Mobile Feedback Grows As Smartphone Usage Grows

Mobile feedback is the new method of tracking customer loyalty for customer experience management experts. No longer are small business owners, restaurant managers, and retail stores relying on comment cards and paper surveys. Many are looking to mobile feedback for a way to monitor the sentiment around their brands, incorporate loyalty programs, and even engage with customers at the point of sale. A lot of this mobile feedback is coming from non-app based tools. Regular mobile feedback apps can include sites/tools that are downloaded onto a person's smartphone. These frequently-visited recommendation sites are often used by customers to leave public feedback about a business -- restaurants, retail stores, doctors and dentists, etc.

And while they are valuable tools to restaurant and retail managers who want to measure the sentiment of their customers, it also often falls prey to overinflation of complaints and people who believe that outraged indignation is a birthright, as well as completely falsified complaints and attacks by unscrupulous competitors.

The other alternative that restaurants and retail establishments can take advantage of are text-based mobile surveys, and special survey websites that use a mobile device, but are more private and will only solicit the opinions of actual customers, not people who make up complaints because they have an axe to grind.

Imagine having a dedicated mobile feedback web page that can only be accessed at the point of sale via a QR code. Ask customers to scan it as they pay for their purchases, or scan it when they receive their bill at their table, and they can take a mobile feedback survey on their phone while they wait.

Or try using a text-based mobile survey. Have the waitstaff or sales staff point out the number to dial to receive a four-question survey about their experience just by texting their answers back, or leave it on a table tent in a restaurant or flyer around the store. This can be done on a smartphone or regular flip phone.

In both cases, the mobile feedback answers will be compiled and aggregated into an overall satisfaction score. But they can also be used to alert management as soon as there is a problem.

For example, at a restaurant, a customer can take the survey while they wait for their bill to arrive. They give a low score for their experience, and the manager is immediately alerted. He or she can visit the customer's table, help solve any problems, and offer a discount or free dessert to improve the customer's satisfaction, thus ensuring they become repeat customers.

Using non-app based mobile feedback helps managers immediately identify problems and help improve customer satisfaction without waiting for a person's issues to reach the web where everyone can see them. With the right mobile feedback system, managers can help improve customer satisfaction enough so that if the customer does visit a recommendation site, they will leave a positive review instead.