What is customer feedback?
Customer feedback is what customers tell you about your product, your service and the experience of buying from you. It comes as scores, choices and written comments, and it shows what to fix, what to keep and what to build next.
Customer feedback in plain terms
Customer feedback is any information customers give you about their experience: a 4 out of 5 after a delivery, “Price” picked as the reason for leaving, or a comment such as “The checkout asked for my address twice.” Some of it you ask for with a survey. The rest arrives on its own, in support chats, reviews and emails.
Feedback explains what other numbers can't. Sales figures show that fewer people bought, and feedback shows that the new shipping fee put them off. It also reaches problems your team never sees, such as a page that breaks on one phone or a setup step that confuses new customers.
Most teams gather feedback at a few moments that shape the relationship, such as a purchase, a support case or the first weeks of use, and read it together as a voice of the customer program. The value comes from the last step, when each answer reaches someone who can act on it.
- Also called
- Customer input, client feedback, user feedback
- Comes as
- Scores, choices and written comments
- Collected with
- Surveys, support conversations, reviews and interviews
- Used for
- Fixing problems, setting priorities and keeping customers
Types of customer feedback
Feedback falls into two pairs of kinds. Solicited feedback is what you ask for, with a survey or an interview, so you choose the question and the moment. Unsolicited feedback arrives on its own, in a support ticket, a review or a social post, and often holds the sharpest problems.
The second pair is about form. Quantitative feedback is a number or a choice you can count and compare, such as a rating or an NPS score. Qualitative feedback is written in the customer's own words and explains the number. Most good surveys ask for both: one score and one open question.
| Kind | What it looks like | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Solicited | A survey answer, an interview | Questions and moments you choose |
| Unsolicited | A ticket, a review, a social post | Problems you didn't think to ask about |
| Quantitative | A rating, a score, a choice | Counting and following over time |
| Qualitative | A written comment | Learning why a score moved |
How to collect customer feedback
Ask at the moment the experience happens, while customers still remember it. A question on the order confirmation page hears about checkout, and a short email a few days later hears about the delivery. A survey that arrives weeks after the event gets fewer answers and vaguer ones.
Pick the channel by where the customer is. A survey on your website or in your web app reaches people while they use it, an email reaches customers who don't visit often, and a QR code reaches them in a store, a hotel room or at an event.
- On your website: a popup at a key moment, a side button or a question inside the page
- In your web app: a short question after a task, shown to signed-in users
- By email: a survey to a list of customers, with the first question in the message
- In person: a QR code on a receipt, a table or a packing slip
Customer feedback examples
Good feedback questions are short, neutral and about one thing. A score question gives you a number to follow, and an open question gives you the reason behind it. These work across most industries, from online stores to hotels and software.
- “How satisfied are you with your order?” on a 1 to 5 scale
- “How easy was it to find what you were looking for?”
- “What almost stopped you from signing up today?”
- “What is one thing we could do better?”
How to analyze customer feedback
Start with the numbers: the score for the period, its change from the period before, and how it differs between groups such as countries or devices. Then read the comments behind the change. Once there are more than a few dozen, sort each one into a theme, such as delivery, price or checkout, and count the themes.
Say 400 customers leave a comment in a month. Sorted by theme, delivery holds 148 of them, so a fix to delivery reaches more customers than any other change. A theme that grows from one month to the next is a priority, and a single sharp comment is a case for one person to follow up.
- Delivery
- 148 comments, 37%
- Checkout
- 96 comments, 24%
- Product quality
- 84 comments, 21%
- Price
- 72 comments, 18%
- Largest theme
- Delivery, 148 of 400
How to act on customer feedback
Feedback pays off when it changes something. Give each answer that needs a reply an owner and a status, fix what comes up again and again, and tell customers what changed. Customers who see that answering led somewhere are more willing to answer the next survey.
- Reply to urgent complaints the same day
- Send bug reports to the team that fixes them
- Share the top themes with the whole company every month
- Tell customers when something they asked for ships
Collecting customer feedback in Usertick
Start from a template for your industry or the moment you want to hear about, or describe what you want to learn and Create with AI writes a first draft. Run the survey on your website as a popup, a side button or inside the page, by email to a contact list, by link and QR code, or as a chat that asks one question at a time.
Every answer from every survey lands in one inbox. Usertick reads each written answer as it arrives, in any language and on every plan, and gives it a category and a theme from your organization's list, a type such as bug, idea, complaint, question or praise, and a sentiment. Results shows a card per question with its change from the period before.
Give each response an owner, a status and notes in the inbox, from Open to Resolved. On every plan, workflows send answers to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Sheets and tools such as Jira, Linear, Zendesk and HubSpot.
Mistakes to avoid with customer feedback
Small choices that keep the results useful.
- 01
Asking long after the moment
A survey that arrives weeks after a purchase gets fewer answers, and the ones it gets are vague. Ask while the experience is fresh.
- 02
Asking too often
Customers who see a survey on every visit stop answering. Space your surveys out so each customer sees one at a time.
- 03
Collecting without reading
A pile of unread comments wastes customers' time and teaches them that answering changes nothing. Read and sort what comes in every week.
- 04
Following the loudest voice
One angry comment can feel bigger than a theme fifty customers mention calmly. Count the themes before you decide what to fix.
Frequently asked questions
A review is public feedback written for other buyers, on a review site or a product page. Customer feedback is broader: it covers every score and comment customers give you, most of it in private surveys and conversations, where they tend to be more direct.
Ask at the moments that matter, such as after a purchase or a support case, and limit how often one customer sees a survey. A relationship question such as NPS fits a few times a year.
Keep the survey short, start with a question that takes one tap, and ask in the channel where the customer already is. Telling customers what changed because of past answers helps too.
Yes. In Usertick, every written answer is read as it arrives and given a category, a theme, a type and a sentiment, and each response an urgency, on every plan including Free.
Customer feedback is the raw material. Voice of the customer is the program that collects it across the journey, reads it for patterns and shares it with the teams that act.
Listen better, act faster, and build what truly matters.
Start free, see what your customers mean, and get each answer to the person who can act on it.
- 150 responses a month on Free
- Every channel and AI analysis
- No card needed