Aliyah Marandiz, the founder of hair removal brand Sugardoh, understands the value of honest customer feedback. On Shopify Masters, Marandiz explains that she gets a gut check from social media followers before developing any new product: In a poll, she asks, “’Would you be interested in a product like this? Would you actually pay that?’”

“All these questions are asked before we jump into a new opportunity,” Aliyah says. Not only does customer feedback allow her to gauge customer interest—it also helps Sugardoh stay resilient. In the beauty space, especially the hair removal category, changing styles and social outlooks matter. “So how I adapt is that I take a pulse,” Aliyah explains.

Consistently collecting and incorporating customer feedback is the backbone of a methodology called customer feedback management, or CFM. This methodology produces insights that can help you improve multiple aspects of your business, while also making your customers feel heard.

What is customer feedback management?

Customer feedback management (CFM) is the structured approach to collecting feedback from customers across channels, interpreting it to find patterns, and turning insights into decisions that improve the business. The goal is to close the loop—capturing feedback and acting on it in measurable ways.

Customers want to share their experiences, too: In a customer experience survey by research platform Alida, more than 97% of respondents expressed willingness to provide feedback if they knew it would make an impact.

CFM helps companies analyze both direct and indirect feedback. Businesses collect direct feedback through official channels like online polls and surveys after customer service interactions, while they collect indirect or unsolicited feedback through ancillary sources like social media comments and web traffic analytics.

In the simplest terms, the process of managing customer feedback breaks down into three stages:

1. Collection. Use methods like surveys and focus groups to gather feedback from users at different stages of the customer journey.

2. Analysis. Organize and dissect all the feedback you’ve gathered to gain insights into key customer experience areas, such as customer service, shipping, and fulfillment.

3. Action. Make decisions in response to what your customers have shared with you, turning this information into actionable steps for the short, medium, and long term.

The customer feedback management process is typically an ongoing endeavor. There are plenty of customer feedback tools that can help you integrate CFM into your business’s day-to-day operations. Many of these software applications further simplify the CFM process by integrating with Shopify storefronts.

Customer feedback management vs. review management

Though both customer feedback management and review management involve gathering feedback from customers, they’re distinct in a few ways.

Review management is fairly limited in scope and involves monitoring and engaging with customer reviews on third-party sites—for example, review platforms like Yelp, Google, and Facebook.

CFM, on the other hand, operates more behind the scenes and at a higher level. It’s less a reaction to individual customer complaints and more a comprehensive, systematic process encompassing the collection of customer feedback data through multiple channels. CFM is designed to identify what customers like and dislike and turn those findings into actionable steps.

Why is customer feedback management important?

Collecting honest feedback and taking it to heart can be a powerful way to increase customer satisfaction with your brand. Here’s how CFM makes this possible:

• Streamlines the process of collecting customer feedback. A methodical feedback management process helps you efficiently gather and act on customer feedback. It provides customers with opportunities to voice their opinions and establishes a routine for soliciting the information your company finds most valuable. 

• Helps you better address customer complaints and struggles. Understanding customer pain points and listening to their suggestions is crucial for developing customer success strategies that anticipate customer needs. This also lightens the load for your support team and can aid your product development process. 

• Shapes longer-term growth. Using feedback effectively—for example, to make customer service improvements or develop a better version of your product—can lead to stronger customer loyalty and an improved customer experience, factors that significantly impact your customer retention rate and revenue.

How to manage customer feedback

1. Articulate your goals
2. Ask for and collect feedback
3. Sort and analyze the data
4. Act on what you’ve learned
5. Let the customer know their feedback matters

To effectively manage feedback, consider the before, during, and after. A robust customer feedback system will encompass not just collecting the feedback itself but also the strategy behind acquiring it and doing something with it afterward.

1. Articulate your goals

Start by defining the outcomes you want from customer feedback management. Determine the kind of feedback you want and how exactly you hope to use it. Clarifying your goals will help you choose the best ways to gather customer feedback and figure out which takeaways are worth focusing on.

For example, maybe you’re considering launching a loyalty program and want to better understand current and past customers’ impressions of your brand, and opt to calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS). Maybe you want to improve your marketing strategies by seeking quantitative data on the demographics of people who purchase a specific type of product. 

Remember that customer feedback can be helpful in product development, too, and great product development can ultimately improve customer satisfaction.

Marcus Milione of performance apparel and jewelry brand Minted New York often previews product concepts on his personal TikTok and takes note of the comments. “There are constructive comments and criticisms that come from [customers] that you can use to help improve your product,” he explains on Shopify Masters. Sometimes, he says, followers will flag something he didn’t even think about.”

2. Ask for and collect feedback

Let customers know you’d like to hear from them and implement strategies for collecting their input. Direct feedback can come from multiple channels: feedback forms linked in a newsletter, post-purchase emails asking for reviews, website pop-up polls, in-person focus groups, and more.

Customer feedback management software can be a useful investment because it streamlines some of these processes. You can also collect indirect feedback through social listening (staying on top of social media chatter) or by monitoring website or purchasing behavior.

3. Sort and analyze the data

To use customer feedback effectively, you first have to understand what you’re looking at. Separate customer responses into different buckets: comments on a specific function of your product, for example, or about the pricing of a service you offer.

This helps you spot trends and route insights to the right team. For instance, maybe you pass along feedback on product functionality to your product development team and share pricing feedback with your sales team. You can also distinguish between quantitative feedback and qualitative feedback.

Once you’ve divided the data into manageable categories, analyze it and identify salient takeaways. You can note specific patterns in the qualitative data—for example, maybe you find customers in a certain age group asking for a particular type of product. Or use the quantitative data to calculate metrics like a customer satisfaction score or churn rate. Your customer feedback management tool can help automate data analysis and generate tailored reports.

4. Act on what you’ve learned 

Once you’ve identified patterns in the feedback data, you can turn these insights into actionable takeaways, prioritizing by impact and urgency. Some issues you can address in the immediate term, while others might require research and development or more involved organizational changes.

For example, maybe a survey of your new apparel line flags customers frequently reporting broken zippers on one product. Others say that they wish you would start selling a particular style of jacket. Order of importance would dictate that you first fix the broken zippers, then consider whether the new jacket is worth developing.

Respond promptly to what you can and incorporate the rest into longer-term goals. Regularly share the feedback with colleagues and make sure department heads have the data that’s relevant to their teams.

5. Let the customer know their feedback matters 

Closing the feedback loop can show customers that you’re listening—and that you trust and appreciate their input. Thank customers who participate in surveys and polls, and if you can, follow up publicly or directly to highlight changes you’ve made based on the feedback process.

“Bringing your customer along on the journey helps them buy into the product even more,” Marcus says. When he showed off a new tote bag in development, followers expressed their preference for an adjustable strap over the rigid one on the prototype—and when the Minted New York team retooled its design, it made it clear that customer feedback was the reason. “I think it’s just a cool way to include a wider community,” he explains.