Differences Between Direct and Indirect Customer Feedback

Within the scope of the customer experience, the different types of customer feedback each play a different role and each offers valuable insight into your customer service. It can be difficult for businesses to see the value provided by each type of customer feedback and understand how it can help you improve the customer experience. You may want to know – what are the different types of customer feedback – and the boostCX Team can help. No matter what industry you are in, customer feedback plays an integral role in customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. With boostCX Customer Experience Management on your side, you’ll learn to identify the types of customer feedback that are most valuable to you and your business.

5 Different Types of Customer Feedback

From online reviews on Yelp to social media mentions on Facebook or X (Twitter), every type of customer feedback provides its own benefits. Customer surveys offer direct insights into specific aspects, while support tickets reveal pain points and areas for improvement. Social media mentions can gauge brand sentiment and identify potential crises with the opportunity for real-time customer engagement, while unsolicited reviews provide unfiltered opinions.

Net Promoter Scores (NPS) measure brand loyalty, and customer satisfaction surveys capture the overall customer experience at your business. Website analytics reveal user behavior, and in-app feedback provides real-time insights. Each type of customer feedback, when analyzed and acted upon, strengthens your customer service and leads to happier customers and a thriving business.

1. Review Sites

When customers choose a business, review sites play an important role in that decision – and likewise are a valuable resource for businesses who hope to improve the customer experience. Review sites like – the Better Business Bureau, Google Reviews, Yelp, and more – are a great source of customer feedback and can be used as testimonials when positive.

2. Customer Surveys

boostCX collects customer feedback from a variety of channels – which include customized branded customer surveys that allow you to score the customer experience via a variety of methods that include multi-lingual surveys. Customer engagement surveys allow you to tailor the questions to your business and identify trends.

3. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that measures customer loyalty. This type of customer feedback allows you to categorize customers as promoters, detractors, and passives. With this method you can set benchmarks, highlight loyal customers, and work to turn detractors into promoters.

4. In-App Ratings and Reviews

In-app ratings and reviews are like tiny applause meters within your app that offer instant feedback on the user experience. A quick, real-time thumbs-up or thumbs-down provides valuable insight into specific features, user pain points, and areas for improvement, allowing you to fine-tune your customer experience and keep your audience engaged.

5. Social Media

Social media provides an incredible wealth of customer feedback. From praiseworthy comments to heated complaints, these unfiltered opinions reveal real-time sentiment, brand perception, and emerging issues. Businesses that listen closely to this social media chatter – can introduce product improvements, identify brand advocates, and address pain points before they become more significant problems.

From customer surveys to social media reviews, the diverse chorus of customer feedback can be overwhelming and it is important to remember that each type of customer feedback holds the key to unlocking a richer, more satisfying customer experience. By understanding the different types of customer feedback and harnessing their unique aspects, you can create a more impressive customer experience.

In a global market where the customer experience is what sets you apart, customer feedback is the gold standard for understanding what truly matters to your audience and driving success. Discovering valuable customer insights via well-crafted and targeted customer survey questions allows you to identify areas for improvement and tailor your customer experience strategy to deliver maximum impact.

Here is a better look at the top 5 best questions to ask your customers about customer experience to gain a deeper understanding of their preferences. When you ask these questions and leverage powerful tools like boostCX to collect and analyze customer feedback, you can transform customer feedback into actionable insights and pave the way for a customer experience that exceeds expectations and builds brand loyalty.

What Questions Do You Need to Ask Your Customers?

Effective communication is key to understanding your customers. But what questions do you need to ask to get the most valuable feedback?  Here are a few general questions that can reveal a wealth of information about your customers’ needs, wants, and their overall experience. By asking these questions and actively listening to the answers, you can gain a better understanding of your audience and use that knowledge to improve your customer interactions.

How Satisfied Are You with Our Products and Services?

A simple yet powerful question – How Satisfied Are You with Our Products and Services? – gets straight to the point. It provides a direct gauge of customer satisfaction and loyalty, revealing areas where you excel or areas for improvement. boostCX empowers you to gather this feedback effectively by offering multiple channels and tailoring surveys to help boost response rates and gather customer data. Results can even help you calculate your Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a valuable metric that measures customer loyalty.

What Can We Do to Better Serve You?

Asking – What Can We Do to Better Serve You? – shows customers you value their opinion and want to turn customer sentiment into action. It opens a dialogue and allows them to directly express their needs and frustrations with products or services. But remember – the real power lies in the action. When you implement customer suggestions, you demonstrate you’re actively listening and working to improve your products, services, and the overall customer experience, which builds trust and loyalty with your business.

What Are the Biggest Challenges You Face?

What Are the Biggest Challenges You Face? – is an important question to ask for service-based business customers. It highlights the specific pain points customers encounter when interacting with or using your services. By understanding the challenges your customers face, you can identify areas where your service can be more helpful, efficient, or user-friendly. This knowledge empowers you to tailor your service offerings and directly address the issues that matter most to your customers.

Why Did You Choose Our Products or Services?

When you ask – Why Did You Choose Our Products or Services? – it goes beyond simple satisfaction. It uncovers the core reasons why customers selected you over your competitors. This sheds light on the secret sauce that sets you apart. By understanding these aspects of your business, you can emphasize your strengths in marketing materials and refine your offerings to further attract your target audience. Imagine a company known for its exceptional customer service – feedback might reveal that customers choose them because they feel valued and heard, and this reinforces the importance of prioritizing excellent service at every touchpoint.

How Well Did We Understand Your Needs?

The question – How Well Did We Understand Your Needs? – goes beyond surface-level satisfaction. It probes how effectively you identified and addressed the core needs of your customers. This question highlights any gaps in communication or understanding, and emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs of your customer base. When you close this communication gap, you ensure a more personalized and seamless customer experience.

By incorporating these essential questions into your customer surveys, you unlock a treasure trove of customer insights. Understanding the 5 best questions to ask your customers about the customer experience helps you collect, analyze, and take action on customer feedback. boostCX empowers you to ask the right questions, gather the feedback you need, and transform those insights into actions that build an unrivaled customer experience.

Businesses have become more and more focused on creating positive customer experiences. But what does that really mean? You may hear terms like Customer Experience (CX) and Customer Success (CS) and they may even be used interchangeably — but they represent distinct approaches with different goals and strategies. It is important to understand the differences between customer experience and customer success and learn how to develop effective customer-focused strategies. boostCX offers powerful customer experience management tools that can be tailored to fit various industries — including automotive, financial, retail, and more — helping you achieve success in both areas.‍

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Customer Experience (CX) vs. Customer Success (CS)

While both CX and CS focus on creating positive experiences for customers, they have distinct approaches and goals. CX aims to create positive and engaging experiences across all touchpoints to foster satisfaction and loyalty. CS focuses on helping customers achieve their desired outcomes using a company's product or service. 

‍Customer Experience — CX encompasses all interactions a customer has with your brand, from initial awareness to post-purchase support. It focuses on creating positive and engaging experiences across all touchpoints to foster satisfaction and loyalty.

‍Customer Success — CS is about partnering with customers to help them achieve their goals and extract maximum value from the products or services you have to offer. It's a proactive approach that focuses on guiding customers towards success and gaining value from their relationship with your business.

Customer Experience vs. Customer Success: Areas of Focus

Customer experience strategies cast a wider net than customer success, creating positive impressions at every stage of the customer journey, from initial awareness and interactions with your brand to their post-purchase experience and beyond. It's about crafting a seamless and enjoyable overall experience at every step along the way. Customer success adopts a more targeted strategy, focusing on helping customers achieve specific goals and maximize the value they receive from your product or service. This may include providing proactive guidance, personalized support, and resources that empower customers to successfully utilize your products or services.

Customer Experience vs. Customer Success: Strategy

CX strategies often involve mapping the customer journey, identifying pain points, and implementing improvements to enhance customer satisfaction. This approach helps streamline processes, improve communication, or personalize interactions to create a more seamless and enjoyable experience for customers. CS strategies focus on providing the support and resources customers need to successfully utilize a product or service and achieve a specific outcome. This could include onboarding programs, training materials, ongoing support channels, and proactive guidance for customers.

Customer Experience vs. Customer Success: Customer Relationships

CX strategies aim to build positive relationships and create connections between your brand and your customers. This involves creating a consistent and enjoyable experience across all facets of the business, from the initial interaction to post-purchase support. It's about making customers feel valued and appreciated at every touchpoint, so they become repeat buyers and brand advocates. CS involves developing deeper relationships with key customer segments after they have made a purchase, providing personalized support and guidance to help ensure their success. This might involve assigning dedicated customer success managers or offering tailored onboarding programs.

Customer Experience vs. Customer Success: KPIs

CX Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) often include metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer acquisition rate, customer conversion rate, and customer churn rate. These metrics measure how satisfied customers are with their overall experience and how likely they are to recommend your brand to others. The KPIs analyzed with a customer success strategy focus on metrics like customer lifetime value (CLTV), customer retention rate, customer effort score (CES), and repeat purchase rate. These metrics measure how successful customers are in achieving their desired outcomes using your product or service.

‍READ MORE: Top 25 Stats that Show the Value of Customer Experience‍

When you are looking at ways to improve your business processes, it is important to understand the differences between customer experience and customer success. While they represent different approaches, they are complementary and essential for building a successful and customer-focused business.‍

Contact boostCX today to learn how our solutions can help you excel in both customer experience and customer success!

In the modern economy, customers interact with brands across various channels and it’s important for businesses to adopt effective customer engagement strategies that cater to these multiple touchpoints. Omnichannel and multichannel strategies are two approaches that aim to engage customers across multiple platforms and improve the customer experience. While these strategies may seem similar, there are key distinctions between them that can significantly impact the customer experience, making it important to understand the differences between omnichannel and multichannel strategies. boostCX can provide the support your business needs with a comprehensive customer experience management platform that can help you implement the right approach to achieve your goals.

Omnichannel Engagement vs Multichannel Engagement

Multichannel engagement employs interactions with customers across various platforms like email, social media, and physical stores. The focus of multichannel engagement is primarily on promoting the brand or products, providing customers with a consistent and static message that highlights the brand. However — this strategy uses channels that often operate in silos, and may not provide a cohesive approach.

Omnichannel engagement puts the focus on the customer and is focused on creating a seamless and integrated experience across all touchpoints of the customer roadmap — whether online or offline. This strategy relies on understanding the customer's journey and adapting to their individual needs, creating a more personalized and fluid experience.

Benefits of Omnichannel Engagement

Omnichannel engagement empowers businesses to create a fluid and personalized customer strategy, regardless of which channels customers choose to interact with your brand. This customer-focused approach builds customer loyalty, boosts conversions, and drives long-term success.

• Improved Customer Experience — Omnichannel engagement delivers a cohesive and consistent experience across all channels, engaging with customers where they are most active.
• Increased Customer Satisfaction — Personalized interactions and proactive support show customers that you value their business and produce a better customer experience.
• Improved Customer Retention — A positive customer experience fosters loyalty and reduces customer churn, which improves retention.
• Higher Conversion Rates — Personalized and relevant communication leads to increased sales and conversions.
• Valuable Customer Data — This approach gathers data from various touchpoints to gain a comprehensive understanding of customer behavior and preferences.
• Creates Brand Identity — Sets your brand apart by providing a superior customer experience that differentiates you from the competition.

Benefits of Multichannel Engagement

Multichannel engagement offers businesses the advantage of reaching a larger audience by establishing a presence across multiple platforms. This strategy caters to diverse customer preferences and expands brand and product visibility. While it might not provide the same level of seamless integration as omnichannel, multichannel engagement serves as a valuable tool for connecting with customers on their preferred channels.

• Increased Reach — A multichannel strategy engages customers across multiple platforms, increasing brand exposure and reaching a larger audience.
• Increased Access — This approach caters to diverse customer preferences by offering multiple channels for interaction.
• Improved Brand Awareness — Multiple touchpoints create more opportunities for customers to encounter and interact with your brand.
• Improved Customer Engagement — Allows customers the flexibility to choose where and when they interact or communicate with your business.
• Targeted Marketing Opportunities — Enables businesses to tailor messaging and campaigns to specific audiences based on the channel.

While both omnichannel and multichannel strategies have their benefits and it is important to know the differences between omnichannel and multichannel engagement strategies, the best strategy depends on your business goals, target audience, and resources. boostCX can help you determine the best strategy for your business and provides the features you need to enact a successful strategy.