4 customer feedback examples from online businesses to inspire you

This guide analyzes how four successful companies collect customer feedback: discover how to put these tactics into practice—so you can validate your product decisions and delight customers.

4 customer feedback examples and ideas to guide and inspire you

Collecting customer feedback brings numerous benefits, from higher conversion rates to more devoted users. But to enjoy these advantages, you need to start asking your customers the right questions. 

We know that can be easier said than done, so we’re here to give you examples of successful customer feedback approaches and show you how to implement these techniques with your own users. 

1. Apple: post-purchase surveys to ensure customer satisfaction

Apple is a prime example of how collecting customer feedback can set you apart as an industry leader. Steve Jobs said it best himself: “One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology.”

One of the reasons Apple is so good at giving its users what they want is because it actively reaches out and listens to them. It makes it easy for users to share opinions about their products, often sending out surveys after a customer makes a purchase to gauge their satisfaction with it.

But Apple doesn’t just focus on getting feedback on its products and features—the company also makes sure to collect insights about the overall customer experience (CX).

After a customer makes a purchase at the Apple Store, they receive a link in an email containing their receipt to share feedback about their experience. This allows Apple to improve its customer service interactions, which play a big role in overall customer satisfaction. 

Unsurprisingly, Apple is a market leader when it comes to Net Promoter Score® (NPS)—a measure of how likely customers are to recommend your product to others. Apple’s NPS score for 2022 is 60, and Apple Music has an NPS score of 57, positioning it at the top of its industry.  

💡So, how can you follow in Apple’s footsteps? Listen to everything your customers have to say, both about your product and the overall customer experience. Send out a survey after they make a purchase to understand how they feel about their experience and your brand as a whole.

By making an effort to listen to them, you get the feedback your customers may not have shared unless prompted—so you can give them a product and experience that surpasses their expectations. 

2. Ryanair: customer surveys to better understand the buyer journey

Customer feedback doesn't just help you understand what your customers want to achieve with your product: it also helps you better understand the buyer's journey. That’s exactly what Ryanair does: using Hotjar Surveys, the team gauges whether customers seamlessly navigate their website, detects barriers to purchase, and measures general user satisfaction. 

Ryanair successfully addresses its buyers’ pain points by asking open-ended questions to identify user frustrations. Then, it sends out multiple-choice surveys directly related to these frustrations to better understand where the customer journey needs improvement. 

But sending out surveys isn’t just key to understanding your customers and their experience of your purchasing process—it also helps get stakeholders on board with product decisions and keeps everyone in the loop about performance. 

💡How to apply Ryanair’s techniques to your business: send out multiple series of surveys to understand your customers’ pain points, so you can pinpoint what improvements you need to make. These findings help you improve your product experience (PX) and justify your decisions and recommendations to decision-makers with customer-backed evidence.

3. Amazon: customer feedback made easy

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said he defined Amazon by its big ideas, which included 'customer centricity' and 'putting the customer at the center of everything we do.' So, what’s one of the best ways to put your customers at the heart of your decisions? Make it easy for them to give you feedback. 

As you probably know, Amazon empowers its customers to share their opinions by enabling them to leave reviews about their purchases. After all, research shows that displaying reviews can increase conversion rates by 270%, so Amazon reviews are a central feature of the ecommerce giant’s success. 

Amazon sends out consumer survey emails asking customers about their experience with the products they purchased. It also offers customers gift cards as incentives for completing surveys, which is a very useful tactic to collect in-depth insights from your buyers.

Like Apple, Amazon makes a point to collect feedback after every customer service experience. By asking a simple question about whether they solved the customer’s problem, Amazon gives buyers the chance to share feedback—to constantly improve the customer service experience. 

So it should come as no surprise that in 2021, Amazon had a customer satisfaction score of 78. 

💡How to mirror Amazon’s customer feedback strategy and gain brand loyalty: make it easy for your customers to share their opinions. Include surveys at the end of your customer service conversations and offer incentives for them to share feedback, so you can put your customer at the center of all your decisions. 

4. TechSmith: customer feedback to inform product development

They say, “If you build it, they will come.” But what if you build a new product or feature your potential buyers don’t actually want? The best way to avoid this is by using customer feedback to inform your product design and development decisions. 

That’s exactly what TechSmith does with customer feedback. Using Hotjar's on-page survey triggered by certain actions, the software company segments customer insights based on activity and collects focused feedback that helps inform product development decisions.

Next, TechSmith asks more specific questions related to the feedback users share, observes behaviors related to that feedback using heatmaps and recordings, and then makes the specific changes that customers want to see.

💡How to emulate TechSmith's feedback techniques: while TechSmith is a software company, just about any business can apply this customer-centric approach to its processes. For example, an ecommerce company could use the feedback and reviews users write about their purchases to inform design decisions for new products, ensuring customer delight and improving customer retention.

Use customer feedback examples to create a better product and see happier users

Collecting customer feedback isn’t rocket science. It just requires the right tools, planning, and strategy, so you can get actionable insights to improve your product and satisfy your customers. 

Take inspiration from these customer feedback ideas and examples and start implementing similar tactics in your business to improve the customer experience and turn your buyers into brand champions and product advocates.