Thousands of website visitors use feedback forms to leave their comments for e-businesses every day. That input helps companies make better decisions about website functionality, marketing promotions, and other critical business functions. Perhaps the greatest return on open-ended feedback, however, comes from sales. The most highly qualified prospects are the ones who are self-selecting, the ones who come forward and say, "I want to know more," meaning, "I care enough about your product to ask a question and wait for your response." When enterprises share these customer-driven conversations with sales teams, they open the door for creating high-value prospects that quickly fill the sales funnel and boost conversion rates.
So, how does a business go about transforming customer feedback into high-yield leads? Make sure to touch upon the following five steps:
1. Maximize visitors' opportunities to communicate with you.
Offer feedback options on every important part of your website, including landing pages, shopping cart, search mechanisms, and registration pages. Give prospects quick-pick menus and sub-menus so they can quickly indicate the category of feedback they wish to leave. This will also speed your ability to deliver comments to the internal stakeholders who can best address individual concerns.
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2. Accommodate a wide range of communication styles
Some prospects will want to write lengthy messages to you. Others will prefer selecting from a menu of icons to indicate their feelings about a particular product or service. Provide both options. Keep in mind that the idea is to let the customer initiate the discussion, so avoid pre-set questionnaires or traditional surveys that limit responses.
3. Respond promptly and helpfully
Studies show that 65 percent of visitors who leave feedback include their contact information. Use that data to connect with prospects, and they'll be impressed and likely stunned; online shoppers have become conditioned to expect little response from the e-businesses they patronize. Responding promptly need not be resource-intensive. Pre-defined auto-reply emails can address a majority of feedback items. Emails can include advice, solutions, and incentives to return and convert. However, sales, support, or marketing staff should address more difficult concerns personally. Even after a one-to-two-week period, many companies find that contact with visitors leads to conversions.
4. Soft selling works best with feedback-driven leads
When your prospects self-identify by willingly communicating with your brand, there's no need to employ a hard sales pitch. These potential customers have already indicated a connection to your company, product, or service, so thank them for taking the time to reach out to you. Then, show the customer that you've listened to their concern or question, address their problems, and offer them an incentive to return and purchase on their next visit. Experience indicates that up to 45 percent of them will convert.
5. Create opportunities for future sales
Keep the conversation open and fluid. Offer respondents the option to opt in to a company e-newsletter. That way, you keep the communications channel with the target open, supporting the likelihood of continued loyalty and additional sales in the future.
A lead-generation strategy that pays off quickly
Marketing managers often invest significant resources into pay-per-click and other website campaigns that attract traffic. However, the average online conversion rate, despite these investments, remains a paltry 3 percent, according to Shop.org. That leaves 97 out of 100 website visitors clicking away without taking any action at all. Do those 97 visitors have something to say about their experiences on the site? Do they have a way to say it and be heard?
Unlike traditional lead-generation methods, web-based feedback unlocks a level of intelligence directly from customer-generated discussions. Such feedback enables sales teams to establish a real relationship with the prospect by opening the conversation and then propelling it forward with predefined parameters that identify a lead's status.
When website owners offer visitors the opportunity to provide feedback, more of those visitors engage, delivering valuable insight into their experiences. That information provides the means for e-businesses to demonstrate their understanding of customer needs that will result in the closing of more sales, faster.
Ariel Finkelstein is co-founder and CEO of Kampyle.
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