Once you have all that feedback from customers, outside sources and the like, what do you do with it? Red Door Interactive's Reid Carr winds up his two-part article.

Last Thursday, in part one of this two-part article, I talked about the different forms of so-called "free" marketing feedback. Today, I'll talk about what to do with some of this information.

Investigation Techniques

How should marketers proceed when actionable or valid responses are received? Here are some of the ways to take action to make the most use out of criticism:

For comments about the usability of the site, marketers should first use diagnostic tools to check for things like fluxes in traffic, site performance issues or outages. This may quickly reveal whether or not there were issues that may have uniquely affected the user’s experience, such as the pages not loading properly, the database not responding or pages being served abnormally slow.

Site analytics tools can check paths that include the page noted by the person as being troublesome during that time period. Running a check might indicate an increase in that page being an exit page, an increase in page reloads, or a lot of people returning to the previous page.

If available, marketers can then pull the user’s customer record. Looking at the record can provide information on whether or not the individual has a past record of purchasing from the company. If he/she is a previous customer, the complaint may be related to past experience or may be indicative of changes since the last time the website was visited.

Time is always of the essence. If the marketer has the individual’s information, he or she should respond. Hopefully the marketer has identified the issue at this point and can confirm with the individual whether or not the problem was related to something discovered in research. Communicating directly with the individual helps close the loop and, if you can, you should go the extra mile with a direct link to a fix or a description of how to execute what she/he was trying to execute. As an added incentive, the marketer can offer a coupon, or other offer, to help the customer get over fears of placing an order.

If the marketer is unable to diagnose the issue, she/he should still contact the customer to let them know of interest in remedying the issue, but that she/he would like some additional information to help solve the problem. The marketer might have to make concessions in exchange for information.

You may have to compensate customers for additional information: the equivalent of a restaurant offering a free dessert to a disgruntled patron. If you can do this, you may consider something that will not require an additional purchase, such as a gift certificate or a Starbucks card. (Some marketers offer “free shipping on your next purchase,” although assuming that there will be another purchase from this customer might be overly optimistic.)

In any case, marketers should minimize the amount of personal information that they request from the customer. As a general rule, individuals shopping online don’t like to offer too much about themselves. In fact, marketers should specifically state that the individual will <i>not<I> be added to any lists and that his/her personal information will not be used in any way, et cetera. Questions should be limited to those unique to the circumstance at hand, but should also try to determine whether or not the user is actually a part of the target market. Marketers should ask their questions in such a way so as not to raise a customer's privacy hackles, yet still identify the customer's demographic. Marketers should consider leading questions that suggest information with which a customer can agree or disagree.

Marketers should keep back-and-forth communication to a minimum and streamline responses to a few, very specific questions with little room for misinterpretation. ”Tech” or “industry terms” should be avoided to prevent confusion. Marketers may consider a mix of yes/no and open-ended questions, realizing that the latter may yield inconsistent responses.

For technological problems, marketers should find out what browser, operating system and speed of internet connection the individual was using, what page she/he was on (cutting and pasting the URL works best), what error messages were received (cut and paste or screen shot) what time and date the problem was experienced and what was expected compared to what was received. All of these will help technical resources remedy the issue.

The marketer may have to explain to a user how to do some of the things she/he was attempting and may consider having a description or survey prepared in advance to streamline the process.

Not all online feedback received by marketing is “actionable,” and many times it may not even be valid. Comments will only grow with the demand and affinity of a site, so marketers might even take them as compliments of sorts.

Marketers should proactively put mechanisms in place to solicit feedback and reach out to hear customers’ opinions. Then, be prepared for the feedback.

Ultimately, this will help in qualifying and responding to ensure that the company’s reputation is consistent with the target’s expectations. 

Reid Carr is president of Red Door Interactive, [] helping clients -- such as the San Diego Convention Center, SkinMedica, Benetrac and Sharp Systems of America -- to lay out strategies for their online presence and interaction activities. Before founding Red Door Interactive, Carr formed the interactive arm for the San Diego-based PR agency, McQuerterGroup. Prior to that, he was chief operating officer and accounts director at PBJ Digital, a bi-coastal Interactive development and incubator shop in Los Angeles; before then, Carr handled account management in both the Venice and Playa del Rey offices of TBWA/Chiat/Day. He has a BA from the University of Oregon's advertising program.