1. Pause irrelevant feedback campaigns

If you’re no longer able to meet your customers’ expectations, you may need to consider pausing your existing feedback campaigns. Your customers are going to be pretty upset, annoyed and angry if you ask them to review a holiday they never went on or a show they didn’t get to see, which means you won’t get the kind of accurate feedback that’s useful for other customers or insight.

Just because you’re pausing your existing campaigns doesn’t mean you need to stop collecting feedback altogether though, as we’ll explain in a bit.

2. Give customers more time to receive and use your products before asking them for feedback

Under usual circumstances, your customers may be used to receiving your products within a few days, but if you’re suddenly snowed under with orders or experience supply issues, you may not be able to keep up with demand. This isn’t a problem as long as you set expectations, but it may become a problem if your product review requests are sent to your customers way before their product even arrives.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution – simply delay the send date of your feedback requests to allow enough time for your customers to receive and use your product. This will result in higher quality, more accurate reviews and will help prevent your customers from thinking their purchase is either late or been lost in the post.

3. Create new campaigns and start collecting feedback on what matters

If you can’t run your existing campaigns, it’s time to start some new ones! The feedback you decide to collect should be based on what you want to achieve.

If you want to improve your brand reputation and build trust in your service, why not collect feedback on how your amazing customer service team is dealing with enquiries? Even if you can’t get any new customers at the moment, you can show everyone that your business can be relied upon, even in trying times. Share your positive reviews to social media to remind your audience that you’re still here and will be waiting for them when everything goes back to normal.

When the situation is out of your hands, it’s still important to talk and listen to your customers and understand how you can support them, but this shouldn’t have to affect the great reputation you’ve developed over the years. Private feedback campaigns allow you to collect the insight that’s important to you, but may not be of value to customers in the future. Understanding where your business is struggling through a difficult period is vital to keep tabs on, so you can better help both your customers and your customer service team.

4. Tailor your feedback request emails to show empathy and understanding for your customers

Whether you’re continuing to run your existing campaigns or creating new ones, it’s important to adjust the language of your feedback request emails to reflect how your customers may be feeling at this moment in time.

Be empathetic in your language and tone – if you’re a retailer, you may want to apologise that customers might not have been able to get everything they want in their most recent shop, or if you work in travel, that they had to return from their holiday earlier than expected.

You should also explain why your customers’ feedback is so important to you at this time. This will help boost your response rates and show customers that you care about the level of service you’re delivering, even when things are out of your control.

What if I can’t collect any feedback right now?

If you’ve entered a period where you’re not doing any trading whatsoever or dealing with any customer enquiries, it may not be possible to send out feedback requests. That doesn’t mean the reviews you already have aren’t important, though. Here are some ways you can make the most of them while your campaigns are on pause.

Plan ahead

Use your existing feedback to learn more about your customers, products and service, and plan ahead for the future. Look back over the feedback you’ve received over the past 12 months to find what people love about your business and what needs improving.

You can work to improve any issues your customers have highlighted over the past few months and craft your upcoming marketing efforts around the things they love. This means that when things are back to normal, you can really hit the ground running and get ahead of your competitors.

Display and share your positive feedback

Even if you’ve had to cease trading through your website for the foreseeable future, you can still reassure visitors by displaying your ratings and reviews on your website and across your social media channels. There are lots of ways you can display your feedback on your website to boost consumer confidence, whether you’re still trading at this time or not, and sharing your best reviews on social media is a great way to remind your customers you’re still here and you deliver a great service.

Revamp your campaigns

If you’re having to press pause on your campaigns, now is the perfect time to take another look at them and see if they can be improved at all. When’s the last time you tweaked your feedback request emails or the feedback form?

By preparing your campaigns for when your business needs them again, you can help to improve your response rates. For example, the wording of your feedback emails could say how much you appreciate your customers coming back to you and why you need their feedback now more than ever to make sure you’re delivering on their expectations.

Don’t underestimate the power of reviews, whatever your situation

You may feel like reviews are a luxury right now, but they’re more important than ever for helping you maintain your brand reputation, continue to build trust in your business and learn from your customers’ experiences. Things might seem difficult, but you still have the power to show everyone just how great your customer service is, and that people can rely on your business no matter what happens.