Updated: December 12, 2023
Collecting customer feedback is key to knowing what customers think about your business. The way you ask for feedback varies based on your business type and when you interact with customers.
Ahead, we’ll guide you on the best times and methods to ask for customer feedback. This includes in-person chats, emails, and text messages. Plus, we’ve got 20 free customer feedback templates ready for you to use right away.
When Is the Best Time to Ask Customers for Feedback?
When and how to ask for customer feedback depends on your industry and business model.
You can ask customers for feedback at multiple points during the customer journey, including:
- Following an interaction
- Post-purchase or post-service
- When a customer cancels their service
In real life, you may choose to ask customers for feedback after they’ve signed up for your gym, bought a house, or had their dog groomed.
Following an Interaction
It’s best to catch customers when their experience with your business is fresh in their minds. Make it a habit to follow up after any interaction a customer has with your business. That could be a conversation with your bookings manager or a treatment at your beauty salon.
Asking for feedback right away usually means you’ll get a more honest and open opinion. Plus, if you receive negative feedback, it’s easier to rectify it and provide your customers with a satisfactory solution too.
Here are some examples of how you could ask for feedback following a customer interaction depending on your business type:
- Doctor’s Office (dentists, therapists, and other healthcare providers) – Following an initial consultation, you could ask the prospect whether their questions were answered and if the experience addressed their health concerns.
- Real Estate – Buyers and sellers have different needs, so it’s important to tailor your feedback request to each segment. Ask buyers following property visits if it matched their preferences as well as when the deal is closed or the search is off. Ask sellers for feedback once they have sold their property or called off the sale.
- Home Services (plumbers, landscapers, and HVAC) – Service businesses should ask customers for feedback right after a service to check that customers are happy with the result.
- Insurance Agency – Brokers should check in with customers after confirming their plan or making a claim to check that they’re happy with the outcome.
- Law firm – Lawyers could ask for feedback following an initial consultation, once a case is resolved, or when a client leaves their service.
- Assisted living facility – Receptionists and caseworkers should ask for feedback from both patients and relatives. They could ask for feedback once a person has moved into the facility, a few months after, every couple of months, and if someone leaves their service.
- Storage facility – Salespeople and receptionists should request feedback when a new customer joins the service, a few months into a subscription, and if someone leaves the facility for a competitor.
- Salon – Beauticians or receptionists should ask customers for feedback right after treatment.
It’s important to train your staff on how to ask customers for feedback in a polite, natural, and personal way. Team members should regularly ask customers for feedback and consider how to best approach them. They can then supplement feedback requests with software like GatherUp to help them follow up, gather, and manage feedback types in real-time.
Post Purchase or Post Service Completion
Another key moment for asking for customer feedback is following a purchase of a product or service from your business.
For example, local grocery stores could send out a quick customer feedback request following a customer’s weekly shop. A quick “How did we do today?” can go a long way. You could also ask customers more specific questions about wait times, the quality of customer service, and if they found everything they were looking for.
Real estate agents should ask customers for feedback once the deal is complete or the search is over. It would feel a little premature to ask for feedback midway through the process.
Read more: The Untapped Value of Real Estate Agent Reviews
Customer satisfaction surveys are a great way of getting specific feedback from customers.
Check out our guide to creating an effective customer satisfaction survey and try out our 20 recommended survey questions.
When a customer cancels their service
For many businesses, the absence of negative feedback is a sign of customer satisfaction. But, only 1 in 26 unhappy customers complain, the rest often say nothing and then leave your business for a competitor.
While unhappy customers are more likely to leave quietly than provide negative feedback, proactively asking them for feedback may help you understand where your business may be falling short of expectations.
If you’re able to quickly identify solutions, you may even be able to prevent those initially unhappy customers from churning and going elsewhere.
Understanding why customers dropped your business can also help you implement better customer experience strategies moving forward so that you retain future customers.
For example, gyms should always ask for feedback via an exit survey if a regular visitor drops off or cancels their subscription. Law firms and doctors’ offices that may have a set of regular visitors should remember to ask for feedback if a customer suddenly leaves the service.
Tag your exit surveys within GatherUp to help identify the type of customer feedback you’re dealing with.
How can you ask for customer feedback?
Now you know when to ask for feedback, let’s look at how to ask for customer feedback through different communication channels.
Each type of feedback is better suited to different businesses. For instance, a doctor’s office may be best suited to requesting feedback on flyers while a reservation-only restaurant may prefer to text customers feedback requests using the number that was used to make the reservation.
It’s important to test out different communication methods to see what your target audience prefers.
Some feedback types work best for certain businesses:
- Law Firms – Email
- Restaurants – TextBack, text
- Real Estate – Text, Email
- Home Services – Text, Email, TextBack
- Doctors’ Offices – Face-to-face, TextBack, email
- Gyms – Face-to-face, text, email
- Salon – Text
- Assisted Living Facilities – Face-to-face, email
Asking for feedback face-to-face
If your business is customer-facing, you could ask customers directly how they feel about your business or provide them with a paper questionnaire.
At a local grocery store, the cashier could ask if the customer found everything they were looking for. Simple exchanges like this can be valuable for understanding how customers generally feel about your business.
You can also use face-to-face exchanges as an opportunity to remind customers that they will receive a text or an email later requesting feedback from them.
Some businesses like home health services or doctor’s offices may deal with older customers who are less familiar with the technology. So ask them to share their thoughts via a paper questionnaire.
Asking for feedback on social media
If a customer posts about your business on social media, you could leave a link to a feedback form for them to fill in. Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook also make it easy to run simple polls. You could use these as an opportunity to gauge satisfaction around new location openings or new product launches.
Requesting a third-party review
When customers leave positive feedback, via a survey or email, ask them to leave a quick review on a third-party website. These reviews help market your product or service to potential customers.
Identify the best third-party review websites for your business. For example, Google Reviews is popular with local businesses. Yelp is another site that’s popular with restaurants.
To encourage people to leave reviews, you could add a call-to-action button to the footer of your email newsletter.
Posting a feedback form on your website
Adding a pop-up survey or feedback form on your site is a great way to encourage customers to leave feedback anytime. Make the form short and easy to fill in to increase your chance of responses.
Stick to around five questions and consider offering an incentive to customers. An incentive could include entry to a prize draw to win a $200 Amazon voucher or similar.
Requesting feedback via email
When you send out feedback surveys by email, make sure to personalize requests to your customer or a segmented customer group. Address it to the customer’s first name and sign the email off with a team member’s name. Always send your customer feedback request from a real person and not from the customer support team through a generic email like [email protected].
If you have an email subscriber list of loyal customers, consider sending out feedback requests at regular intervals.
10 Email templates for requesting Feedback
1. Post-sale email template
Strike while the iron is hot and send a customer this request for feedback immediately following a purchase:
Dear Alice,
Thank you for purchasing a Toyota Corolla at Smith’s Car Dealership – we hope you’re happy with your new car!
We’d love to know how you found the experience of purchasing a car with us, so would like to invite you to take our customer satisfaction survey – it will only take 2 minutes and will be invaluable for helping us improve our service!
Thank you so much,
Joe Smith, Founder of Smith’s Car Dealership
2. General feedback email template
After someone has been a customer of your business for a while, send out this email to encourage them to share their valuable insights. Include an incentive to increase the chance of them completing the customer satisfaction survey:
Dear Bill,
We’re always looking to make ABC Insurance exactly what you need for your insurance needs. As a valued customer, your feedback helps us decide which services to improve and which new features to add to our insurance policies.
We would love some feedback to help us make ABC Insurance the best it can be. Take our survey before March 15th, and we’ll enter you into a giveaway for 3 months of free home insurance (terms and conditions apply).
Thank you,
Mark, Director of ABC Insurance
3. Post-hotel stay email template
Send out a quick request for feedback no later than a few days after a guest’s stay in your hotel. Personalized details help your message stand out and may encourage guests to complete the survey:
Dear Chris,
Thanks for staying at Swan Lodge. We appreciate you choosing us for your Thanksgiving Holiday plans.
To help us improve, we’d love to ask you a few questions about your stay. It’ll only take 5 minutes, and it will help us make Swan Lodge even better for you and future guests.
Thanks,
Lindsey, Bookings Manager at Swan Lodge
4. Review request email template
Local reviews are a great way of publicizing your customer feedback and boosting your business’s credibility in the local area. Request an online review with this template:
Hi David,
It’s been great doing business with you. Thank you for being a loyal customer for the past 2 years!
As you may know, lots of people like you rely on online reviews to find great local doctors. With that said, we would love it if you could leave us a quick review on Google.
You can find the page by clicking on this link to leave your review and help other people like you find a doctor who cares about their wellbeing.
Thank you again! We appreciate it.
Dr. Matthew Smart
5. Lost customer feedback request email template
Customers often leave businesses in silence, but catching them before they go to a competitor is key to accessing some valuable customer insights. It can be tough to write to customers who have left your business, so try this simple template:
Dear Emma,
We’re sorry to see you cancel your subscription with us at CrossFit Xtreme. As a small locally-owned gym chain, I care deeply about our gym goers’ experience and wanted to take the chance to see if there’s anything we could do to improve our classes.
If you have 2 minutes to spare, I’d love for you to complete our survey. If you have any other details to share that aren’t on the survey I’d love to schedule a call with you.
We hope to see you at CrossFit Xtreme again soon!
Thank you
Brad, Founder and Owner of CrossFit Xtreme
6. Post-service completion email template
As soon as your business completes a service for a customer, make it a habit to send out a quick personalized survey requesting some quick feedback:
Hi Fred,
Thanks again for trusting Boston Air Conditioning Services to install your brand-new unit. Your business means a lot to us, and as a loyal customer, we’d love to know your thoughts when it comes to what we could do to improve our services.
We’d appreciate it if you could answer a few questions about our quality of service and your overall satisfaction with the job. Here’s a link to our survey – don’t worry, it won’t take more than 5 minutes.
Have a great rest of your day!
Andrew, Lead Technician
7. New business feedback request email template
If your business is new and welcoming its first few customers, it’s a great moment to reach out for a few lines of customer feedback about your initial offering:
Hey Gavin,
Thanks for giving Jake’s Juice Bar a try! We’re new to the area and would love to know your thoughts on our bar. Let us know anything from our juice menu to our music choice.
Complete this quick survey and be in with a chance of winning a three-month supply of daily juice!
Thanks,
Jake, Founder of Jake’s Juice Bar
8. New customer feedback request email template
New customers can provide a fresh perspective on your business and help you understand why customers are choosing you instead of the competition:
Hi Harvey,
Welcome to May Law and Partners. We’re always interested in learning what new clients look for when they choose us to represent them. If you’re open to sharing, I’d love to know what initially brought you to our site. When you have a moment to spare, I’d appreciate you taking our survey.
Anything that you’d like to share would be much appreciated!
Jessica, Partner of May Law
9. Post-meal customer feedback request email template
Following a restaurant reservation, send out a simple feedback request that may include a survey asking customers if they’d recommend your restaurant to a friend and how they rated the meal:
Hey Isabel,
It was great to see you at Jones Grill & Bar this evening. We hope you had an awesome time and that we’ll see you again soon.
It’d be great to hear what you felt we did and what could be improved for next time. If you have a moment to fill in our survey we’ll enter you into a prize draw for a three-course dinner for two.
Thank you!
Carly, Jones Grill & Bar Restaurant Manager
10. Regular customer feedback request email template
If you have a subscription-based business, you should check in with your customers every few months to see how they feel about their subscription and its value:
Hi Josh,
We’re curious to find out how you feel about the gym membership you started three months ago. Do you think it’s helping you reach your fitness goals?
Take a moment to fill in our survey, and we’ll give you a personal training session with us to say thanks!
Keep up the great work!
Chad, FitnessOne Gym Manager
Read more: 10 Ways to Get More Reviews
25 Customer feedback templates for requests
5 Steps for getting valuable customer feedback
Knowing how to approach customers in the right way makes all the difference when it comes to gathering meaningful customer feedback.
First, you must understand why customers don’t automatically leave feedback. People are busy and don’t always want to spend 5 or 10 minutes providing your business with free insights.
Help customers to see their input means a lot to your business, and you’ll receive more feedback.
Step 1: Personalize your approach
If you’re relying on text messages or emails to request feedback, always personally address them to customers and make them relevant to each individual.
Instead of asking open-ended questions like ‘How do you feel about our business’, make them specific to the service or product the customer bought. Ask customer feedback questions along the lines of ‘What would you like to change about our product?’ or ‘How could we improve our in-store customer service?’
Step 2: Explain why customer feedback is valuable
Everybody likes to feel helpful. Highlight how feedback is invaluable for improving your business’s offering. You could say that you plan to launch a new line of products or add new features to your services.
Step 3: Keep it brief
Most people don’t relish the idea of completing 20-question long customer satisfaction surveys. To ensure higher completion rates and lower drop-off rates, keep your survey to around 4 or 5 questions.
NPS surveys (net-promoter-score) are also a great way of keeping feedback requests short and sweet. All customers need to do is to say on a scale of 1-10 how likely they are to recommend your company to a friend.
Include an option at the end to provide more feedback if customers want to, but don’t make it obligatory.
Step 4: Provide an incentive
Providing customers with an incentive like a discount, entrance into a prize giveaway, or similar can be a great way of encouraging them to provide meaningful feedback. Rewarding customers will help encourage them to invest some time into completing your survey.
Remember that you can only offer incentives for internal feedback. You cannot incentivize a 3rd party review as this goes against the regulations set out by most review sites. So if you’re using GatherUp and asking for feedback with an incentive, turn off the review request links.
Step 5: Say thank you and follow-up
Always thank your customers for taking the time to provide their valuable insights and opinions. You should follow up with any critical feedback to clarify any details and get further insights.
Who should ask for customer feedback?
Depending on your business’s structure and industry, certain people will be best placed to ask customers for feedback. Generally, team members in a customer-facing role should ask for customer feedback.
Here are some examples of who that person could be depending on your business type:
- Real Estate – Agent or receptionist
- Doctor’s Office – Receptionist or doctor
- Home Services – Technician or doctor
- Car Dealership – Salesperson, receptionist, or customer support agent
- Insurance Brokers – Salesperson or receptionist
- Restaurant – Waitstaff, restaurant manager, or booking manager
Once customer feedback is collected, it’s then important that it’s properly logged and reported to the right person.
GatherUp can help you store all of your customer feedback, data, reviews, and surveys in one place. Get a full picture of your business through the eyes of your customers and begin to implement customer feedback and better manage customer experience.
Collect customer feedback and ask the right questions with GatherUp
Asking for customer feedback in the right way is vital for survey and review completion rates When done right, you’ll also receive more meaningful insights and even boost customer loyalty. When customers feel valued and that their insights will improve your business, they’ll be more likely to share their honest thoughts.
Asking for valuable feedback doesn’t have to be complicated. Start by choosing the right moment in the customer journey and then use one of our templates.
Ask for feedback regularly, and you’ll be on your way to improving the customer experience.
How to ask for customer feedback FAQ
What is the best way to ask for feedback?
The best way to ask for feedback is to make it easy and convenient for your customers. You can use methods like short online surveys, feedback forms on your website, or quick polls on social media channels. It’s important to ask clear questions that are easy to understand.
Also, let your customers know that their opinions are valuable and will be used to improve your products or services. Remember, the easier and more straightforward it is for customers to give feedback, the more likely they are to respond.
How do I write a customer feedback survey?
When writing a customer feedback survey, follow these steps:
- Start with clear and simple questions that focus on what you want to know.
- Use a mix of question types like multiple choice, rating scales, and short answer questions.
- Make sure the survey isn’t too long––about 5-10 questions usually keep response rates high.
- Begin with more general questions and then move to specific ones. It’s also a good idea to include a question at the end that lets customers share any additional thoughts or suggestions.
- Always thank them for their time and feedback, and assure them that their opinions will help you improve your product/service.
How do you ask for feedback if it’s not a good experience?
When asking for feedback after a not-so-good experience, follow these steps:
- Acknowledge that their experience wasn’t up to the mark and express your commitment to making things better.
- Ask specific questions about what went wrong and how it affected them. This shows that you’re genuinely interested in learning from their experience.
- Encourage honest feedback by saying that all customers’ opinions are valued and will be used to prevent similar issues in the future.
- Remember, handling negative feedback well can turn an unhappy customer into a loyal one.
