30% response rate) than their subtler cousins: slide-out surveys or feedback buttons (with a 2-5% response rate).

(Slide-out: a small widget on the side or bottom of the page that can be triggered by various actions such as scrolling, clicking on a specific button, or hovering over the widget.)

The Bad

Popups get a lot of bad rep from all the “You are the millionth viewer of this page!” scam or similar click baits. Many customers might close them out of habit without even glancing at the content itself (just imagine the response rates if you could avoid this!). If set up incorrectly, popups can be a high-ranking source of frustration.

customer effort score

The Ugly (Yet Surprisingly Satisfying)

The ugly part is the in-between space of how to bring out the good and mitigate the bad. Popups are really powerful, but oh-my do they come with responsibility… For more on that, keep reading.

Or if you’d rather learn more about website surveys in general, or you are just looking for a muse on what to ask the people that interact with your website, check out article Best Website Survey Questions [+Examples].

Introduction to Customer Effort Score

Let’s talk about Customer Effort Score (CES) for a moment. If you’re interested in the background of CES and how and why it works, you can download our Ultimate Guide to Customer Effort Score.

CES ebook

For the purposes of this article, all you need to know is that CES asks a simple question: “How easy was it for you to solve your problem today?” It’s a metric that measures how much effort a customer has to put in to get their problem solved. The less effort customers have to expend, the better the score. We all want our customers to have a great experience and not be frustrated, so let’s work on improving our CES scores!

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Strategies for Implementing CES Popup Surveys (the ugly makeup)

 Let’s recap what we’re dealing with:

  1. Popup surveys can be annoying.
  2. Visitors may overlook them due to bad previous experiences.
  3. We’re focusing on “How easy was it for you to solve your problem today?” (though the following tips are generally applicable for other types of surveys as well).

To overcome the dislike of popup surveys, stick to the following simple principles:

Define your objectives: Determine what you hope to achieve with your popup survey. Have you identified a bottleneck where visitors start leaving, but you don’t know why? Is your customer support team overwhelmed even though you have an extensive knowledge base users should be able to use instead? Are you unsure about the seamlessness of your onboarding? Regardless of your reasons, be mindful of the question you are seeking answers for?

Timing: I cannot stress this enough – timing is everything. You want to display the survey while visitors are still engaged, but not when it could disturb them from their current course of action. This way, the survey can appear as a part of the experience instead of a disturbance. Some good examples would be:

  1. Survey your visitors after a purchase or conversion. It’s an ideal time to capture feedback from customers as they have just interacted with your brand and have a fresh experience to report on.
  2. Use an exit intent survey. Many issues with popups come from the fact that they tend to appear after a short time spent on a page or even right when the page is opened. Showing a survey when the user is about to exit gives them an opportunity to provide feedback before they leave without disrupting their experience. This can be especially useful for surveying your knowledge base experience.
  3. If you want to verify a specific process or interaction on your website, consider triggering a popup survey when the visitor finishes a monitored task. That way, the experience is still fresh, and though the popup grabs the attention, it feels relevant.

Frequency: Limit the number of times a survey popsup for a visitor. Keep this in mind both for repeating the same survey and for separate surveys on different pages. No one wants to answer the same question repeatedly in short time, and having a survey popup on every other page gets tedious even faster.

💡Quick Tip

I’ve got some feedback – what now?

Once you’ve received feedback, the next step is to analyze it and take action. Breaking down feedback into actionable data is key to making improvements. Look for repeating patterns and take note of any suggestions for improvement. Even if your CES score is low, using customer feedback removes the guesswork from the equation. When customers see that you’ve taken their feedback seriously and made changes, they’re more likely to become loyal customers.

It’s important to keep track of your metrics over time, even if you have good scores. If you notice a decrease, it’s time to identify the root cause and take corrective action. On the other hand, if you notice an increase in scores, it’s important to identify what you did right and replicate that success elsewhere.

Check out the customer story of Man Crates which is a great example of how to combine metrics to get a more complete picture. CES is a valuable metric, but CES + CSAT is even better. Adding NPS to the mix can give you a truly holistic view of customer satisfaction.

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Word in conclusion

Although popup surveys can be annoying, when used wisely and sparingly, they can become engaging and invaluable for your feedback loop. Just like fighter pilots rely on continuous feedback loops to improve their performance and avoid mistakes, businesses must prioritize feedback to identify areas for improvement and enhance customer experience. By collecting and analyzing customer feedback through tools like popup surveys and using it to make targeted changes, you can continually refine your processes and stay ahead of the competition.

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8 Best Front Integrations To Provide Better Support https://www.nicereply.com/blog/best-front-integrations/ Thu, 04 May 2023 06:07:00 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=13269 We love Front. Their app makes collaboration between different people and teams extremely easy. Instead of old-fashioned tickets, it puts conversations at the center of the entire workflow, making it that much easier to retain that special human touch when talking to customers. And we’re not the only ones who love Front. Over 5,500 customers […]

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Discover 8 Front integrations that offer enhanced support to customers and elevate the level of customer service.

We love Front. Their app makes collaboration between different people and teams extremely easy.

Instead of old-fashioned tickets, it puts conversations at the center of the entire workflow, making it that much easier to retain that special human touch when talking to customers.

And we’re not the only ones who love Front. Over 5,500 customers counting brands like Mailchimp, YCombinator, Stripe, and Shopify seem to think so too. Among their most recent accomplishments are a successfully raised $59M seed round from earlier this year as well as being listed in a prestigious list of in the world. For 3 years in a row! On the 21st place this year! The Front is definitely doing something right.

The Front continues to add new features, but sometimes you need a functionality that’s just not part of what Front aims to be. To solve this, Front integrates with 67 different apps to help its 5,500 customers execute their 4 different use cases.

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Why use Front integrations?

There are 2 main reasons why you may want to consider using a 3rd party app with Front.

You want features not available in Front

Front is a fantastic tool, but first of all, it’s a fast-growing business. To continue their scaling, they need to be laser-focused on what they do best, and as such, not every niche use case is going to make it on their roadmap. Using a 3rd party app integration can be a great way to acquire new functionality, like sending Customer Satisfaction surveys, sending SMS text messages or measuring Net Promoter Score straight from Front’s great UI.

You want to share data between different platforms

Chances are you are already using several different business platforms today. Your email campaigns live in MailChimp, your support conversations in Front, your sales communication in Pipedrive…

Having systems that don’t talk to each other is referred to as having your data in “silos”, and since no customer interaction happens in a vacuum, it is highly undesirable. One of the ways to remedy this is to integrate your tools via APIs so they can share information and communicate with each other.

Best Front integrations

To help you do that, we’ve compiled this list of the most helpful apps that integrate with Front, based on our personal experiences as well as customer reviews.

The best app to get customer feedback: Nicereply

4.5 stars on G2 crowd based on 302 reviews

Front is all about collaborating on customer conversations. But how do you know if your reply helped your customers or not? And how do you get better at resolving your customers’ issues over time? The answer is customer feedback.

Nicereply helps you collect customer feedback via email satisfaction surveys.

You can trigger the surveys automatically, after resolving a ticket or place them in the signature of every email you send out. This way you can measure the most popular customer service quality metrics – Customer Satisfaction, Customer Effort Score, and Net Promoter Score. Front’s very own support team is collecting customer feedback this way with Nicereply, measuring CSAT in every message, while surveying for Customer Effort Score after a conversation is closed. You can learn more about how Front uses Nicereply to provide a seamless experience in a case study we published last year.

What’s more, you can also see all this data within Front as a comment.

What do Nicereply customers say?

The best app to talk with your customers: CloudTalk

4.4 stars on G2Crowd based on 230 reviews

You can accomplish a lot over an email or a chat nowadays, but sometimes the best way to go is a good, old-fashioned phone call.

CloudTalk puts a modern spin on this and lets you both make and receive calls via their cloud call center solution. It comes packed with over 40 advanced call center features as well as 25+ integrations to help you set up a workflow that fits your business.

Every time you receive an incoming call, the caller’s profile with his entire customer history comes up, so you know who’s calling you and what to expect even before you pick up the phone.

What do CloudTalk’s customers say?

The best app to talk with your team: Zoom

4.5 stars on G2Crowd based on more than 30,000 reviews

I don’t think Zoom needs any introduction in 2020, but just in case you’re a hermit who’s been living under a rock for the past year, Zoom is currently the go-to app for scheduling and attending video meetings.
The Zoom integration for Front lets you quickly add a Zoom meeting when creating calendar events in Front Calendar, as well as start a call from the comments bar in a single click.

What do Zoom’s customers say?

The best app to help your sales/success team: Pipedrive

4.3 stars on G2Crowd based on 1,200 reviews

Sales and support teams come into contact more often, than most people realize. Oftentimes your new leads may be in touch with several teams at once. Your sales team may be trying to close the deal, your success team is working hard on onboarding the customer and your support team is there to make sure any problem encountered along the way is resolved as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

The problem is when these teams use different tools and thus have access to different information. Pipedrive’s integration for Front synchronizes information about contacts, deals, and activities between Pipedrive and Front and helps your customer data get out of those nasty silos.

What do Pipedrive’s users think?

The best app for eCommerce teams: Shopify

4.3 stars on G2Crowd based on 3,400 reviews

Shopify is the go-to platform to design, open, and run an online business. Their integration for Front lets you see data about your customers such as their address, orders or refunds directly in your Front inbox. This way you have all the information you need to get their order on track.

You can connect multiple stores with your Front account.

What do Shopify’s customers say?

The best app to text your customers: Twilio

While SMS texting has been surpassed by different IM platforms, like Messenger and WhatsApp, a simple text message can often cut through the noise in a way email never could. That makes them ideal for important notices and messages your customers shouldn’t miss.

Twilio integration lets you create an SMS channel in Front to manage your SMS messages alongside all your other channels.

Afterward you can send, receive, and reply to SMS messages directly from Front.

What do Twilio’s customers say?front integrations

The best app to keep everything organized: Trello / JIRA

Trello: 4.3 stars on G2Crowd; JIRA: 4.2 stars on G2Crowd

Yes, it’s a 2-in-1, but hear me out. Both tools come from the project management giant – Atlassian. Trello is a fantastic light-weight tool for organizing smaller teams and projects, while JIRA is a massive tool ready to carry an entire enterprise. It really depends on your team here, but both tools are fantastic for keeping your team organized and on track.

Trello’s integrations lets you pull up existing Trello cards for additional context, or create new ones when needed.

In a similar matter, integration Front with JIRA allows you to link, access, and create JIRA issues, set due dates, assignees to keep product ideas, feedback and requests flowing between different teams.

What do Trello’s users say?front integrations

What do JIRA’s users say?front integrations

Build your own support stack

These are some of the best tools you can integrate with Front based on our experiences, but there are many others out there. It’s now up to you to define what needs to be done to enhance your workflows. Integrating a new app is usually just a few clicks away from Front’s list of integrations, so don’t hesitate to start exploring!

Also if you think there’s a great app out there that we’ve missed, feel free to reach out to us at editor@nicereply.com to let us know! Have fun building your support stack.

The post 8 Best Front Integrations To Provide Better Support appeared first on Customer Happiness Blog.

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6 Best Chatra Chatbot Alternatives of 2024 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/best-chatra-alternatives/ Tue, 18 Apr 2023 06:04:00 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=17679 In today’s business landscape, customers have come to expect instantaneous assistance and customized encounters, making live chat a valuable tool for companies seeking a competitive edge. Choosing the right software can take time for small businesses that want to provide excellent customer service. If you’re looking for more Chatra chatbot alternatives, keep your eye on […]

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Boost your customer engagement with the best Chatra alternatives.

In today’s business landscape, customers have come to expect instantaneous assistance and customized encounters, making live chat a valuable tool for companies seeking a competitive edge.

Choosing the right software can take time for small businesses that want to provide excellent customer service. If you’re looking for more Chatra chatbot alternatives, keep your eye on the rich integrations list, availability through different channels and automation features.

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Key advantages to having a live chat on your site

By delivering high-quality live chat support, businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors and build a more substantial brand reputation.

Approximately 80% of internet consumers engaged with chatbots at least once a year, as per the survey results published by Userlike. Live chat facilitates real-time communication with a business and results in satisfaction levels of 73%, which is higher than the satisfaction levels of 61% for email and 44% for phone, following the statistics.

What is Chatra? 

Chatra is a live chat software designed for small businesses and e-commerce websites to communicate with customers in real time. It allows website owners to connect with visitors through live chat, email, and Facebook Messenger, monitor visitors’ behavior, track their location, and view their history of visits to the website.

One of the key advantages of Chatra is its user-friendly interface and ease of use. Let’s look at the most popular Chatra chatbot alternatives.

1. Zendesk Chat

Zendesk Chat is a live chat software designed to help businesses engage with their customers in real time. It enables businesses to connect with customers on their website or mobile app and provide personalized support and assistance.

Zendesk Chat offers a range of features to help businesses provide excellent customer support:

  1. Live chat. Through Zendesk Chat’s live chat feature, businesses can engage in real-time conversations with customers, facilitating the prompt resolution of customer queries and speedy solving of issues.
  2. Chatbots. Businesses can leverage Zendesk Chat’s chatbot builder to develop personalized chatbots that respond to routine customer queries and provide automated support.
  3. Email. Support teams can receive and manage customer emails in Zendesk Chat’s dashboard. This enables businesses to keep all customer communications in one place and respond to queries quickly and efficiently. 
  4. Mobile app. Zendesk Chat’s mobile app enables businesses to support customers on the go. It also allows businesses to monitor chats and manage support requests from anywhere.
  5. Integrations. Zendesk Chat integrates with various tools, including customer relationship management (CRM) software, email marketing, and Nicereply, allowing businesses to enhance their support experience. 

Zendesk Chat is a powerful software. Its range of features and integrations can be customized to suit the needs of businesses of all sizes and industries. One of the notable integrations is with Nicereply, which allows businesses to gather valuable customer feedback and insights directly from their chat interactions. One significant difference from Chatra is that Zendesk Chat offers a broader range of features beyond just live chat. It includes a comprehensive messaging platform that allows businesses to communicate with their customers, which makes Zendesk Chat one of the best Chatra alternatives.

Pricing: from $19/month

2. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a cloud-based live chat software designed to help businesses manage customer support and communication across multiple channels, including live chat, email, social media, and phone.
Here are some of the key features of LiveAgent:

  1. Live chat. LiveAgent offers a robust live chat feature that allows businesses to engage in real-time conversations with their customers, providing efficient support.
  2. Email management. LiveAgent enables businesses to manage all their customer emails in one place, providing a unified inbox for all communication channels.
  3. Social media integration. LiveAgent can integrate with popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, allowing businesses to manage customer queries and comments on social media within the LiveAgent dashboard.
  4. Knowledge base. LiveAgent includes a knowledge base feature that enables businesses to create and publish articles and FAQs to help customers find answers to common questions.
  5. Automation. LiveAgent offers automation features that enable businesses to create custom workflows and automate routine tasks, such as sending automated responses to common customer queries.

Pricing: from $9/month, a free version is available

3. Tawk.to

Tawk.to is a cloud-based live chat software that is available for free and helps businesses deliver real-time customer support through their website, mobile application, or social media pages.

There are vital features of Tawk.to:

  1. Live chat. By offering a live chat feature, Tawk.to empowers businesses to initiate real-time conversations with their customers and provide them with prompt and efficient support.
  2. Multi-channel support. Tawk.to supports multiple channels, including live chat, email, and social media, allowing businesses to manage customer queries from a single platform.
  3. Visitor tracking. Tawk.to includes visitor tracking capabilities, enabling businesses to see information about the customer, such as their location, browser, and previous interactions with the company.
  4. Chatbot integration. Tawk.to can integrate with popular chatbot platforms like Dialogflow and ManyChat, allowing businesses to provide automated responses to common customer queries.
  5. Customization. Tawk.to offers customization options, enabling businesses to customize the look and feel of their live chat widget to match their brand.

By utilizing Tawk.to, businesses can offer exceptional customer support across multiple platforms. Tawk.to is a great alternative to Chatra because it offers similar features, is free to use, and provides additional functionality, such as integrations with social media pages and mobile apps. 
Pricing: Free

4. Front

Front is a comprehensive customer communication platform with live chat functionality.

Here are some of the key features of Front:

  1. Real-time messaging. Front enables businesses to engage in real-time customer conversations, allowing efficient support and a seamless experience.
  2. Collaboration. Front includes collaboration tools, enabling team members to resolve customer queries.
  3. Automation. Automation features enable businesses to automate routine tasks, such as tagging and routing, allowing customer support teams to focus on more complex issues.
  4. Analytics. Front provides analytics and reporting features, allowing businesses to track response times, chat volume, and customer satisfaction.
  5. Integrations. By integrating with popular business tools, Front enables businesses to simplify their workflows.

Front live chat is a versatile solution that enables businesses to deliver excellent customer support across multiple channels. Front offers more advanced features, which makes it a suitable alternative to Chatra.

Pricing: from $19/month

5. Freshchat

Freshchat operates in the cloud and is intended to assist businesses in engaging in real-time conversations with their customers while providing timely and practical support.

Below are some notable features of Freshchat:

  1. Customizable chat widget. Freshchat’s chat widget can be customized to match the look and feel of a business’s website or branding.
  2. AI-powered chatbots. Freshchat’s chatbots are powered by AI and can handle routine customer queries, freeing up human agents to focus on more complicated issues.
  3. Analytics. Analytics and reporting features are available on Freshchat, enabling businesses to monitor and measure various metrics, including response time, chat volume, and customer satisfaction.
  4. Integrations. Freshchat integrates with various popular business tools enabling businesses to streamline their workflows.
  5. Mobile app. Freshchat has a mobile app that enables businesses to engage with customers from anywhere, at any time.


In conclusion, Freshchat is a competent and versatile live chat that empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support across various channels, enhancing customer loyalty.

Pricing: from $15/month, a free version is available

6. Olark

Earlier, we introduced Olark as one of the best customer service tools. Let’s see which features can compare Olark as a Chatra alternative. 

Olark is a live chat solution created to assist businesses in engaging with customers in real time while delivering adequate support. It is equipped with various features that can aid customer support agents in effectively managing chats.

Some of the key features:

  1. Customizable chat widgets. Olark provides customizable chat widgets tailored to match a business’s brand and website design. This helps to provide a seamless experience for customers and makes it easier for them to engage with support agents.
  2. Automated messages. Businesses can set up automated messages to greet customers when they land on the website or after a certain amount of time has elapsed. This can initiate conversations and provide a more personalized experience for customers.
  3. Chat transcripts. Olark automatically saves chat transcripts, making it easy for agents to refer to past conversations and provide more informed customer support.
  4. Organize data. Olark helps to organize customer data by providing customer support agents with access to real-time visitor insights and chat histories. Olark also integrates with third-party tools such as CRM systems and marketing automation software, allowing businesses to consolidate customer data in a central location and streamline customer support processes. Additionally, Olark’s reporting and analytics features can help businesses track customer engagement and monitor the performance of their customer support team.

Integrations: Olark integrates with various popular customer support tools, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk, making it easy for businesses to manage their customer support operations from a single platform.

Olark is a powerful tool for customer support agents that can help them manage chats more effectively and provide a better customer experience.

Pricing: from $29/month, a free version is available

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How to Create a Feedback Form [Best Practices & Checklist] https://www.nicereply.com/blog/feedback-form-checklist/ Tue, 11 Apr 2023 09:42:38 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=17598 Use these best practices and checklists to turn your feedback forms into key sources of customer insights for your business. Without customer feedback, you’re in the dark. No insights on what customers like or dislike about your product, the support they receive, or any other areas of your business.  That’s why using feedback forms to […]

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How can you create feedback forms your customers want to answer?

Use these best practices and checklists to turn your feedback forms into key sources of customer insights for your business.

Without customer feedback, you’re in the dark. No insights on what customers like or dislike about your product, the support they receive, or any other areas of your business. 

That’s why using feedback forms to collect your customer’s opinions is indispensable. 

The best thing about customer feedback forms is the insights they give you. But the second best thing is that they can be made by anyone, and usually don’t require many resources. Despite this fact, a lot of companies struggle with how to create feedback forms that consistently deliver. 

You can’t completely control if a customer will make it to the end of your feedback form, but you can make it easy by building feedback forms that are easy to understand, follow a logical flow, and avoid human bias. 

Learn the basics to master creating feedback forms so you can start learning directly from your customers about what matters the most to them. 

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What is a feedback form?

A feedback form is a tool for gathering opinions and feedback from the people who matter most to your success. That might be your customers, stakeholders, or patients. If you’re a teacher, it could be your students. If you’re an employer, that might mean your employees.

Types of feedback forms

You’ll send a different form depending on the information you’re after, such as measuring how loyal customers are or why they stop using your product. There’s an infinite amount of ways you can build a feedback form, but these are some of the most common feedback forms you can find:

  • CSAT: A CSAT score measures customer satisfaction with a product, service, or customer support interaction by asking: “How satisfied were you with [company]?” It’s typically measured as a percentage score. 
  • NPS: Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys measure loyalty and satisfaction by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your product to others. 
  • CES survey: Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric that measures how much effort a customer has to exert to use a product or service on a scale of “very difficult” or “very easy.”
  • Churn survey: A churn survey attempts to uncover why a customer stopped using your product or service. 
  • PMF survey: Product-market fit (PMF) measures your product or service’s importance and relevance to customers. PMF surveys ask customers how they’d feel if they could no longer use your product.

How to create an effective feedback form 

One of web usability’s golden rules is, arguably, “don’t make users think.” It’s a reference to the book of a similar title by Steve Krug. And you can apply the same logic to feedback forms. 

When you’re designing a feedback form, you should make it as easy as possible for customers to fill in a form until the end. Any extra clicks, mandatory open-text questions, or images that take too long to load will undercut your feedback form’s success. 

For this reason, ease of completion should be at the forefront of all feedback forms—no matter your goal. Any extra effort required, even if it seems negligible, means losing respondents along the way. 

Make it easy.

We’ll look at specific best practices next, but keep this mantra in mind along the way.

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Best practices when creating customer feedback forms

1. Use simple language and avoid bias

You might think that because you’re sending your feedback form to a group of professionals, you have the license to write long, complex questions. You’re wrong.

Readers, no matter their expertise, are busy. They scan, not read. According to research, about 79% of users scan new pages; only 16% read word-by-word. Your feedback form should use clear language and specific and direct questions. “How satisfied are you with the response time of the customer support team?” is better than “What has your experience been working with our customer support team?” 

In this example from Slack, sentences are conversational and easy to understand. 

When choosing your words, aim to minimize survey bias. Instead of asking, “How great was your experience with our customer service team?” ask,  “On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied were you with our customer service team?”

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2. Keep it short for more responses

Survey fatigue is a real thing. 

The more questions you add to your feedback form, the more likely you’ll tire your audience out. That means lower response rates and fewer insights. To avoid this, eliminate superfluous questions and focus on what’s most important. 

For example, surveys often waste precious space by explaining to users what they will see on the next question. Avoid that—just explain each question as it comes. 

Ultimately, it’s about finding the balance between collecting enough information for you to act upon while not overwhelming users so much that they leave your feedback form early.

You may use QR codes as well to collect feedback. These codes are easy to use and can be created easily using a QR code generator.

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3. Show a progress bar 

Most people that take time out of their day to start a survey actually would like to finish it. By showing a progress bar, you’ll give customers a better feeling of how long they’ll need to complete it. 

Imagine you only have one question left. You’ll likely make that extra effort to finish it, right? However, if you have no clue how many questions are waiting for you—maybe two, maybe twelve—you’re probably more likely to drop out. 

It’s also super helpful to let users know how long it’ll take to complete your feedback form. This transparency sets clear expectations for your customers.

The example below, from the newsletter Dense Discovery, offers respondents a glimpse of what’s left:

4. Keep your audience in mind

Who will be answering your feedback form determines many factors, such as the time to send it, length, type of questions, etc. Perhaps you’ll send the survey via email or as a survey pop-up on a website

For example, this example from Nicereply is aimed at their blog readers. The goal is to know how valuable articles are for their audience.

It does that by asking a simple question at the bottom of each blog post. Users can then provide extra context (if they want) or just send the rating as-is:

5. Customize your feedback form 

Your feedback form is part of your business. As such, it should be on brand. Think about your brand’s language and colors—your users should be able to recognize it’s from you just by looking at your survey. 

If you can’t fully customize your feedback form, at least ensure you sound like your brand by using the same tone of voice.

Here’s a great example: Remote.com sends an email asking about the quality of the support received using their brand colors and voice:

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6. Find out the best time to send the feedback form

When you send your feedback form has a big impact on how many responses you’ll receive. Some general guidelines are below, but you should experiment with different approaches to see how it impacts your response rate. Transactional surveys like CSAT or CES may be best to send immediately, whereas other feedback forms might be better on a more delayed cadence.


For email surveys, experts suggest that just after lunch or in the evening (between 6 pm and 9 pm) are often the best time. Midweek—Tuesday to Thursday—is often when emails see the most engagement.

If your survey is triggered by a certain action—like a customer making a purchase—you need to decide when to send your follow-up survey.  For instance, you might send an NPS survey to measure their likelihood to refer exactly one week later. Wait longer than that and your customers might have forgotten the experience; send it earlier and they might not have received your product yet. 

In the example below, the clothing brand The Reformation sends an NPS feedback form via email exactly a week after a purchase:

7. Consider both closed and open-ended questions

Open-ended survey questions let respondents write whatever they feel, while closed-ended surveys give people choices, such as Yes/No or a rating within a scale. 

Closed-ended questions are faster to answer and analyze than open-ended feedback. They’re great for gathering quick, standardized, quantitative feedback from respondents.

Open-ended questions take longer, but they can provide much more color and context than closed-ended questions. They often enable you to discover issues that haven’t been flagged before. 

As a general rule of thumb, be mindful about making open-ended questions mandatory. Because they take more effort to answer, this can lead to people dropping out. 

Just like many other best practices on this list, the “right” type of question depends on the purpose of the feedback form you’re creating. Many businesses opt to use both types of questions, making the closed-ended question mandatory and the open-ended question optional.


For example, Miro lets users rate their help center using five emojis. This 1-5 scale makes rating easy and fast to quantify. If they’d like, respondents can then add more context in their own words.

feedback form

8. Give respondents a reason (or incentive) to fill out your form

Time is golden, so not everyone will be willing to spend it on one of your feedback forms. 
You can get more people to respond to your feedback requests by offering a clear reason why they should. This can be as simple as highlighting the impact: This feedback will be used to shape our product roadmap for the next six months. Another way to encourage more answers is by providing incentives, such as a gift card or a voucher. Airline Ryanair.com does the latter by offering respondents the chance to win a €100 gift card.

9. Use logical ordering

Your feedback form should flow in a way that makes sense. Don’t ask for product experience feedback after a user responds that they’ve never used your software. 

Here’s the best way to do this:

  • Start by briefly introducing why respondents should complete the survey (“We want to learn why you canceled your subscription so we can improve”).
  • Lead with general questions and move to more specific ones. 
  • Unless you need to screen out participants, it’s often best to place questions that collect personal information—like an email address—at the end.

For longer surveys, it’s often helpful to create a  spreadsheet with the type of questions (multiple choice,  Yes/No, free text, etc.) and the logical ordering (for example, if the answer to question 6 is > 7, jump to question 9). 

This step might seem unnecessary, but you’ll save time as you’ll make any tweaks to the logical flow before you’ve invested time in creating your feedback form.​​

10. Test your feedback form internally 

After building your feedback form, test it internally before sharing it with your customers. This is super critical if you’ve built out complex logical flows

If your survey is so long or confusing that your colleague gets tired of answering it, you have little chance your customers will bother to spend time on it. Internal tests may only take a few minutes, and they give you a prime chance to catch and fix mistakes before it’s too late.

This mobile survey form from Facebook gathers feedback on its Messenger app:

Checklist to create a feedback form

Next time you need to create a feedback form, follow this simple checklist to set yourself up for success:

  • Choose the goal of your survey 
  • Determine your audience and the best time to send your form (or commit to experimenting)
  • Pick the questions you’ll use (open or closed, multiple choice, dropdown…)
  • Use clear and simple language on your form
  • Customize your feedback using your brand’s colors and voice
  • Fix any mistakes by sending a test survey internally
  • Make your form public and start collecting feedback

Other form examples:

  • Wrike:
  • Confluence:
  • Loom:

Creating stellar feedback forms 

One of the best ways to make positive changes to your business is by asking customers for honest feedback. 

The insights from these requests help you prioritize and act strategically. While one-on-one conversations with customers are wonderful, feedback forms are the best way to get firsthand information from your customers at scale.

When you’re creating a feedback form, don’t start from scratch. Instead, use these best practices to create a feedback form that is easy for customers to answer and will deliver the insights you’re looking for. Remember: always make it easy for your customer to share feedback!

If you’re looking for the easiest way to gather effortless customer feedback, start a free trial of Nicereply today.

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An Expert Guide to Auditing Your Customer Help Center https://www.nicereply.com/blog/customer-help-center-audit/ Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:08:00 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=17521 …but it’s a foundational way to improve your customer experience and scale your customer support team. What’s the first line of defense in a business? People often assume it’s your customer support team—but they’re wrong. Your first line of defense is actually your help center. Most customers look for answers in your help center before […]

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Running a regular help center audit is often overlooked,  

…but it’s a foundational way to improve your customer experience and scale your customer support team.

What’s the first line of defense in a business?

People often assume it’s your customer support team—but they’re wrong. Your first line of defense is actually your help center.

Most customers look for answers in your help center before they contact support. If your support contact options are integrated and well-designed, help articles should automatically be suggested to customers who try to contact you without checking your help center too.

That means it’s worth making the time to ensure your help center performs at its best.

The question is: How do you build a great customer help center? 

And the answer is quite simple: Running a regular audit. 

An audit is a systematic evaluation of your help center based on an agreed set of criteria to identify areas for improvement. That might sound tedious, but it can make a huge difference to your customer experience.

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Why you should audit your help center

Customer help centers have become such a standard part of customer support that almost every company publishes one as soon as they’re able—and with good reason.

If 70% of your customers look for a help center before writing support, you’d miss out on a massive opportunity by not having one.

Of course, the first step is creating a customer help center. It’s tempting to spend forever trying to create a perfect help center, but it’s better to give it your best shot and launch quickly.

In many ways, launching a help center is similar to building a new product: you can build for years and hope everything is perfect when you launch, or you can launch a minimum viable product quickly, get customer feedback, and improve from there. History shows us that launching quickly and getting real customer feedback is almost always the best bet. 

Once you’ve launched your help center, it’s time to shift towards making it better every day. And that’s where a help center audit makes a big difference.

Auditing your help center will:

  • Ensure that your content remains up to date
  • Enable you to improve help content based on customer usage

Both are essential in helping you level up your knowledge base’s performance over time. 

Keeping your help center content up-to-date 

Say you’re a customer with a simple question about how to use a feature in a piece of software. 

You go to that company’s help center and find the pages describing that feature. Then you see that the screenshots look nothing like the product you’re using. None of the UI elements—like button descriptions—match up, so you can’t find an answer to your question. Eventually, you give up and contact support.

Products evolve all the time. It’s how things work, But even when you include help center updates in your release process, it’s easy to miss articles here and there. Your help center audit finds and corrects these accidental oversights.

Adjusting your help center based on customer usage

Writing a help center article involves research, but also has some element of guesswork. If you’re basing the content on existing support tickets, you have some idea of what customers are asking but you can’t know if the way you present the answer is as helpful as it could be.

You can only figure that out when you see how customers interact with the content you’ve created. An audit is a good way to ensure that the customer feedback you receive results in improvements to your articles.

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The 3 elements of your help center you should regularly audit

The success of your help center audit depends on what you review. The more specific you are in your review process, the easier it is to see the improvement opportunities.

A good audit involves:

  • Evaluating the content quality
  • Analyzing customer interactions
  • Assessing your help center’s structure

Evaluating your help center’s content quality

Evaluating the content quality is the most important part of a help center audit. This process includes:

  • Checking its relevance and accuracy. Help center content should be up-to-date, correct, and useful for customers—or else what’s the point? Each article’s title should accurately reflect what it’s about. The title makes a promise, and the article should deliver on that promise.  
  • Improving the tone and readability. Every article should be written in a way that’s simple, easy to follow and understand, and free of jargon. 
  • Improving the formatting and visual aids. Proper structure makes a big impact on how easy to read a piece of content is. If you’re using screenshots, images, or videos, your audit should include making improvements to these. 

If you notice any recurring patterns with these, a content standard is a tool that can dramatically improve the consistency of the content you’re publishing to your knowledge base. 

Content quality is the biggest piece in determining whether your help center is successful or not. Since most customers use your help center as the first step in resolving issues, having user-friendly knowledge base articles available will transform your customer support experience. 

Analyzing customer interactions with your help center

Analyzing how your customers interact with the help center unlocks a treasure trove of information you can use. 

You might look at customer satisfaction metrics, such as CSAT or NPS, to identify patterns and see what your customers say about the articles they interact with. You can also use help center analytics, such as user flows or the article-to-ticket conversion rate, to target specific topics. 

If customers often ask questions covered in your help center, you probably need to experiment with different ways to present that existing information and to make it more searchable.

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Assessing your help center’s structure

The final area of your help center to check in your audit  is the overall structure. This can cover:

  • The navigation. Simplifying the navigation and reducing the number of clicks required to access information makes it more likely that customers will find the information they need. 
  • The layout. A visually appealing layout and design increases customer engagement.
  • How content is categorized. Intuitive and consistent categorization isn’t easy to achieve but makes content easier to find.
  • Search functionality. The more accurate and relevant the results are, the more customers will use the help center.

Keep in mind that the right structure for your help center today might not be the structure you need a year from now.

How to conduct a customer help center audit

Conducting a help center audit can feel overwhelming, especially if you have multiple products and a robust knowledge base. If you aren’t careful, audits can become one of those endless projects that drag on from quarter to quarter due to the workload. 

The trick to an effective audit process is to break it down into small steps, each ruthlessly focused on a single goal at a time. The basic steps involved are always the same, irrespective of the size of your help center:

  1. Establish audit objectives.
  2. Assemble a team.
  3. Review articles.
  4. Implement changes.
  5. Report and debrief.
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Establish audit objectives

Start by asking: What do you want to achieve from the audit? What specific areas of the help center do you want to evaluate? 

It’s often tempting to try to review everything in the help center. That might not be necessary if you have a more specific objective based on your support center KPIs

Some examples objectives for your help center audit might be:

  • Improve customer satisfaction. This might involve looking into helpfulness ratings or feedback from customer surveys and focusing only on improvements that impact customers. 
  • Improve knowledge management. The goal would be to improve how knowledge is captured and found, for example, by focusing on search terms and clickthrough rates. 
  • Increase ticket deflection. Deflection starts with tickets that ask questions that could be resolved through self-service, then backtracking to see how and why those tickets were created. 
  • Ensure consistency. If you have a new set of brand guidelines or a content standard to apply, ensuring that the content matches makes your help center experience more consistent.
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Assemble a team

The ideal team size for your audit depends on what you want to achieve. It’s often a good idea to include at least two people in the auditing process since they can support and challenge each other.

However, introducing too many voices can slow the process down. Find the right balance based on your audit objectives and the other priorities for your support team

It may go without saying, but team members involved in auditing your help center should have a good understanding of the current help center and should be experienced in customer support. If possible, adding in perspectives from teams like sales, marketing, or product design can provide really valuable insights.

Review help center articles

It’s tempting to review articles and apply changes simultaneously. While this might work if you’re only making minor updates, doing a comprehensive rewrite while reviewing an article involves task and context-switching—which usually slows you down.

That’s why it’s often best to focus on reviewing first. 

How to structure and get started with your review process depends on your objective. Here are four direct approaches you can use:

  • Make a list of product updates since the last audit and prioritize the articles related to those.
  • Start with the top viewed articles and apply a new content standard or stylistic changes to those first.
  • If your goal is to cull content and make the help center leaner, then start with your least viewed content.
  • Focus on articles that lead to the most ticket creation, and use feedback from those to improve the content of other articles.

Checklists are your best friend when auditing your help center: 

  1. Create a checklist covering all the aspects your team should check in each article.
  2. You can use a rating system for more nuance and to make reporting easier afterward (although the tradeoff is that this requires more training up front). An example would be rating the clarity of the images in each article. 
  3. Track progress in a shared tool, like a Google sheet. 
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Implement changes

Once all articles are reviewed, you can start editing them. It can be helpful to separate these updates into different types of updates and tackle each category individually. 

This might be:

  • Small updates to fix terminology and links
  • Splitting articles that cover too much content.
  • Rewriting an article completely because the feature it’s about has changed considerably.
  • Archiving or deleting articles that are no longer relevant.

Finding a tool that enables you to make bulk updates (such as Help Center Manager for Zendesk) can make this step way faster. 

Report and debrief

It’s always good practice to debrief at the end of a project. This allows you to gather insights while they’re fresh so that you can change the process and be more efficient next time you audit your help center. It’s also motivating to have an overview of the changes made and a new baseline to track how your updated articles perform over time.

Continuous evaluation is key to a successful help center

The most successful help centers are lean and agile. 

Continuous and incremental improvement over a long period results in a help center that massively impacts your customer experience. It’s how you build a support experience that’s scalable and efficient—and most importantly, one that customers love. 

Regular help center audits are a key tool in the maintenance and evolution of your help center. If you aren’t already doing them, there’s no time like the present to get started!

The post An Expert Guide to Auditing Your Customer Help Center appeared first on Customer Happiness Blog.

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The Advantages and Challenges of Implementing AI in Customer Service https://www.nicereply.com/blog/ai-in-customer-service/ Tue, 21 Mar 2023 07:57:04 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=17472 According to McKinsey & Company, 52% of respondents at companies reported: their organizations invest more than five percent of their digital budget in artificial intelligence. Furthermore, 63% say they expect to increase investments in AI in the next three years.  If AI still needs to be part of your workflow today, you can expect your […]

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What challenges can Customer Success teams face during the implementation of artificial intelligence?

According to McKinsey & Company, 52% of respondents at companies reported: their organizations invest more than five percent of their digital budget in artificial intelligence. Furthermore, 63% say they expect to increase investments in AI in the next three years. 

If AI still needs to be part of your workflow today, you can expect your customer success team to be augmented with a digital assistant tomorrow. Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in customer service is a rapidly growing trend, with many businesses seeing the advantages of utilizing technology to provide better customer support. 

Global tech giants confirm the stability of the direction and increasing demand for AI products. Recently, Alibaba announced that it is testing its solution that could become a rival to ChatGPT. Chatbots and voice assistants are already used in customer work, especially in repetitive and routine tasks. 

Engaging digital assistants can be challenging, but there is an advantage to working with AI for every invocation. The key to successfully implementing AI in customer service is clearly understanding the current capabilities, potential benefits, and risks.

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Challenge: It takes time to customize to business specifics

Depending on the size and specifics of the business, a chatbot’s initial setup and testing may take some time. Effective team interaction with the new tool is equally important. A careful and attentive setting is the key to successful work with AI in the support team. AI implementation for customer service can be costly due to the need for specialized software and hardware, as well as ongoing maintenance and training. Depending on the project’s complexity, it could take months or years to implement AI technologies into customer service operations fully. Additionally, AI implementation may require significant upfront investments, and an organization may need to hire experienced personnel to ensure its successful deployment. For efficient AI integration in customer service, partnering with top AI development companies is crucial.


Building effective interaction between a customer and a digital assistant at different customer touchpoints may be beyond the competence of the Customer Success team. In such cases, a new in-house support specialist or outsourced experts are involved. Businesses interested in working alongside AI can train employees to ensure they have the necessary skills and feel comfortable with new instruments.

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Advantage: Automates customer service and saves time

AI technology can automate various tasks associated with customer service and significantly reduce the time it takes to answer inquiries and resolve issues. A well-configured bot or voice assistant will handle routine support tasks and frequently repeated inquiries. Moreover, it is available 24/7. By automatically responding to customer inquiries, AI chatbots can provide more instant responses and move the conversation to a human representative if necessary. If the issue requires the involvement of a specialist, you can assign the bot to collect the initial information. Such interaction is effective for both customers and businesses. 

An example of automation involving AI is a lead funnel: a bot will recommend relevant content, automatically send lead magnets, and calculate the probability of selling additional services.

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Challenge: AI needs human supervision and audit

Recently, journalists asked ChatGPT whether it could replace humans. AI honestly admitted that it requires human supervision and direction to operate effectively. In customer service, it is also necessary to supervise the work of digital assistants to ensure that they are consistent with the level of service accepted by the company. Regularly checking the correctness of the bot’s work will allow you to make timely adjustments to its behavior patterns.

AI is still developing, so it is not as capable as a human at understanding complex requests, identifying and addressing customer needs, and responding in a way that meets customer expectations. As a result, AI can make decisions without proper oversight, which leads to poor customer experiences, outcomes, and potential legal liabilities. To ensure AI is used correctly and ethically, companies must have internal processes to audit and monitor AI-driven customer service solutions and responses.

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Advantage: AI helps to engage customers and encourage interaction

A digital assistant can offer help, generate customized content recommendations, follow up on client interactions, and remind customers of product features. If you want to provide stellar customer service, AI can be a tool to achieve this goal. According to the Epsilon research report, 80% of respondents said they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences. 


AI-powered chatbots can answer customer questions quickly and accurately, while AI-powered predictive analytics can help to identify and resolve customer service issues before they become a problem. AI can also help to create better customer segmentation and more personalized customer experiences.

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Challenge: Keeping customer data safe and secure

To provide quality support and customer service, you must connect to a CRM and provide sensitive personal data to the assistant. Therefore, the security of customer data is one of the company’s most critical challenges.

Companies should ensure that data is only collected according to laws, stored securely, and that customers know how their data is used and processed. Furthermore, it is vital to ensure that customers can control their data and that any data collected is only used for the purpose for which it was collected. Businesses should also pay special attention to data storage, ensure its security, and ensure that fraudsters do not have access to the warehouse.

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Advantage: Working with AI opens the door to the future of customer success

AI can analyze customer inquiries, track their experience, and generate insights that can be used to improve customer service. Working with digital assistants is a great opportunity for every customer support and retention professional to expand their skills, gain relevant experience, and prepare for the service industry’s future. If you want to provide better, faster, and more competitive service, AI skills are not an option, but rather a necessity.

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Challenge: It is essential to maintain a balance between AI and human service

One of the significant drawbacks is the lack of human touch. AI customer service is highly automated, meaning that customer queries and complaints are often answered by a computer rather than a person. This eliminates the personal interaction that customers are used to with traditional customer service departments and can make them feel disconnected from the company. Additionally, customers may feel frustrated when the chatbot cannot answer their query or their question is answered with a generic response. Finally, AI customer service may lead to customer indifference, as customers become used to the robotic support and do not feel as though they are being heard.


According to a Clutch survey, 88% of respondents prefer speaking to a live customer service agent instead of navigating a phone menu. Remembering that a robot may lack the emotional intelligence to understand a customer is essential. Chatbots provide them with informational assistance instead of support and understanding of their problem. Let the client know that we want to help them and their issue is important.

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Advantage: AI as an advanced tool for Customer Success

AI can be used not only to increase external customer satisfaction, but also to improve the support team’s efficiency. For example:

  1. The assistant can combine customer data from different systems to help the agent see the complete picture. 
  2. A bot can help sales and support automatically fill out the form of emails and tickets based on the available information about the client.
  3. AI-driven customer service tools can automatically route tickets to the appropriate support representative based on the topic and severity of the customer’s issue. 
  4. AI-driven tools can create a dynamic knowledge base, offering accurate and up-to-date information to customer service representatives and helping customers to find relevant information quickly. 
  5. Predictive analytics tools can be used to predict customer issues, allowing customer service agents to address them before they become too pressing proactively.
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Conclusion

Remember that AI will not replace humans, but is only a tool. Nevertheless, focusing on AI technologies is no longer optional if you want to grow and develop your business. Primarily, AI makes customer service operations more independent due to its ability to automate repetitive tasks. This can improve efficiency, reduce customer wait times, and improve customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, AI solutions can provide personalized experiences for customers and generate insights from customer data that can help inform strategy. However, there are potential challenges with AI, such as cost, privacy, and potential bias that should be considered when deciding whether to implement it. Delegate routine tasks to chatbots to see the prospects for development.

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How to Create an Effective Popup Survey for Your Website https://www.nicereply.com/blog/effective-pop-up-survey-for-your-website/ Thu, 02 Mar 2023 08:58:52 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=17340 They can provide valuable insights into what customers think about a company’s products or services, and help identify areas for improvement. However, if set up incorrectly, they can also be a source of frustration for users and can even harm a company’s reputation. In this article, we’ll explore the pros and cons of popup surveys […]

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Popup website surveys are a popular way for companies to gather feedback from their customers.

They can provide valuable insights into what customers think about a company’s products or services, and help identify areas for improvement.

However, if set up incorrectly, they can also be a source of frustration for users and can even harm a company’s reputation. In this article, we’ll explore the pros and cons of popup surveys and provide practical tips for setting them up correctly.

What are popup surveys?

Popup surveys are short questionnaires that appear on a website or app, usually in the form of a modal window. They can be triggered by various events, such as when a user completes a transaction or spends a certain amount of time on a page. Popup surveys can gather feedback on a wide range of topics, including customer satisfaction, product usability, and website navigation.

What are popup surveys used for?

Popup surveys can be used for a variety of purposes, such as:

  • Gathering customer feedback on products or services
  • Measuring customer satisfaction
  • Assessing website usability and user experience
  • Identifying areas for improvement

The key is to choose the right survey type that aligns with your goals and objectives and to carefully craft the questions and response options to gather actionable insights from your customers.

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✅ Here are some GOOD examples of how NPS, CSAT, and CES surveys can be used on a website

  • After a customer has made a purchase, you could display a CSAT survey asking them to rate their overall satisfaction with their experience.
  • If a customer spends a certain amount of time on a particular page of your website, you could display a CES survey asking them how easy it was to find the information they were looking for.
  • If a customer has just signed up for your service, you could display an NPS survey asking them to rate how likely they are to recommend your company to others.
  • If a customer is about to cancel their subscription, you could display a CES survey asking them to explain why they no longer find your service valuable.

❌ Here are some BAD examples

  • “Do you think our website is good or bad?” – This question is too vague and doesn’t provide any context for the respondent to give a meaningful answer.
  • “How satisfied are you with our service?” – This question is too broad and doesn’t specify which aspect of the service the respondent is being asked to rate.
  • “Did you find what you were looking for?” – This question is too closed-ended and doesn’t allow for any elaboration or explanation of the respondent’s experience.

How do popup surveys work?

Popup surveys typically consist of a few questions that users can answer quickly and easily. They can be based on various question types, including multiple-choice, rating scales, and open-ended questions.

Tips for setting up popup surveys

To ensure that your popup survey is effective and doesn’t harm the user experience, here are some tips to keep in mind:

  1. Timing is key – Make sure that your popup survey appears at the right time. If it appears too soon, users may feel annoyed or interrupted. If it appears too late, users may have already completed their task and be less willing to provide feedback. A good rule of thumb is to wait until the user has spent a certain amount of time on the website or completed a specific action before showing the survey.
  2. Keep it short and sweet – Popup surveys should be short and to the point. Refrain from overwhelming users with too many questions or too much text. Keep the questions simple and easy to understand, and limit the number of answer choices for each question.
  3. Formulate questions correctly – It’s important to formulate your survey questions correctly to ensure that you get useful feedback. Avoid leading questions or questions that are too vague. Instead, ask specific questions that are relevant to your business objectives.
  4. Test and iterate – Before launching your popup survey, test it thoroughly to ensure that it works correctly and doesn’t disrupt the user experience. Once it’s live, monitor the results and use the feedback to make improvements and iterate on the survey design.

Remember that popup website surveys are a powerful tool that can give you valuable insights into your customers’ satisfaction and experience. However, like any tool, it’s important to use them properly to avoid any harm or frustration.

One time, a friend of mine was browsing a website when she suddenly got bombarded with popup surveys. She closed each one as soon as it appeared, but they kept coming back like a game of whack-a-mole. She finally gave up and closed the website altogether, frustrated and annoyed.

The moral of the story? Don’t be like that website! Use popup surveys thoughtfully and sparingly, and make sure they add value to the user experience rather than detract from it.

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14 Best Sales Tools for Your Small Business https://www.nicereply.com/blog/free-sales-tools/ Tue, 28 Feb 2023 07:06:00 +0000 https://www.nicereply.com/blog/?p=11381 That’s why you need to use every tool in the toolbelt to get ahead of the game. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from running a small business, it’s that sales take a lot of hustle and legwork. You have to acquire leads, send out information, have meetings, follow-up, and close the deal. Even if […]

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When you’re trying to grow your business, every sale counts.

That’s why you need to use every tool in the toolbelt to get ahead of the game.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from running a small business, it’s that sales take a lot of hustle and legwork. You have to acquire leads, send out information, have meetings, follow-up, and close the deal. Even if your customer is interested, they aren’t usually the drivers of the conversation. If you forget to follow-up with your prospects, you’ll likely lose the sale.

But if you’re running a small business, there’s not always a lot of extra bandwidth (either in time or budget) to build out a big sales workflow. Instead, you need to be smart about the tools you invest in.

Today we’re sharing 14 best (and mostly free) sales tools that prove you don’t really have to spend money to make money.

Live Chat

I initially added a live chat widget to my webpage as an experiment. I didn’t think many of my potential customers would message me through it. I definitely didn’t think it would turn into my biggest source of leads.

But my experiment paid off. Adding live chat to my website was the easiest way to start converting website traffic to leads – even if I couldn’t always respond in real time. There are tons of free tools available.

Here are three I like:

Drift: While Drift is known for its powerful workflows and integrations for enterprise sales teams, their free individual plan is also pretty useful. It includes one seat for live chatting, space for 100 contacts and a customizable welcome message.

Chatra: Built as a modern messaging platform, Chatra includes a lot of really nice to have features that make talking with your customers feel almost like talking with your friends. Their free plan also includes just one user, but is stacked with a ton of valuable features.

Tawk.to: It’s one of the most popular chat tools on the internet, and for good reason. Tawk.to is free forever, with unlimited agents. It’s a great basic chat platform that will meet most of your sales needs.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

When you start your business, you might have kept all your client information in your head, or stored in your inbox. Once you have a few dozen customers, that’s no longer practical. I started by documenting clients in a spreadsheet but still found things were falling through the cracks. A CRM can help you keep track of all your leads, prospects, and customers much more easily. These free tools will help you remember who needs a follow-up, identify opportunities and measure your overall sales volume.

Hubspot

Automated interaction tracking, pipeline management, and excellent reporting. Hubspot’s free CRM helps you know exactly what you should be doing next to bring in more sales. Plus, as you grow, Hubspot’s ecosystem of marketing automation, service desk, and sales hub will meet your ever-changing needs.

Really Simple Systems

Track your sales from start to finish, set tasks and automate follow-ups and campaigns with Really Simple Systems – a CRM for small B2B sales teams. Their free plan includes two users and 100 contacts.

Freshsales

Part of the Freshworks platform, Freshsales offers unlimited contacts and unlimited users in their free CRM. Plus, it fits seamlessly in with the rest of their helpful suite of tools including a Help Desk, Status Page and collaboration tools.

Sales tools

Email Tracking

I send a ton of emails every day, but the big sales emails are the most important to me. I want to know when potential customers have opened my cold email, I want to see when prospects have read my quote and I need to know if my existing clients have viewed the invoice. This is where email tracking comes in handy. Using these tools will help you remember to follow up and give you a nudge when your clients are engaging with your information.

SalesHandy

Schedule emails, see when prospects open up your email and create templates for your sales emails. The free version of SalesHandy is super useful and integrates with Gmail, so you can easily send and track emails.

Sales tools

Mailcastr

Mailcastr’s free plan limits tracking to just three emails per day, but it’s a simple, lightweight option for teams just looking to get notified on the occasional email. Install it as a Chrome extension and get real-time notifications when your email is opened.

Sales tools

Bananatag

Bananatag was one of the first email-tracking products available on the market. Their free plan allows you to track five emails per day. When a prospect opens your email, you’ll get a notification right in your inbox.

Booking

“I can do between 2 and 4 on Thursday, and anytime after 5 on Friday”
“My time or your time?”
“Oh, sorry, actually….”

Sound familiar? Booking software can eliminate the need for back-and-forth emails to choose a meeting time that suits everyone. They also prevent timezone issues and help every attendee add the meeting to their calendar of choice. The invite includes a meeting link to the video conference call software you use too. Best of all, there are a ton of free booking software options available.

Calendly

Offering prospects the chance to book a convenient meeting time through Calendly removes all the friction of booking meetings. It only takes three clicks to book, which means you’ll have more sales calls on your schedule in no time. The Basic Calendly plan includes one calendar and one event type (ie. only a 30 minute meeting or 15 minute meeting).

Sales tools

Bookafy

Unlimited event types, unlimited bookings, and a beautiful design. Bookafy’s free offering is a heavy hitter. Even with their basic version, you can do a lot of customization to get your booking workflow exactly in the shape you want it.

Sales tools

Productivity

When you have a million things to do, finding a tool that saves you time is a cause for celebration. These tools will all make your sales process more effective and keep your business running smoothly.

Document signing: HelloSign

Remove the need for prospects to print, sign, scan, or fax paper contracts back to you. Digital signing is much more efficient for everyone. HelloSign’s free plan includes three documents per month.

Sales tools

Video Conferencing: Zoom

The free version of Zoom might even be better than the expensive enterprise video platforms available. It’s lightweight, extremely easy to set up, great quality and syncs to your calendars. The free version only allows meetings up to 40 minutes for up to 100 participants.

Sales tools

Email Locator: Hunter

If you want to get in touch with a company, but you aren’t quite sure who the best person to email is, Hunter can locate all the relevant email and job titles for you. Simply enter the company’s domain name and Huner will return every contact they’ve found for them. Get up to 100 searches per month on their free plan.

Sales tools

Bonus tool

Email Signature Generator: Newoldstamp

A standardized email signature used across your whole organization can create thousands of sales opportunities every day with every email sent.

Newoldstamp helps sales teams stay memorable and keep prospects engaged with the help of customized email signatures. It also comes with built-in email signature analytics that helps monitor your CTA effectiveness, which is a valuable addition for any salesperson.

Boost your sales workflow into overdrive

When you’re trying to grow your business, every sale counts. That’s why you need to use every tool in the toolbelt to get ahead of the game. Plus, it doesn’t help if those Sales tools come free! Did we miss any tools that your sales team can’t live without? Let us know!

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