Getting reviews is one of the most important aspects of growing your business—they’re a barometer of how you’re doing and are invaluable as a marketing tool for many reasons. Yet, as a marketing strategist, so many of my clients haven’t baked getting reviews into their process and struggle to follow up consistently. That’s where review management software comes in.

Most of my projects involve working with clients to get reviews so we have effective voice of customer data and testimonials to build trust and social proof. However, it can be like pushing a boulder uphill to get reviews in a timely fashion, so to make their next project smoother sailing, I always do my best to help them integrate the process of asking for reviews at the conclusion of every project or sale.

Some automate it through their email or SMS marketing software. Others have CRMs with review management features. Still others use standalone review management software to help them track customer sentiment, improve products and customer service, and grow their sales.

Because sorting through all the options can be challenging, I’m breaking down some of the best review management software options to simplify your search.

Table of Contents

• Best Review Management Software
• What is review management software?
• Benefits of Review Management Software
• How to Choose Customer Review Management Software
• Ready, Set, Manage Your Reviews

What is review management software?

Review management refers to the process of getting, analyzing, and responding to customer reviews. The more complex your business (and the more platforms your customers are on), the more important it becomes to use review management software to keep track of what people are saying about you online.

For example, when I’m mining customer reviews for data, I might look at reviews on sites that include, but aren’t limited to:

• Google.
• Facebook.
• LinkedIn.
• Yelp.
• G2.
• TrustPilot.
• Clutch.

What’s more, I might also set a Google Alert for mentions of my client and their company and check out forums like Reddit.

As your company grows, keeping track of all the reviews, responding to them appropriately, and integrating the feedback with sales, marketing, and operations can become a full-time job — unless, of course, you bring in a tool to help you streamline it.

Looking for prompts or ideas for responding to reviews? Grab our FREE Review Response Templates here!

Benefits of Review Management Software

Most people today — 93% of us — are influenced by reviews when it comes to making purchasing decisions. So, while you already know reviews are important, you may not understand the benefits or, more importantly, the role review management software can play.

Makes It Easier to Get Reviews

In my opinion, the number one benefit of customer review management software is that it makes it easier to get reviews in the first place. If this is not baked into your process, you may not have enough data to make decisions. And as I’ve mentioned, having reviews is helpful on so many levels. Whatever your industry, your buyers are using reviews and personal recommendations to make decisions:

• 94% of B2B purchasers use online reviews to make decisions. (Clutch)
• 82% of review site users say reviews are more influential than sales claims. (B2B SaaS Reviews)
• 84% of consumers place as much trust in online reviews as in personal recommendations. (CapitalOne Shopping Research)

And if those stats aren’t enough to help you understand the importance of reputation and review management software, here are a few more:

• 94% of businesses using reputation management tools see an ROI. (BrightLocal)
• 75% of customers recommend companies based on a great experience. (SalesForce Research)
• Conversion rates increase 270% when online retailers display reviews and peak with a 4.9 out of 5-star rating. (CapitalOne Shopping Research)

So now that you understand the importance of reviews in your sales process, let’s explore some of the other benefits.

Helps Your Marketing Strategy

I can talk about marketing all day long, but let’s keep this brief. Here are some of the top marketing benefits of using review management software:

• Voice of the customer data. When you use the words your customers use to talk about their problems, it’s easier to build trust with them because you can show you understand their needs.
• Social proof. People like what other people like, so having reviews that show how incredible your products or services may tip the scale in your favor.
• Buzz building. When you get new reviews in places like Google My Business, it helps the search engines build trust in your business, plus it gives you content to share online.

But it’s also about authenticity. Anytime you can share the review in its “natural” environment, you can combat some of the fears of fake reviews. 79% of people think that fake reviews are a problem, so when you can alleviate their concerns, you’re ahead of the game.

And because different types of review management software make it easier to gather, analyze, disseminate, and respond to feedback, it can save you considerable time.

Improves the Customer Experience

In addition to being a marketing buff, I’m also laser-focused on processes and experiences. Creating a great customer experience doesn’t have to mean going all out—it simply starts with doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’ll do it. (It’s also about great customer service.)

93% of customers say good service makes them more likely to return, and 80% say the experience is as important as a company’s products or services.

Reputation management software allows you to read the room — especially when you’re not in it so you can get hints about what people are saying about your business and plug any holes that appear or adapt based on what your audience wants.

In fact, unhappy customers present one of the best opportunities to learn and improve. So, even though good reviews are important, your response to negative feedback can also help build trust.

How to Choose Customer Review Management Software

With so many options out there, choosing the right review management software can be a real struggle. Here’s how you can zero in on the right review management software for your business:

First, I recommend taking some time to identify what you need. A good place to start is by considering questions like these:

• How many reviews will you need to manage and respond to on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?
• What are the review platforms that are most relevant to your business (e.g., Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor)?
• What features are important to you (review collection, response management, analytics, sentiment analysis, and integration capabilities)?
• What investment am I comfortable making?

Then, make a list of the different review management software options and the features they offer and compare them to your needs.

A few things to consider when you compare:

• Pricing. Weigh the cost vs. value provided by each option, and be aware of costs like setup fees, additional charges for premium features, or per-user fees.
• Ease of use. The software should be intuitive and easy to navigate for all team members.
• Scalability. Ensure the software will still work for your business as it grows.
• Reviews and case studies. Check review sites like G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot to see what other users are saying about the software, and look for reviews from businesses similar to yours. Many software providers have case studies or testimonials on their websites which can help you learn how the software is used and has helped other businesses.
• Integration and compatibility. Find out if the software integrates with your existing systems, such as your CRM, email marketing, and social media management tools. I also recommend checking if the software offers API access for custom integrations.
• Support and training. Your review management software should have excellent customer support and make sure you have what you need to start out on the right foot. They should offer onboarding and training resources such as tutorials, webinars, and documentation.

Next, it‘s time to test the software. There’s no better way to find out if the software will work for you than to take advantage of free trials and demos so you can experience it first-hand.

At this point, if you‘ve landed on an option that checks all the right boxes, you can move forward with signing up, knowing that you’ve made the right choice.

By taking a methodical approach, you can save yourself a ton of headaches (that I’ve seen many business owners suffer) by being too hasty.

Try HubSpot’s Customer Feedback Software to get a better understanding of what they want and think so you can wow them. Get a demo today.

Best Review Management Software

1. HubSpot

HubSpot provides a suite of tools — marketing, sales, customer service, and customer relationship management (CRM) — to help you attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers.

From the lens of review management, HubSpot has created customer service feedback software that helps you easily share valuable data with your team and seamlessly works with all of its other features. Hubspot is the go-to for serious marketers.

Features

• Centralized review dashboard. Monitor and manage all your customer reviews from different platforms in one place, making it easier to track and respond.
• Automated review requests. Boost the reviews you get for your business by requesting them through email or SMS.
• Review aggregation and display. HubSpot’s software aggregates reviews from multiple sources. You can display these reviews on your website or landing pages using customizable widgets to enhance credibility and social proof.
• Sentiment analysis. Use the provided sentiment analysis tools to gain insights into your customer satisfaction and areas that may need improvement.
• Integration with CRM. You can link customer reviews to individual customer records and get a full understanding of each customer’s experience and history.

What I like: I love how easy it is to use Hubspot and how many different tools it offers! You can use the platform for customer service (ticketing and knowledge base creation), marketing (email marketing, ads/content management, analytics, and reporting), and landing page building.

Pros: Hubspot is a powerful tool for just about everything. It‘s easy to use, and it’s a clean dashboard for your business (you don’t have to log into a dozen different tools!).

Cons: Some users have found that Hubspot‘s pricing can be a little complex, and it’s a significant price jump from one tier to the next ($15 USD per month for a basic plan up to $800 per month for the Marketing Hub Professional plan). Also worth noting is that it’s easy to hit limits if you choose a free plan (for example, you can send 2,000 emails per calendar month).

Free plan? Yes, HubSpot has a free plan! It includes a whole suite of tools, such as forms, website traffic analytics, ads management, and retargeting.

Pricing: Paid plans range from $15 to $3,600 USD per month, depending on the tier and number of users.

2. HighLevel

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HighLevel is designed for small businesses and entrepreneurs. It aims to simplify workflows by automating day-to-day tasks and providing sales funnels, email marketing, appointment scheduling, and pipeline management features. HighLevel is an all-in-one CRM option, but it includes review management features that make it an essential part of your business workflows that I’d like to highlight.

Features

• Conversations. One click shows all your reviews, SMS, Google chats, and email conversations, allowing you to read and reply to reviews from a single, easy-to-use window.
• Spam and unfair review dispute. A quick link feature directly within the review interface makes it easy to dispute spam or unfair Google reviews. This will help protect your business from harmful feedback and maintain your online reputation.
• Detailed reporting. Reporting tools track the number of reviews, overall ratings, trends, and customer sentiments. You can set goals and sort reviews by source, star rating, and date range, providing valuable insights into your review performance.
• Automated review requests. You can make the review request process hands-off and send customized automated requests via SMS and email. This will encourage customers to leave feedback with less work.
• Integration with CRM and other tools. You can link reviews to customer records and blend your review processes within your existing workflows.

What I like: Personally, I moved to GoHighLevel because I was tired of trying to integrate all the apps and was happy to have a solution that just worked, but was also flexible enough to work with my business.

Pros: Lower cost than other CRMs. Plus, customer service is available equally across all service tiers.

Cons: Some users have said that they had difficulty migrating over to HighLevel and that certain features were paywalled beyond the monthly cost.

Free plan? There’s no free version, but HighLevel offers a 14-day trial.

Pricing: Their plans range between $97 and 297 USD based on the tier you select. Other people may white-label High Level and offer varying degrees of support.

3. BirdEye

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Birdeye helps you improve your customer interactions and manage your online reputation by providing tools to gather customer feedback, manage reviews, and enhance your overall customer satisfaction.

Features

• Review management. Monitor, respond to, and manage reviews so your business can maintain a positive online reputation. This includes platforms like Yelp, Google and Facebook.
• Review generation. Send automated review requests to customers via email or SMS to increase reviews and improve your online ratings.
• Customer surveys. Create and send customizable customer surveys to gather valuable feedback.
• Listings management. Manage your online listings to improve local SEO and help your customers find you easily.
• Social media management. You can manage your social accounts, schedule posts, and monitor social media activity.

What I like: What stood out to me is that you can use Birdeye to chat with your customers as they’re live on your website. You can handle questions and offer support right away.

Pros: You can easily aggregate reviews by field so that you can identify trends and quickly understand how your business performs in specific areas. You can also send out surveys very quickly after a customer visits your business to get reviews while you’re top-of-mind.

Cons: I found their pricing information was not transparent without providing business details and an email address first. Users have also mentioned that their contract terms are very long (12 months) and automatically renew.

Free plan? No free plan, but they have a demo that you can watch once you provide business information.

Pricing: None provided.

4. Reputation

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Reputation focuses on helping businesses manage and enhance their online reputation. I’ve found that their tools are helpful for monitoring, managing, and improving your customer feedback and online reviews through actionable feedback.

Features

• Social media monitoring. Track mentions, comments, and reviews on social media platforms to stay informed about what your customers are saying.
• Review management. Track, respond to, and analyze online reviews from platforms like Google, Facebook, Yelp, and more so you can maintain a positive online image and address customer concerns promptly.
• Survey and feedback. Create and distribute customer surveys to gather valuable feedback directly from your customers. This feedback can help you improve your products, services, and overall customer experience.
• Customer experience management. Monitor and manage your entire customer journey, from when they first contact you to following up after they buy.
• Business listings. Create profiles that help you stand out from your competitors and ensure they’re accurate and optimized for local SEO. You can also track clicks and conversions from your listings.

What I like: Reputation has a very clear metric called (wait for it!) Reputation. This score helps you get a high-level view of where you stand with your online reputation and is based on review ratings and volume. You even get relevant suggestions for making your score better.

Pros: When I viewed a demo of Reputation, I saw that it was easy to navigate, but robust. And, I liked the clean interface.

Cons: Some users have said that the social media functionality is a bit lacking and that the onboarding can be challenging. I also found no information about pricing.

Free plan? No free plan, but you can watch a demo.

Pricing: None provided.

5. Podium

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Podium is a platform that can help you connect with customers more effectively and manage your online reputation. You can communicate with customers, gather their feedback, and even take payments.

Features

• Messaging platform. Communicate with customers through multiple means, including SMS, email, and web chat. This makes it easy to have conversations in one place.
• Review management. Ask for, manage, analyze, and respond to online reviews. You can request reviews from customers via text message, which can help increase your positive reviews on Google, Facebook, and Yelp.
• Feedback and surveys. Podium allows businesses to create and distribute surveys to gather valuable feedback from customers. This helps businesses understand customer satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
• Webchat. Engage with your website visitors in real-time, answering questions and providing support, which can help convert website visitors into customers.
• Payments. You can send payment requests via text message, making it easy for customers to pay your invoices quickly and securely.

What I like: Podium really leans into its SMS functionality and makes it effortless for your team to send a review request to a customer‘s phone right after they buy. I was impressed by how fast the process was — click a button in the dashboard, enter their name and phone number, and press send. That’s it!

Pros: Podium makes it super easy to get Google reviews through their SMS review request process. There’s also integration for getting reviews on other channels like Facebook.

Cons: A number of reviews said that Podium’s onboarding process is a challenge, and there were many mentions of their 30-day cancellation policy (you need to provide notice to cancel).

Free plan? No free plan, but you can watch a demo.

Pricing: Their plans range from $399 to $599 USD per month, and they also offer custom pricing.

6. Reviews.io

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Reviews.io helps businesses collect, manage, and display customer reviews. The platform aims to showcase your most attention-grabbing and relevant reviews, boosting your business’s online reputation, improving customer trust, and increasing conversion rates.

Features

• Integration capabilities. Works with third-party apps, including e-commerce platforms (such as Shopify and WooCommerce) and CRM systems (such as HubSpot and Salesforce).
• Review nuggets. Highlight the most relevant parts of a review and feature it right next to your Buy Now buttons. You can even create review carousels that help drive higher conversions.
• Social proof. Showcase your reviews on social media platforms to attract more customers. The platform also has a trust badge widget that you can display on your website. You can display User-Generated content to boost your credibility.
• Multi-location support. If your business has multiple locations, you can manage reviews and reputation for each location separately.
• Video reviews. The platform supports the collection and display of video reviews, providing a more engaging and authentic way for customers to share their experiences.

What I like: What got my attention is that you can watch your customers as they navigate your e-commerce website in real time with their Session Replay feature. Some may find this a little controversial, but the information you can gain by watching highlights can be helpful if your goal is to increase conversions.

Pros: Their plans are not contract-based, and their pricing is transparent. As I was reading reviews, I noticed several users said Review.io’s customer service is excellent.

Cons: Many users commented that they felt the price was too high, and noted that many features are locked unless you’re in a high-tier plan.

Free plan? There is a free plan! You get up to 10 Survey Replies and 50 Replay sessions, as well as access to company and product reviews, the Reviews Widget, and surveys.

Pricing: They have a tiered pricing system, and paid plans start at $99 per month based on review invites. You can book a demo before you commit to a paid plan.

7. Reviewly.ai

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Reviewly.ai helps you generate and respond to Google reviews from your customers using AI. By automating the review collection process, you can easily request and respond to customer feedback, making sure every review is addressed quickly and properly.

Features

• Makes use of AI. The platform uses AI in a few unique ways – create personalized responses to your customers‘ reviews, help positive-rating customers generate written reviews, and draft responses to your customer’s reviews.
• Automated review collection and follow-up. Sends automated review requests via SMS (which has a high open rate). If a customer responds to an SMS with a poor rating, you are notified immediately so that you can follow up and resolve potential issues before they start sharing negative feedback.
• Integration capabilities. Works with third-party apps like Zapier, Twilio, Slack, and your Google Business profile so you can easily add it to your existing workflows.​
• Multilingual support. This enables your businesses to communicate with your customers in their own language.
• Insights and analytics. Detailed analytics and reporting tools help you review performance and how your customers feel about your business.

What I like: Reviewly.ai embraces AI at every stage of the feedback process, but what stood out to me is how the platform uses AI to help customers write reviews.

In my experience, one of the biggest problems with collecting reviews is that many people just don‘t know what to say, even if they’re thrilled with your business. This AI feature helps solve the problem without creating more work for you.

Pros: The platform makes the process of getting reviews for your business as uninvolved as possible while allowing you to respond very quickly when needed.

Cons: Since this platform is focused on Google reviews, it doesn’t offer much support for reviews across other channels like some of the previous options I reviewed.

Free plan? No free plan, but you can book a live demo and get a 7-day free trial.

Pricing: Plans range from $39 to $129 per month. Higher-tiered plans allow users to send more feedback requests and access priority support.

Ready, Set, Manage Your Reviews

It’s never been easier or more important to get high-quality reviews and manage them. With tons of great review management tools out there, it’s more a matter of what you need and what works with your existing tech stack. (And with Zapier, it’s possible to connect just about any two pieces of software these days.)

While I work with these types of products day in and day out, I’m always amazed at how good these tools can be and how AI is continually improving them. Right now, I use HighLevel to get reviews, but I’m really excited to play around more with Reviewly.AI to see more.

At the end of the day, if you’re not using any reputation management software, give one of these best-in-class options a try and start reaping the rewards of those reviews.

Around 75% of customers will pay more for a great customer experience. Are you using a feedback form to help you find out exactly what they’re looking for?

One thing that continues to surprise me in the world of digital products and website design is how confident businesses are that they know their target audience. Product and design decisions are made on assumptions or personal preferences, and the results often backfire.

You don’t realize the importance of a good background color until you stumble on a website with a bad one. The right background color is subtle, and seamlessly captures your brand without distracting the user. The wrong background color … well, it’s all the user will notice, probably.

Dreading telling loyal customers that you have to raise prices?

Sending a price increase letter can be intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be.

In this post, we’ll explain what a price increase justification is, then we’ll review some best practices you should consider when making a price increase announcement to your customers, and give you a free price increase template to take with you.

Skip to:

• Reasons for Price Increases
• Price Increase Letter Tips
• Price Increase Letter Templates
• Price Increase Examples

Common Reasons for Price Increases

Most customers expect that the cost of their beloved products won’t remain stagnant forever. However, if a competitor’s prices are not increasing, this potentially puts you at risk for customer churn. You must handle a price increase quickly and authentically to ensure that your customers understand the situation and are willing to stick through it.

Some reasons companies increase prices are:

• Production Costs: Costs to produce and distribute your products play a key role in pricing. If those costs increase, you’ll need to raise prices to accommodate the added expense.
• Material Costs: Similarly to production costs, the price of materials can also go up which will affect your bottom line. Any adjustments to upgrade the quality of your product will impact pricing as well.
• Industry Trends: If you’re not a first-mover into your industry, chances are you’ll need to keep up with competitors to make sure your business stays relevant. Conduct a competitive analysis (if you haven’t already) to stay on top of industry standards. If you find deficiencies in your current business model, bringing your company up to speed may result in a price increase.

• Growth: Growth is what most businesses strive for and it can also present an opportunity to increase prices. Should you choose to increase due to growth, it’s important to offer existing customers benefits or new services to offset the negative effects of an increase.

Before deciding on any price changes, sync with your sales and customer service teams to make sure everyone is on the same page about whether the increase is justified and how to best communicate this change to customers.

Price Increase Justification

This conversation is never easy to have with customers. After all, who wants to hear that the product your business relies on is going to cost more?

No matter how well you communicate this change, your customer service team should expect at least a few negative reactions. If you aren’t seeing anyone complain about higher prices, then they’re still probably too low. This leaves it up to your discretion whether you want to increase revenue or maintain customer satisfaction.

If you’re experiencing pushback from your customer base, it’s helpful to sync your sales and customer service teams. Both departments should align when it comes to how you communicate this price change. It will provide customers with consistent information as they speak with both sales reps and service reps.

In general, the best approach your team can take is assuring customers that the increase will help maintain product quality. Customers who are dependent on your products will be more understanding of this reasoning and will want you to maintain the high quality that they’re accustomed to.

HubSpot’s Chief Executive Officer, Yamini Rangan, reflects on this approach in the quote below.

“Some price optimizations were successful and others weren’t. But the ones that we communicated well were always value-driven.” – Yamini Rangan, Chief Executive Officer at HubSpot

If you’re not sure how to begin the conversation, take a look at some of the best practices below before you get started.

1. Contact them directly.

Imagine if your Spotify Premium bill increased from $9.99 to $14.99 per month without your knowledge or consent. You would be pretty mad, right?

It’s unfair for a customer to suddenly find out there has been a price increase in their product. If a price increase occurs, go through your list of customers who use that product or service, and send a price increase letter notifying them of the change. If possible, address the letters to each customer to personalize the process.

Tom Edwards, founder of Bit Quirky Consulting, shares his thoughts on the difference a personalized message can make, “Personalizing your communication is crucial. I have always reached out directly via phone or even in person if possible, and followed up with a clear email. This shows you genuinely care about their business.

In the past, I have considered offering options like phased price increases and flexible pricing plans to make the transition smoother. Keep a positive and confident tone, emphasizing the value of your services. Encourage open dialogue, listen to their feedback, and be willing to make adjustments if necessary. By showing appreciation and maintaining high standards, you’ll reassure your customers that they’re making the right choice by staying with you.”

2. Let customers know well in advance.

You should provide your customers with plenty of time to come to terms with the price increase. They may need to re-assess their budget or consider alternative options, so you should keep them in the loop once you’re made aware of the situation. Additionally, encourage them to make one or more product orders before the price increase kicks in.

Edwards continues on to say, “The key is to communicate early and be transparent. Give your customers plenty of notice and explain the reasons behind the increase, whether it’s due to rising costs or because you’re enhancing your services. People appreciate honesty and are more likely to understand if they see why the change is necessary.”

3. Tailor messages to different customer segments.

Sam Hickson, CEO of TG Wireless – Wholesale Cell Phones, shares personal insight on the importance of differentiation, “I can say from experience that price changes have varying impacts on different users or clients. It’s very important to personalize your messages because, from my experience, a company often deals with various customers who engage with different products and services. 

Some customers might be on paid subscription plans, while others could still be using free versions. You also might be serving both corporate clients and regular end-users, who are each at different stages of their customer journey. All these factors need to be considered when crafting a price increase letter.”

Depending on the service or product that you offer, you need to meet your customers where they are, especially considering their individual needs. You can increase prices, but try to do so in a way that is feasible for varying budgets.

“I personally believe that it’s important to categorize your clientele into distinct segments and tailor different versions of a price increase notice to each group. It should follow a different approach for each user segment, taking into account their specific needs and the subscription plan they currently have.”

4. Remind them that higher prices mean better quality.

The necessity for a price increase can be confusing for customers, especially if they’ve been purchasing the same product for months or years. It makes it vital that you stress the importance of product quality.

Typically, products increase in price to match higher operating costs, increases in hires, or increases in prices of needed materials. To ensure the same level of high quality, sometimes you have to raise the price.

Erika Friedrich, Operations Manager at A-Temp Heating & Cooling Inc.shares a quote, “Despite rising costs, it’s crucial to maintain the guarantees you currently offer to maintain a high level of trust with your clients. Take time to emphasize the value they will continue to receive by detailing improvements in quality, new features, or additional benefits that justify the price hike. 

5. Explain the reasoning behind the price increase.

Craig Willis, CEO of Skore, explains why you should lead with reasoning, “Explain why you need to increase prices and provide examples of what’s driving it. If your staff costs are rising, say so. If it’s infrastructure, provide an example of how much that has gone up, etc. No customer expects you to run your business at a loss, so they will appreciate the honesty. If they don’t care, are they the type of customer you want?”

To make it clear that you’re raising the prices to maintain the quality of the product, you should explain what caused the price increase. For instance, as some raw materials become increasingly scarce and expensive, companies that utilize these materials are forced to increase the prices for products that use them. Laying that out to customers will prove your willingness to be transparent.

6. Ensure the entire organization is aware of the price increase before announcing it to customers.

It would be embarrassing for a frontline worker to accidentally charge a customer the wrong price because their company failed to notify them of a change. Even if all employees were made aware of the situation, they should all be on the same page in terms of the cost difference, the reasoning, and the logistics moving forward. That way, your company has a consistent voice on the matter.

7. Offer flexible pricing structures to maintain inclusivity.

Virginie Glaenzer, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer at AcornOak, emphasizes the value of accommodation with the quote, “Communicate with empathy, understanding the sensitivity of price adjustments, and provide channels for feedback to foster a dialogue.

Also, consider maintaining current rates for existing customers temporarily as a gesture of loyalty. Finally, monitor reactions and adapt strategies as necessary to maintain trust and satisfaction. This sophisticated approach not only manages the price transition but also enhances the overall customer experience.”

Reward your current loyal customers with a perk only they have access to at the beginning of the price change, while no customer is excited to see prices go up, they will feel more appreciated getting an exclusive discount amidst the change.

8. Allow customers to reach out with further questions or concerns.

You want to be sure your customers receive all the information they require. A lack of information could cause them to churn to a competitor with lower prices. Reassure them that they can always reach out to anyone in your company — including high-level executives — with any more questions or concerns that come up regarding the price increase.

Cari O’Brien, founder of Custom Content Solutions LLC, shares, “Encourage customers to respond with any questions or concerns and commit time on your calendar to speak with anyone who reaches out. The better customer service you provide, and the more transparent and honest you are throughout the process, the more likely you’ll retain your customers.”

Have a price increase coming but still not sure how to say it? Check out the following price increase letter templates to help you put it in the right words.

Price Increase Letter Templates

It’s important to let your customers know about an upcoming price increase, but telling them can sometimes be tricky to phrase.

If you’re stuck, take a look at the templates below for ideas on conveying the message to customers.

1. General Price Increase

This is an example of a letter that lays out a general price increase to customers. It states the exact percentage of the price increase and which products will be experiencing the higher cost. The letter also states exactly when the price increase will come into effect and reminds customers of how long they have to order their products at the current price.

2. Increase in Cost of Materials

This letter also states the exact percentage of the price increase and when it will go into effect. It gives a specific reason for the price increase, providing transparency that many customers will understand. To make this message more impactful, consider adding the value that the price increase provides to customers.

3. Increase in Operating Costs

Like the others, this letter states the percentage of the price increase and when it will go into effect. The letter begins by stating a clear reason for the change. It’s helpful to lay out the exact products that will be experiencing a larger price increase than the rest to avoid any confusion from customers.

Based on these templates, you can use the format below to create your price increase letter to send to your customers.

Sample Price Increase Letter Template

Keep in mind that you’ll want to adhere to the tone that you’ve set during the customer relationship so far, while being transparent and personal every step of the way. Templates can help provide the necessary professional context for price increases and other challenging topics, but be sure to customize them for maximum impact.

Click here to download a free price increase letter template, available exclusively in HubSpot’s 50 Customer Service Email Templates Kit.

How to Write a Price Increase Letter

Delivering notices of a price increase shouldn’t bring a sense of dread. With the messaging tips below, you can make things easier for your team and customers.

1. Be clear and concise.

Customers shouldn’t have to guess or assume what your correspondence means. Communicate the important information at the beginning of the notice, letting them know explicitly what the new pricing will be and when it will take effect. Outline any steps customers need to take before the increase happens. Next, explain what their options are and where they can get more information.

2. Be empathetic.

Depending on your industry, the language you use for written correspondence may need to be more formal, but it shouldn’t come across as cold. The Netflix letter above is a great example of being both personable and professional. It makes customers feel that their business is valued and that the company sees them as more than just a number. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about how you’d like to receive similar news while drafting the letter. Additionally you’ll want to thank them for their business before signing off.

3. Don’t apologize.

Companies raise prices all the time and it’s a completely normal aspect of doing business. Apologizing will not only make the reader think you’re unsure of the decision, but also creates unnecessary awkwardness. Your product or service provides excellent value and you should charge accordingly.

4. Send a follow up.

Email notices can easily end up in spam folders and customers can mistake physical letters as junk mail. To combat this, it’s good to send a follow up notice before the increase goes into effect. It will also give a bit of cushion for customers who maybe read your first notice, but forgot to follow up or take action to renew. Additionally, it will decrease the chances they’ll feel blindsided by an increase.

With these templates in hand, let’s go through some best practices for making your price increase announcement.

Price Increase Letter Examples

You have the tips. You have the templates. How do they work in real life? If you are a paid member of any subscription service, chances are you have received one or two price increase letters in your email inbox. Amazon Prime is a popular company you might have witnessed increasing prices over the last few years. They are not the only ones. Let’s take a look at examples from Spotify, Disney+, Upwork, Hulu, and Netflix.

1. Fabletics

Fabletics sent an email to its VIP members about an upcoming $5 price increase. The athleisure brand offers a monthly membership where members can purchase new outfits and clothing each month.

While this price increase letter is significantly longer than the other examples on this list, it’s great at conveying the value members will get along with the increase. It starts off by telling members what’s in it for them — an added $20 in purchasing power each month. Now for $59.95 per month, members can get up to $100 in merchandise each month.

The email reiterates multiple perks membership offers in addition to highlighting new collaborations with Lizzo. So instead of focusing on the price increase, attention is now directed to all the value membership provides.

2. Apple

Apple sent an email informing customers of a price increase to $6.99 (previously $4.99) for its Apple TV+ subscription.

The streaming platform notified customers directly via email and gave customers several weeks to decide between keeping or canceling a subscription. This price increase letter closes out with a call-to-action for customers to revisit their subscription.

Short, sweet, and to the point, this price increase email is an ideal example to imitate when you write your own letter.

3. Upwork

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Upwork, one of the largest freelancing websites, announced a price increase to its Freelancer fee structure. Since the change involved an increase for both freelancers and clients, the announcement posted on the website had to be thorough.

To explain the reasoning behind the price increase, Upwork includes an FAQ section that gives quick answers to common questions about the change, and where to go for more information.

At the close, this email does not prompt freelancers to reach out with further questions, but it does direct them to learn more about the changes happening to their membership. With Upwork being a platform where freelancers spend and make money, this price increase letter covers enough touchpoints to efficiently introduce customers to the change.

4. Hulu

5. Netflix

Netflix took a much more effective approach in their price increase messaging. Like Hulu, they sent notice well in advance but also took the opportunity to remind customers how their service adds value.

“This update will allow us to deliver even more value for your membership — with stories that lift you up, move you, or simply make your day a little better.” It perfectly sums up why customers should stick around despite the increase.

Overall, Netflix’s tone is warm and personable while still hitting all of the best practices listed above. To further retain customers, the company added a list of new releases and top picks in the footer to retain loyal customers — showing them all the great content they’ll miss out on if they were to cancel their subscription.

How to Raise Prices without Losing Customers

Don’t procrastinate. Your customers have signed up for a product or service, and they deserve ample time to make a decision. Most customers anticipate increased costs in the future. Follow the tips listed in this article, and keep moving forward.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Your business’s health relies on customer satisfaction, and a well-implemented customer service satisfaction survey helps you keep track of that.

Understanding customer satisfaction will help you decide where to focus your time and energy to keep customer delight at the highest level possible. It will also help you understand if a new product feature is worth investing in, areas for improvement, and more.

Your customers will tell you what they need, but you have to ask them.

That’s where customer satisfaction surveys come in.

In this post, we’ll cover:

• The Importance of Customer Satisfaction Surveys
• What Is a Customer Satisfaction Survey?
• How Can I Measure Customer Satisfaction?
• Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions
• Customer Feedback Questions
• Best Practices for Creating Customer Satisfaction Surveys
• How to Use Customer Satisfaction Survey Results
• Customer Satisfaction Survey Template
• Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples from Real Brands

The Importance of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys help businesses better understand and utilize the voice of the customer to sustain growth. There are several key reasons above and beyond this overarching goal that make customer satisfaction surveys a top priority for customer centric businesses.

1. Identifying negative themes in the customer experience: By conducting customer satisfaction surveys, companies can pinpoint negative themes that customers are having and work to resolve them. This helps improve the overall customer experience and increases customer loyalty.

2. Gauging customer loyalty: These surveys give customers a chance to share feedback that yields their propensity to be a loyal customer. Companies can use this information to better retain customers.

3. Identifying customer trends: Surveys allow companies to identify trends in customer satisfaction over time. For example, if several customers have the same complaint about a product, there may be a shift happening in the market that your business hasn’t noticed yet. Acting on this feedback can keep your business ahead of the curve to not only keep existing customers, but acquire new ones who are interested in that same trend.

4. Providing a competitive advantage: Companies that regularly conduct customer satisfaction surveys and make adjustments based on feedback are likely to outperform their competitors. This is because they are better able to meet customer needs and expectations.

5. Validating business decisions: Customer opinions and feedback are two of the most essential factors that validate decisions within your business, allowing you to become more equipped to meet their specific and immediate needs instead of basing your strategy on assumptions.

6. Shaping the customer lifecycle: Their opinions also shape the customer lifecycle. If you don’t know their thoughts, you have a lower chance of retaining them, delighting them, or enticing them to make future purchases.

With all of this in mind, it’s clear how customer satisfaction surveys provide crucial information for customer delight.

What is a customer service satisfaction survey?

A customer service satisfaction survey is a tool to collect customer feedback regarding their experience with your customer service department. Customer service satisfaction surveys are designed to measure customer satisfaction levels, of course. However, they can also identify areas for improvement in your service department and uncover product areas that need attention.

Your customer service team is likely the department with the highest level of customer touchpoints, so understanding what drives customers to call and how their questions are handled is invaluable information when it comes to iterating on feedback and meeting customer expectations.

How can I measure customer satisfaction?

There are plenty of ways to measure customer satisfaction, and they all come down to asking customers how they feel. You are probably familiar with customer satisfaction surveys. Typically, you’ll receive an automated email after a purchase or customer service interaction asking you to complete a survey or rate your experience from 1-10 and explain why.

Plenty of survey software can do this, including HubSpot’s Service Hub. However, you don’t have to pay for customer survey software if you’re not at that stage in your business. I’ve used Google Docs to create feedback forms for my customers, which is a free and easy way to gather feedback and get a feel for customer satisfaction.

I also like to measure customer satisfaction the old-fashioned way: speaking to customers. I’ve had a lot of success asking customers, “How was everything?” after a gig (I rent music gear). You can build rapport, get an accurate feel for customer satisfaction and improvement areas, and solidify repeat business by talking with customers.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) Surveys and Customer Loyalty Questions

Note: NPS is a critical SaaS metric used to measure customer satisfaction.

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your in-store experience today?
• How likely are you to recommend (insert product or service) to others?
• How likely are you to purchase again from us?
• How likely are you to return to our website?
• In your own words, describe how you feel about (insert company name or product here).
• How can we improve your experience with the company?
• In the future, would you be willing to take this survey again?
• May we contact you to follow up on these responses?
• Would you consider our product/service a good value for the price?
• How would you rate your overall satisfaction with our customer service?
• What aspects of the product/service were you most satisfied with?
• What was the primary reason for choosing our product/service?
• What other products/services would you like to see us offer?

Questions for Collecting Product Feedback

• What’s your biggest roadblock when (insert something related to your product)?
• What would be one word you’d use to describe us and why?
• If we were to update (insert product feature here), could we reach back out to talk about these changes?
• How long have you been using the product?
• Which alternatives did you consider before purchasing the product?
• How often do you use the product or service?
• Does the product help you achieve your goals?
• What is your favorite tool or portion of the product or service?
• What features do you find most useful?
• What features do you feel are lacking or could be improved?
• How does our product compare to others you’ve used in the past?
• What is the one thing that would make you use our product more often?
• How easy is it to use our product?
• Do you feel our product is tailored to your needs?
• Is there anything about our product that surprised you?
• How well does our product/service meet your needs?
• What could we do to make you more likely to recommend us?

Questions About Customer Support

• Rate your satisfaction with our team in resolving your issue.
• Did you feel that our team answered your inquiry promptly?
• Do you agree or disagree that your issue was effectively resolved?
• What can our employees do better?
• How can our employees better support your business’s/your goals?
• What mode of communication do you prefer when reaching out for support?
• How do you rate the accessibility of our customer service?
• Are there additional training or resources you wish our team had?
• How well does our customer support team understand your issues?
• What do you generally think of the wait times?
• Do you feel our support team is knowledgeable and competent?
• Would you describe our customer service as personalized?
• Do you feel the customer support team fully understood your needs and goals?
• Would you prefer to solve issues on your own using knowledge-base resources?

Marketing Research Questions

• What is your level of education?
• What is your approximate annual household income?
• Where do you work, and what’s your job title?
• What industry are you in?
• What’s your most important priority when (insert something related to your industry)?
• Why did you choose our product over a competitor’s?
• How do you generally learn about new products in our industry?
• What kind of advertisements catch your attention?
• Do you follow us on social media?
• What factors influence your purchasing decisions the most?
• How important is brand reputation in your buying decision?
• What do you think about our pricing compared to competitors?
• What trends are you noticing in our industry that are important to you?
• How did you hear about us?

Additional Engagement and Research Questions

• What’s working for you and why?
• How can we improve your experience with the website or the in-store location?
• Can we connect you with a customer success manager via chat?
• Would you be open to discussing upgrade options for your product?
• Can we send you a list of useful resources for getting the most out of your product?
• What additional support can we offer to enhance your experience?
• Would a loyalty program encourage more frequent purchases or interactions?
• How responsive do you find our online platforms?
• Would more frequent updates or newsletters be helpful?
• How personalized do you feel our communications are?
• What elements of our service exceed your expectations?
• Would you recommend us to a colleague?
• Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

If you want to obtain valuable feedback from your customers, then you have to ask them the right questions. Sharing information isn’t always an easy task, and it’s not the customer’s job to provide your business with constructive criticism. Instead, it’s the surveyor’s responsibility to create a thought-provoking prompt that engages the participant.

Customer Feedback Questions

To get the most out of valuable customer feedback you’ll need to make sure you’re asking the right questions. Open-ended questions are a great way to gain more thorough explanations about your customer’s experience with your brand, but they’re not the only types of questions you can ask.

If you’re getting stuck on deciding what to ask your customers, here are some of the types of questions we recommend including on your customer satisfaction survey:

Product Usage

When it comes to customer success and satisfaction, your business must collect feedback about your product or service. If you don’t, then it’s more difficult to assess customer needs and provide effective solutions.

Finding out how satisfied your users are with your offer provides your marketing and product teams with valuable information that can be used to improve customer retention.

Some questions that you could ask in this section are:

• How long have you been using the product?
• Which alternatives did you consider before purchasing the product?
• How often do you use the product or service?
• Does the product help you achieve your goals?
• What is your favorite tool or portion of the product or service?
• What would you improve if you could?
• Which product features do you consider the most valuable?
• Which product feature do you use most often in your day-to-day?
• What points of friction have you encountered while using the product?
• If there was one new feature you could suggest, what would it be and why?

Demographics

Demographics are essential to marketing and sales teams because they make it easier for companies to segment customers into buyer personas. By grouping customers based on key characteristics, this categorization helps employees visualize their target audience. Marketing and sales teams can then use that information to pursue leads that are most likely to convert.

When asking these types of questions, be sure to embrace a proactive and inclusive approach. These questions shouldn’t be mandatory, so always provide an option for customers to omit an answer. Your goal is to extract honest information, but you don’t want it to come at the expense of the customer’s comfort.

Here are some demographics questions that you should consider including in your next survey:

• How old are you?
• Where are you located?
• If applicable, what gender do you identify as?
• What is your employment status?
• What is your marital status and do you have children?
• What is your level of education?
• What is your approximate annual household income?
• Where do you work and what’s your job title?
• What industry are you in?

Psychographics

Psychographic questions dig deeper than demographic questions, uncovering information relating to your customers’ preferences, habits, behaviors, and tendencies. It’s not about who your customer is, but why they do what they do.

Psychographic questions may seem intrusive, but they’re highly valuable pieces of information that give you a glimpse into the reasons for your customer’s buying habits. They’re usually phrased concerning your industry and not specifically about your product.

These questions are instrumental in customer satisfaction surveys because you can indirectly find out how you can better serve your customers.

Here are a few questions you might ask:

• Do you prefer to shop on your phone or your laptop?
• What’s your most important priority when (insert something related to your industry)?
• E.g. if you’re a mortgage lender, you might ask, “What’s your most important priority when buying a home?”
• What’s your biggest roadblock when (insert something related to your product)?
• E.g. if you’ve created a recipe-sharing app, you might ask, “What’s your biggest roadblock when trying to access the best recipes online?”
• How much time do you spend on (insert social media platform you’d like to use for advertising)?
• How much does sustainability matter to you in purchasing a product?
• How do you feel about (insert product type)?
• E.g, if you sell women’s razors, you might ask, “How do you feel about women’s razors?”
• What do you dislike about (insert product type)?
• How many hours a day do you spend doing (insert something that relates to your product)?
• E.g. if you sell ergonomic car seats, you might ask, “How many hours do you spend driving?”

Satisfaction Scale

Sometimes there are aspects of your offer or business that you want feedback on, but they aren’t things that your customers are actively addressing. In these cases, it helps to be direct and ask customers how they feel about these specific details.

Before you do, you’ll have to determine a quantifiable way to measure their responses. Adopting a satisfaction scale section is a great way to create a consistent approach to quantifying this subjective survey feedback. A few ways that you can implement this scale are:

• A scale measuring from 1 to 10 (or another number). 1 means the customer was extremely unsatisfied and 10 means the customer was very satisfied.
• A descriptive scale that measures a customer’s response from unsatisfied to satisfied. The customer is given a shortlist of responses to choose from that range from “very unsatisfied” to “very satisfied.”
• A picture scale that uses images to symbolize customer satisfaction. For example, you can use happy, sad, and indifferent emojis to quickly gather customer feedback.

Example questions include:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your in-store experience today?
• How likely are you to recommend (insert product or service) to others?
• Rate your satisfaction with our team in resolving your issue.
• Did you feel that our team answered your inquiry promptly?
• Do you agree or disagree that your issue was effectively resolved?
• How likely are you to purchase again from us?
• How likely are you to return to our website?

Open-Text

Open-text questions are survey questions that allow the participant to write out their response within a text box. This allows users to fully express their opinions using the customer’s voice instead of the company’s pre-written responses.

While they can sometimes be time-consuming to analyze, these questions encourage the participant to be honest and give them the freedom to address any topic. Open-text questions can be an instrumental asset when determining the core values of your customers.

Here are open-text questions you can ask in your next survey:

• In your own words, describe how you feel about (insert company name or product here).
• How can we improve your experience with the company?
• What’s working for you and why?
• What can our employees do better?
• How can our employees better support your business’s/your goals?
• How can we improve your experience with the website or the in-store location?
• Why did you choose our product over a competitor’s?
• What would be one word you’d use to describe us and why?
• Do you have any additional comments or feedback for us?

Longevity

In the last section of your survey, you’ll want to include questions about the steps that’ll happen after submission. These questions permit your team to follow up with the participant in the future.

This comes in handy when you roll out changes and want to get updated feedback from the same customers that were surveyed earlier. You can phrase these types of questions in a few different ways:

• May we contact you to follow up on these responses?
• In the future, would you be willing to take this survey again?
• If we were to update (insert product feature here), could we reach back out to talk about these changes?
• Can we connect you with a customer success manager via chat?
• Would you be open to discussing upgrade options for your product?
• Can we send you a list of useful resources for getting the most out of your product?

While measuring customer satisfaction can be tricky to manage, asking effective questions can reveal highly valuable customer insights — and the questions we’ve listed above will do the trick.

Next, I’ll go over best practices for creating customer satisfaction surveys.

Designing a customer satisfaction survey is no easy task. Luckily, there are a few best practices that will help you increase response rates and get much-needed feedback from your customers.

1. Make sure you choose the right survey tool.

Choosing the right survey tool is essential because it can significantly impact the quality of your results.

A good survey tool should be easy to use, customizable, and provide in-depth analytics. It should also have the ability to automate survey distribution and analysis.

HubSpot’s Service Hub offers a powerful, easy-to-use survey solution to track customer satisfaction and visualize data in beautiful, ready-made charts.

Without the right survey tool, you’ll have a whole lot of data and no way to distill it or glean valuable insights from it. Choose a tool that allows you to ask different questions, examine basic metrics such as response rates, and track customer sentiment over time.

2. Always ask short and relevant survey questions.

No one enjoys spending a lot of time answering surveys, so be sure to keep your survey questions short and to the point. Asking short and relevant survey questions is the key to earning high completion rates. Long and complex survey questions can be overwhelming and may discourage customers from providing any feedback at all.

On the other hand, shorter questions allow customers to easily comprehend what is being asked and are more likely to provide accurate responses. When asking open-ended questions, keep the minimum character count short, make the question optional, or offer an incentive.

3. Send the surveys at the right time.

Give a lot of thought to the placement of your surveys throughout the customer journey. It wouldn’t make sense to send a survey to someone who’s only just subscribed to your blog — nor would it make sense to send one year after a customer stopped doing business with you.

Sending surveys at the right time is critical to getting accurate feedback. Customers are more likely to provide feedback when they are in a position to evaluate their experience with your company.

When do you send a customer service survey? Send it after a lengthy interaction with one of your teams, a few weeks after purchase or onboarding, and a few times throughout the year to measure the customer’s happiness.

4. Always A/B test your surveys.

A/B testing is an excellent way to find out whether your surveys are as effective as they can be. Simply create two versions of the survey with minimal changes. You can change the order of the questions, the number of questions, the wording, and even the color of the buttons. (Change only one thing at a time so you can accurately measure its impact on the survey.)

By comparing the results of each version, you can determine which version yields the highest response rate and provides the most accurate feedback. This can help you refine your survey strategy and improve the overall quality of your survey data.

5. Thank your customers for their feedback.

Thanking customers for their feedback is important to show that you value their opinion and are committed to improving the customer experience. It also helps to improve customer loyalty and increases the likelihood that they will provide feedback in the future.

Whether it’s through a gift card, a discount, or simply a nice email, always thank the customer for their time, regardless of the nature of the feedback.

By thanking customers for their feedback, you signal that you take their opinions seriously and are committed to addressing their concerns. This can help you maintain strong relationships with your customers and drive long-term business success.

Ready to craft your own customer satisfaction survey? Use the template in the next section to get started.

How To Use Customer Satisfaction Survey Results

1. Define customer segments.

Customer satisfaction surveys can be used to segment customers based on their preferences. With these survey results, you can tailor your approach to specific customer groups and provide more personalized experiences.

2. Track customer satisfaction over time.

Identifying changes in customer sentiment can be difficult if you don’t have multiple data points over a long period of time. Regular customer satisfaction surveys can be used to track this and address issues before they become systemic problems.

3. Benchmark against competitors.

Customer satisfaction survey results can be used to benchmark your company’s performance against competitors. This way, you’ll identify areas where your company may be falling short and implement changes to improve your standing in the market.

Customer Satisfaction Survey Template

The following customer satisfaction survey template can help you get answers from your customers in one easy step. It asks one simple question: “How satisfied were you with your experience today?” If you’d like, you can add more questions to get more details from your customers.

To make a copy of this template and get 4 bonus templates, click here.

Now you’ve got a template and are ready to create your customer satisfaction survey. In need of some inspiration? Take a look at these examples we pulled from different companies.

Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples from Real Brands

We’ve covered why asking for customer feedback is important and the types of questions to include, but you still might be wondering how to put it all together. Let’s check out the customer feedback example questions below from real companies to gain insight into how to roll out a survey of your own.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is another company that uses NPS surveys to assess customer satisfaction. This score primarily comes into play with its customer support and success teams, who can be reviewed after each new interaction.

HubSpot’s engineers then use these responses to address areas in their software that could use improvement. By using this scoring system, HubSpot can attain both qualitative and quantitative data to direct its product development efforts.

What I like:

HubSpot uses its surveys to create product-level improvements, and the best part is that for customers, answering one question is an effortless way to give feedback. So it’s a win-win on both sides. When you carry out surveys, be sure to forward the feedback to the right department to address any issue that your customers brought up.

2. Airbnb

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Airbnb lets customers book overnight stays and experiences across the world. For Airbnb hosts to build a reputation, they rely on customer feedback to make them seem more credible.

In this survey example, Airbnb includes an eye-catching button that prompts recipients to take the survey. Once they click through, they’re taken to a user-friendly survey with a series of questions that can help Airbnb better understand why the recipient chose Airbnb as their provider. It’s extremely in-depth, too, prompting customers to provide as much detail as possible about their experience.

What I like:

Airbnb politely asks for customers’ opinions after their stay, giving them the space to decide whether they want to share feedback or not. In its survey request, Airbnb was intentional about the design of the button, too, by choosing an eye-catching brand color that entices people to click. Your survey invitation emails should have a call-to-action button, just like a marketing email would, to increase click-through-rate.

3. Hilton Hotels

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The Hilton Hotel company provides its customers overnight stays with promising customer service, upholding its century-old reputation.

To better understand what people’s stays were like, it offers a one-page survey where customers can willingly submit their feedback. It’s just a few questions long, most of which are logistical (such as where the visitor stayed and how long they stayed there for). Users then have the option of elaborating.

What I like:

This seemingly simple survey from Hilton gives unhappy guests an easy, friction-free opportunity to submit feedback about their recent stay. It’s hosted on a public URL that guests can access without needing to get through any barriers. The questions are simple and easy to answer.

4. Uber

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Uber has two target audiences — the drivers and the passengers — and it does a great job collecting opinions and reviews from both. The passengers give ratings after every ride, and the drivers rate the passengers as well.

What I like:

This survey makes it fair and transparent for both the driver and the passenger, and these ratings affect both parties’ reputation as well. If a passenger has a lower rating, the driver has the authority to decline the booking. If you run a business with two target audiences, create a survey for both.

5. Netflix

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Netflix provides its customers with curated entertainment recommendations that would not be possible unless they had a great understanding of customer satisfaction.

Overall, Netflix brings out its A-game when it comes to customer experience. With its recommendation system, it is as customer-friendly as one can get. Netflix studies the behavior of all of its customers and recommends movies and shows per their ratings, likes and dislikes, or just what they have been watching. It also collects feedback periodically to improve its offerings.

What I like:

In this survey, Netflix tries to better understand users’ behaviors and preferences. This shows that even if you dominate the market like Netflix does, you shouldn’t stop there. Continue collecting feedback from your customers and users, and don’t be afraid to get granular to understand their needs.

6. Slack

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Slack is a business messaging app that helps professionals connect from anywhere. It bases its product development entirely on customer feedback.

In fact, customer feedback is at the epicenter of its efforts. For instance, there’s a command within the application where users can send feedback to the Slack team, or just tell them what features the users would like to have. The co-founders read all the user feedback and made sure they responded to every ticket raised.

In the email above, Slack invites the user to take a survey to improve its offering. The email is short and to the point.

What I like:

Slack’s commitment to collecting customer feedback is commendable, and so are its invitations to take the survey. In the above example, Slack makes the survey seem more exclusive by mentioning that it was only sent to a few people. Don’t be afraid to curate a short list of customers to send the survey to, especially if it seems like those customers would be more likely to answer.

7. Drift

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Drift provides businesses with a revenue acceleration platform that caters to a buyer-centric world. The above survey asks one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend Drift to a friend or colleague?” Sometimes, that’s really all you need.

What I like:

Drift sends Net Promoter Score®, or NPS, surveys. NPS is a critical SaaS metric used to measure customer satisfaction. The only question it asks is whether the customer is likely to recommend the business to a friend or colleague — and this can be enough of an indicator of a customer’s happiness with your brand.

8. Paytm

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Paytm has always taken customer opinions into account and has taken serious steps to improve the customer experience.

Taking customer experience and security to another level, Paytm has created a “bug bounty” to catch fraudulent merchants. If customers accidentally buy fake movie tickets through the platform, for example, Paytm allows them to get refunds on their bookings.

What I like:

Paytm gives users the opportunity to tangibly improve the product by giving them the ability to report bugs directly on the app. Plus, it not only collects customer feedback, it acts on it, too, by fixing those bugs. Overall, Paytm provides plenty of avenues for turning an unhappy customer into a happy one.

9. Skype

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Another example of a product that provides great customer service is Skype, a business recognized for its telecommunication technology. If you call people using Skype, you know that it asks for feedback after every call. But more than that, it believes in immediately solving customers’ problems.

In the survey above, Skype asks for feedback on the quality of the call. It’s just three questions long, and when it comes to surveys, the shorter, the better. It also gives users the ability to quickly answer the questions by offering multiple choices instead of letting them write out an answer (though they have that option, too).

What I like:

Skype gets straight to the point in this simple three-question customer satisfaction survey. Even more, it keeps the focus on the product by only asking about “Audio Issues” and “Video Issues.” If you sell a product where users might run into issues, consider asking targeted product performance questions, then leave a blank text box for users to elaborate.

10. Amazon

Amazon, one of the most popular eCommerce websites in the globe, exceeds user expectations by collecting all kinds of information. When you contact its customer service department, it sends you a customer feedback survey that asks three questions about your interaction:

• Please rate the service provided by the Amazon representative.

• Please rate how well you could understand the Amazon representative.

• Anything else to add?

But Amazon doesn’t stop there. It makes information easily accessible in a knowledge base, so users can find answers and troubleshoot on their own. This reduces the chances of incorrect purchases, which can make all the difference in a customer’s buying decisions.

What I like:

Amazon’s customer satisfaction survey is a great way to gauge how happy the customer is after getting help from the customer service team. It’s important because customers only reach out when they’re unhappy — so sending a survey like this one helps Amazon understand whether the customer is happy again. Like Amazon, be sure to send surveys after your customers interact with your service team.

10. X

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Not only is X (formerly Twitter) great for direct (personal) and public messages, it’s working toward bridging the communication gap between brands and audiences. You can use the “Polls” feature to informally ask for customer feedback — or get more psychographic data about your target audience. This action is as simple as, well, making a Tweet.

While this is not an example of an actual customer satisfaction survey, publishing a Twitter Poll can be an excellent way to collect customer feedback quickly and effectively in an informal setting.

What I like:

We love the Polls option for customer satisfaction surveys because it’s not a formal sit-down survey. Your followers can answer one question as they scroll through their feed, and you get feedback from those who are interested in your brand, too. It’s a great choice for asking more general brand sentiment questions as opposed to product-based questions.

11. Zomato

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Zomato is one of the largest food delivery and review websites in the world, and its success can be largely attributed to customer satisfaction.

Another product with two types of audiences — restaurants and hungry diners — Zomato puts both of their needs and expectations into consideration. Every restaurant gets rated on the food, and every buyer gets to rate the restaurants. In the above survey, it asks for feedback with one simple statement:

“Tell us what you think about Zomato.”

Then it allows users to free-write their thoughts.

What I like:

This open-ended survey format is perfect for websites and apps. You would ideally always include the option to give feedback in a pop-up button, banner, or tab that users can click. That way, you don’t need to contact users first; they can voluntarily submit feedback to you.

12. Greyhound

Here’s a great example of a customer satisfaction survey from Greyhound that measures the qualitative sentiment and experience about interacting with and buying from a brand.

What I like:

In such a crowded space as bus lines, Greyhound needs to make sure that the service it’s providing works for its customers — or else they’ll start losing them to competitors. This survey, deployed immediately after a trip, is a great way to measure satisfaction at the moment when it’s most memorable for a customer.

13. H&R Block

H&R Block Advisors sent another well-timed customer satisfaction survey — just after “Tax Season” in the U.S.

For accountants and financial advisors, the months before the tax filing deadline are the busiest, so a prompt survey after filing with H&R Block helps the company gauge how many returning customers it can expect.

What I like:

H&R Block Advisors smartly sends the survey at a busy time for its business. If your business also has busy periods or periods where people are more interested in your products, send surveys during those time ranges to optimize the amount of responses you receive. You’ll get more submissions simply because you have more customers during those months.

14. GEICO

Measuring sentiment, in addition to satisfaction, is important when surveying your customers.

In this survey, GEICO asks about customer sentiment regarding a specific interaction during the purchase process — and the general feeling of the experience as well. In this way, GEICO can smooth out specific roadblocks throughout the customer journey, and get an in-the-moment snapshot of its wider customer sentiment.

What I like:

GEICO’s example is simple, short, and to-the-point. It only has three questions and gives an additional avenue for contacting GEICO’s customer service team. Always give respondents a second option for submitting feedback or contacting your team to better gauge how satisfied they are with your brand.

16. Taco Bell

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Well-known fast food company Taco Bell has made an outstanding commitment to gathering customer feedback.

Every receipt is printed with survey instructions that are placed in locations that are easily noticed. Taco Bell also incentivizes its customers by offering them rewards for filling out surveys, along with entering the participants into a raffle upon survey completion.

What I like:

Taco Bell prompts its customers to complete the survey just by including a survey number in the receipt. There’s no need for Taco Bell to email the customer after a purchase. Most importantly, the company increases responses by offering a prize. Try to provide incentives and to provide a link to the survey in a noticeable place.

17. Qualtrics

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Qualtrics is a data-collection company that helps businesses gather data on their customers. It’s no surprise that its customer satisfaction surveys are interactive and include plenty of features that keep participants engaged.

What I like:

In this example, each option has a dropdown menu where respondents can pick an answer to choose from. This keeps the survey’s design short and sweet, making it less intimidating to someone who’s looking to complete it in just a few minutes.

18. HubSpot for WordPress

HubSpot for WordPress is a plugin that adds CRM functionalities, forms, and live chat to WordPress websites. In this survey, HubSpot aims to find out whether the plugin has been working as designed. It has just one simple request: “Rate your experience using HubSpot for WordPress.”

We recommend using this format for product-related surveys — specifically those that have to do with a single specific feature. For instance, if you recently rolled out a new update, this single-question survey can help you measure your customers’ opinions about the new addition to their software or product.

What I like:

The five-star scale is simple to understand and makes it easy to answer, because all the user has to do is provide a star rating. The users can also answer straight in their email, instead of needing to access an external survey link. Sometimes, you don’t need to include complicated questions and options to create an effective customer satisfaction survey.

19. McDonald’s

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McDonalds is a fast food company that knows exactly how to cater to its customers, even deploying different strategies in countries across the world. One way it tracks success is through incentivized feedback.

What I like:

One feature that stood out on this McDonald’s survey was the labeled receipt on the right-hand side. The element is highlighted so participants know exactly what McDonald’s is asking them about in the corresponding survey. Not only does this ensure McDonald’s gets accurate information from the survey, but it also reduces any friction customers may have if they’re unsure or confused about a question.

20. Home Depot

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When customers go to hardware stores, they’re looking for a business that will satisfy their home renovation needs, and Home Depot delivers just that. It collects feedback from customers to improve its offerings and provide better service moving forward.

What I like:

To entice participants to take the survey, Home Depot offers a $5,000 Home Depot gift card. Offering a sweepstakes entry up-front is a great way to ensure that you get feedback from customers who are more likely to purchase from you again. If you weren’t interested in Home Depot, you wouldn’t take a $5,000 gift card. Right away, you get to gauge the customer’s continuing interest in your business.

21. Petco

Pet supply store Petco shows that it takes the customer experience seriously by sending store visit feedback surveys. The follow-up survey not only affirms the brand’s care of the customers’ pet, but asks a simple satisfaction question about a specific visit to a store location.

What I like:

Petco’s feedback survey does a lot right, with a quick turn-around email survey that’s both on-brand and simple. Notice that you don’t have to navigate out of the email; all it requires is one click as you rate your store visit experience.

22. Etsy

Etsy’s customer satisfaction survey takes a slightly different approach. Rather than sending the survey from a customer service rep’s email, it is sent from Etsy’s research team instead. Even more, a picture of the research team member is included at the end, making it easy to forge a human connection with the person who might actually read the survey responses.

Once you click on the link, you’re taken to an extensive survey that asks a multitude of questions. While shorter surveys are typically better, Etsy establishes the right expectations by sending the survey from the research team. This gives you the impression that the survey will be long and extensive, because it’s being used for research purposes.

What I like:

Etsy’s example is a winner because it opens with a personal greeting from one of Etsy’s team members. Even if the email was mass-sent, that greeting immediately makes it feel more personal, and the picture of the Etsy staff member only personalizes it further. Lastly, if you plan to send a long survey, feel free to call it “research” to establish the right expectations.

23. Autonomous NYC

Sometimes, you don’t need a fancily designed email to ask for feedback. Instead, you can send an email just like Autonomous NYC’s. And if you don’t feel comfortable including a picture of yourself like in the Etsy example, you can simply include your first name to give the survey request a more personal feel.

Once you click on the link, you’re taken to a 2-page Google Form survey that measures the user’s happiness with their experience on Autonomous NYC’s website. The survey is clear, succinct, and easy to fill out.

What I like:

Autonomous NYC’s customer satisfaction survey hits all the right notes. It’s short, but not so short that Autonomous NYC’s team can’t glean any insights. It also makes most questions optional, so that users have the choice to walk away after answering two questions. Give the same option to your survey recipients by making at least a few of the questions optional.

Get More Customer Feedback to Grow Your Business

Knowing how your customers feel about you is instrumental in growing your business. Use customer feedback surveys to collect information that can create lasting and positive changes in your company. When you know how your customer feels, you can make decisions that lead to higher revenue and increased customer retention, empowering you to grow better.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2022? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map at the last second?

The thing is — understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even when you think you’ve got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

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While it isn’t possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a convenient tool for keeping track of critical milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

• What is the customer journey?
• What is a customer journey map?
• Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping
• Customer Journey Stages
• What’s included in a customer journey map?
• The Customer Journey Mapping Process
• Steps for Creating a Customer Journey Map
• Types of Customer Journey Maps
• Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices
• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples
• Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I’ve worked with were confused about the differences between the customer’s journey and the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of considering, evaluating, and purchasing a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand’s place within the buyer’s journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. When you create a customer journey map, you’re taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey instead of leaving it up to chance.

For example, at HubSpot, our customer’s journey is divided into three stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

At each stage, HubSpot has a specific set of touchpoints to meet customers where they are — like using blog posts to teach customers about marketing and sales, then nurturing them slowly toward a paid subscription. Within later stages, there are several “moments” such as comparing tools, sales negotiations, technical setup, etc.

The stages may not be the same for you — in fact, your brand will likely develop a set of unique stages of the customer journey. But where do you start? Let’s discuss creating your customer journey map.

The business can then use this information to improve the customer experience, increase conversions, and boost customer retention.

The customer journey map is not to be confused with a UX journey map. But, for clarity, let’s distinguish these two below.

What is UX journey mapping?

A UX journey map represents how a customer experiences their journey toward achieving a specific goal or completing a particular action.

For example, the term “UX journey mapping” can be used interchangeably with the term “customer journey mapping” if the goal being tracked is the user’s journey toward purchasing a product or service.

However, UX journey mapping can also be used to map the journey (i.e., actions taken) towards other goals, such as using a specific product feature.

Why is customer journey mapping important?

While the customer journey might seem straightforward — the company offers a product or service, and customers buy it — for most businesses, it typically isn’t.

In reality, it’s a complex journey that begins when the customer becomes problem-aware (which might be long before they become product-aware) and then moves through an intricate process of further awareness, consideration, and decision-making.

The customer is also exposed to multiple external factors (competitor ads, reviews, etc.) and touchpoints with the company (conversations with sales reps, interacting with content, viewing product demos, etc.).

Keep in mind that 80% of customers consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products.

By mapping this journey, your marketing, sales, and service teams can understand, visualize, and gain insight into each stage of the process.

You can then decrease friction along the way and make the journey as helpful and delightful as possible for your leads and customers. Customer journey mapping allows you to understand your customers’ motivations, pain points, and needs — resulting in an increased ability to provide solutions. Customers are 2.4x more likely to stick with a brand when their problems are solved quickly, so don’t miss out on the power of customers.

What data is necessary for customer journey mapping?

Your customer journey map isn’t just a guess based on how you think customers interact with your brand. It’s a data-driven, research-based operation that analyzes past customer behavior. So, what data should you be looking at?

Customer Surveys and Interviews

What better way to find out how customers think than to ask them? Customer surveys and interviews will provide first-hand information about the stage of the customer journey, their pain points, and how they use your products to solve their problems.

Surveys and interviews are referred to as Solicited Data because you have to specifically ask customers to fill out a questionnaire and provide data. Consider sending an NPS Survey to customers or asking for feedback on social media to gather the solicited data necessary for customer journey mapping. However, surveys and interviews won’t tell the whole story. That’s where unsolicited data comes in.

Unsolicited Data

Unsolicited data refers to all the data you collect from customers without specifically prompting them. Data points like purchase history, time spent on page, email clicks, page views, feedback from your support team, call/chat transcripts, and much more will fill in the gaps in your customer journey mapping strategy.

Unsolicited data is instrumental and much more plentiful than solicited data. While only a small number of customers will respond to surveys and questionnaires, you can collect valuable data on every customer who interacts with your brand to bolster the effectiveness and accuracy of your customer journey map.

Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping

Breaking down the customer journey, phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints accordingly are essential steps for maximizing customer success.

Here are a few more benefits to gain from customer journey mapping.

1. You can refocus your company with an inbound perspective.

Rather than discovering customers through outbound marketing, you can have your customers find you with the help of inbound marketing.

Outbound marketing involves tactics targeted at generalized or uninterested audiences and seeks to interrupt prospects’ daily lives. Outbound marketing is costly and inefficient. It annoys and deters customers and prospects.

Inbound marketing involves creating helpful content that customers are already looking for. You grab their attention first and focus on the sales later.

By mapping out the customer journey, you can understand what’s interesting and helpful to your customers and what’s turning them away. This is where the data we discussed earlier becomes all the more important.

You need to map out your customer journey with concrete evidence regarding your audience’s behavior and interests. Again, conducting customer surveys and leveraging marketing analytics software to gather unsolicited data will reveal all the information necessary to create a customer journey map that’s as accurate as possible.

2. You can create a new target customer base.

You need to understand the customer journey properly to understand your customers’ demographics and psychographics.

It’s a waste of time and money to repeatedly target too broad of an audience rather than people who are actually interested in your offering.

Researching the needs and pain points of your typical customers will give you a good picture of the kinds of people who are trying to achieve a goal with your company. Thus, you can hone your marketing to that specific audience.

3. You can implement proactive customer service.

A customer journey map is like a roadmap to the customer experience.

It highlights moments where people experience delight and situations where they might face friction. Knowing this beforehand lets you plan your customer service strategy and intervene at ideal times.

Proactive customer service also makes your brand appear more reliable. For example, when I worked in customer support, we would anticipate a surge in tickets around the holidays. To be proactive, we’d send out a message to customers letting them know about our team’s adjusted holiday hours. We would also tell them about additional support options if we were unavailable and what to do if an urgent problem needed immediate attention.

With expectations set, customers won’t feel surprised if they’re waiting on hold a little longer than usual. They’ll even have alternative options to choose from — like a chatbot or knowledge base — if they need to find a faster solution. Giving customers the option to reach out to agents via live chat is also recommended — the more options customers have to contact you, the happier they’ll be.

In any case, you still have to be prepared to handle large volumes of customer inquiries. This is where customer service software can come in handy. You can use it to empower agents to work more productively with omnichannel messaging and AI-enhanced responses, for instance.    

4. You can improve your customer retention rate.

When you have a complete view of the customer journey, it’s easier to identify areas for improvement. When you do, customers experience fewer pain points, leading to fewer people leaving your brand for competitors.

After all, 33% of customers will consider switching brands after just one poor experience.

Customer journey mapping can point out individuals on the path to churn. If you log the common behaviors of these customers, you can start to spot them before they leave your business.

While you might not save them all, it’s worth the try. Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25%-95%.

5. You can create a customer-focused mentality throughout the company.

As your company grows, it can be tricky to coordinate all your departments to be as customer-focused as your customer service, support, and success teams. That’s because each department has varying goals, meaning they might not prioritize customer needs — they might focus on website traffic, leads, product signups, etc.

One way to overcome this data silo is to share a clear customer journey map with your entire organization. The great thing about these maps is that they map every step of the customer journey, from initial attraction to post-purchase support. And, yes, this concerns marketing, sales, and service.

Now that we’ve discussed the customer journey and the benefits of mapping it, let’s review the specific stages that comprise it.

Customer Journey Stages

Generally, there are five phases that customers go through when interacting with a brand or a product: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Loyalty.

1. Awareness Stage

In the awareness stage, customers realize they have a problem. They may not know they need a product or service, but they will begin researching either way.

During this stage of the customer journey, brands should deliver educational content to help customers diagnose problems and offer potential solutions. Your aim should be to help customers alleviate their pain points, not encourage a purchase.

During the awareness stage, you can lean on page view and click data to uncover which web pages and blog posts on your site customers flock to as they become aware of the need to solve a problem.

Once you have a general idea of your customers’ pain points, you can use these details in an AI-powered blog topic generator to help brainstorm educational content ideas relevant to your audience’s needs and issues.

Some educational content that I’ve created in the past are:

• How-to articles and guides.
• General whitepapers.
• General ebooks.
• Free courses.

Educational content may also be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

• Your blog.
• Social media.
• Search engines.

2. Consideration

In the consideration stage, customers have researched enough to realize they need a product or service. At this point, they begin to compare brands and offerings.

During this stage, brands should deliver product marketing content to help customers compare different offerings and, eventually, choose their product or service. The aim is to help customers navigate a crowded marketplace and move them toward a purchase decision.

Product marketing content may include:

• Product listicles.
• Product comparison guides and charts.
• Product-focused white papers.
• Customer success stories or case studies.

Product marketing content may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

• Your blog.
• Your website.
• Search engines.
• Social media.
• Conferences.

3. Decision Stage

In the decision stage, customers have chosen a solution and are ready to buy.

During this stage, your brand should deliver a seamless purchase process to make buying products as easy as possible. I wouldn’t recommend any more educational or product content at this stage — it’s all about getting customers to make a purchase. That means you can be more direct about wanting customers to buy from you.

Decision-stage content may include:

• Free demos.
• Free consultations.
• Product sign-up pages.
• Pricing pages.
• Product promotions (e.g., “Sign up now and save 30%”).

Decision-stage content may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

• Your website.
• Search engines.
• Email.

4. Retention Stage

In the retention stage, customers have purchased a solution and will stay with the company they purchased it from instead of switching to another provider.

During this stage, brands provide an excellent onboarding experience and ongoing customer service to ensure customers don’t churn. During the retention stage, you can rely on solicited data from customer surveys and questionnaires to continually refine and improve the customer experience and your customer journey map.

Retention-stage strategies may include:

• Providing a dedicated customer success manager.
• Making your customer service team easily accessible.
• Creating a knowledge base in case customers ever run into a roadblock.

Retention-stage strategies may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

• Your website.
• Live chat.
• Email.
• Social media.

5. Loyalty Stage

In the loyalty stage, customers not only choose to stay with a company but actively promote it to family, friends, and colleagues. This stage can also be called the advocacy stage.

During this phase, brands should focus on providing a fantastic end-to-end customer experience. This should span from your website content to your sales reps, your social media team, and your product’s UX.

Most importantly, customers become loyal when they’ve succeeded with your product — if it works, they’re more likely to recommend your brand to others. Loyal customers will also likely provide feedback and other solicited data to enrich your customer journey mapping strategy.

Loyalty-stage strategies may include:

• Having an easy-to-navigate website.
• Investing in your product team to ensure your product exceeds customer expectations.
• Making it easy to share your brand with others via a loyalty or referral program.
• Providing perks to continued customers, such as discounts.

Loyalty-stage strategies may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

• Your website.
• Email.
• Social media.
• Your products.

As a former customer support engineer at HubSpot, I can attest to the effectiveness of outstanding support in bolstering customer loyalty and moving customers from the retention to the loyalty stage. In my experience, one of the most gratifying experiences of working in support is knowing you’ve transformed a regular customer into a brand advocate by providing top-tier support and helping them succeed in their business goals using your product.

To find out whether your customers have reached the loyalty stage, try a Net Promoter Score survey. This simple question asks: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?” You can use customer feedback software like Service Hub to deliver this survey.

This process aims to provide insights that help you understand how your customers experience their journeys and identify potential bottlenecks.

It’s also important to note that most customer journeys aren’t linear. Instead, buyers often experience a back-and-forth, cyclical, multi-channel journey.

Let’s look at the stages you should include in any customer journey.

1. The Buying Process

To determine your customers’ buying process, you’ll want to pull data from all relevant sources (prospecting tools, CMS, behavior analytics tools, etc.) to accurately chart your customers’ path from first to last contact.

Some data points to consider when analyzing the buying process are:

• Website visits.
• Social media engagement.
• Customer service interactions.
• Purchase history.
• Survey feedback.

However, you can keep it simple by creating broad categories using the typical buying journey process stages — awareness, consideration, and decision — and mapping them horizontally.

2. Emotions

Whether the goal is big or small, remember your customers are solving a problem. That means they’re probably feeling some emotion — whether that’s relief, happiness, excitement, or worry.

Adding these emotions to the journey map will help you identify and mitigate negative emotions and the pain points that cause them.

We use emojis on HubSpot’s journey map to represent potential emotions at different customer journey stages.

It might seem strange to ascertain customer emotions with data analysis, but it’s common. Customer sentiment can be measured using data from:

• NPS surveys.
• Online reviews.
• Social media monitoring.
• Customer interviews and focus groups.
• Customer support data.

3. User Actions

This element details what customers do in each stage of the buying process. For example, customers might download ebooks or join educational webinars during the problem-awareness stage.

The necessary data for understanding user actions is relatively straightforward to collect. You should consider the following data points for customer journey mapping:

• Page views.
• CTA clicks.
• Email opens.
• Email list signups.
• Ebook downloads.

Essentially, you’re exploring how your customers move through and behave at each stage of their journey.

4. User Research

Like the last section, this element describes what or where the buyer researches before taking action.

During the awareness stage, the buyer will likely turn to search engines like Google to research solutions. However, it’s important to pay attention to what they’re researching so you can best address their pain points and answer their questions.

5. Solutions

As the final element in your customer journey map, solutions are where you and your team will brainstorm potential ways to improve your buying process so that customers encounter fewer pain points as they journey.

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates.

This has templates that map out a buyer’s journey, a day in your customer’s life, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company’s buyer persona. This will improve your product and customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you’re creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don’t have one, I recommend creating a buyer persona. This persona is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics of your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics ready.

Don’t have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started.

Questionnaires and user testing are great ways to obtain valuable customer feedback. The important thing is to only contact actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

• How did you hear about our company?
• What first attracted you to our website?
• What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
• How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
• Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
• Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
• Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you’ve learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a customer journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company. If you group too many personas into one journey, your map won’t accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it’s best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don’t worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

For example, if I were to view a display ad, interact with an employee, reach a 404 error, or leave a Google review, all of those interactions would be considered a customer touchpoint.

Your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials, so you must consider the different types of touchpoints in your customer journey map. These touchpoints can help uncover opportunities for improvement in the buying journey.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there’s no overlap.

This is essential in creating a customer journey map because it provides insight into your customers’ actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they’re quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you must also look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

• Social channels.
• Paid ads.
• Email marketing.
• Third-party review sites or mentions.

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding — you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

Consider the following touchpoints as you create your customer journey map:

Customer Actions

List your customers’ actions throughout each interaction with your brand. These might be keywords used in a Google search or logging when a customer clicks on an email. You may wind up with a long list of actions, and that’s fine. You can rationalize your information later.

It’s important to recognize when customers are expected to take too many actions to achieve their goals. Reducing the number of steps a customer needs to take can feel risky but pays off in higher conversion rates.

Customer Emotions & Motivations

All marketing is a result of cause and effect. Likewise, every action your customers take is motivated by emotion. And your customers’ emotions will change depending on which part of their journey they’re at.

A pain point or a problem is usually the emotional driver of your customers’ actions. Knowing this will help you provide the right content at the right time to smooth each customer’s emotional journey through your brand.

Customer Obstacles & Pain Points

Get to know what roadblocks stop your customer from taking their desired action.

One common obstacle is cost. For example, I could love your product but would definitely abandon my cart if I discovered you had unexpectedly high shipping rates. Of course, there are also other factors that are not so easy to spot.

You need to zoom in on the details and see where the bulk of your customers drop as they move through the sales cycle. Dedicated sales software is a good idea here. It lets you examine your sales pipelines and pinpoint what might cause prospects to turn away.

Highlighting these potential obstacles in your customer journey can help you mitigate them. One solution is to provide an FAQ page that answers common questions about shipping costs.

6. Determine the resources you have and the ones you’ll need.

Your customer journey map will touch on nearly every part of your business and highlight all the resources involved in creating the customer experience.

For example, maybe your map highlights that your team doesn’t have the tools to follow up with customers. Using your map, you can advise management to invest in customer service tools to help your team manage customer demand.

Or perhaps you might’ve uncovered new customer touchpoints you haven’t fully leveraged yet when listing them out, like in our previous step. In this case, opting for a unified marketing software solution to track, manage, and use all touchpoints to their maximum potential may be worthwhile. 

By including these new tools in your map, you can accurately predict how they’ll impact your business and drive outsized value. This makes convincing gatekeepers and decision-makers to invest in your proposals much easier.

7. Take the customer journey yourself.

The whole exercise of mapping the customer journey remains hypothetical until you try it out yourself. This will show you first-hand where customers may be falling off or hitting roadblocks in your customer journey.

For each of your personas, follow their journey through their social media activity, reading their emails, and searching online.

8. Analyze your results.

Just because you’ve designed your map doesn’t mean your work is done. This is the most critical part of the process: analyzing the results.

How many people click on your website but close out before purchasing? How can you better support customers? These are some of the questions you should answer with your finished map.

Analyzing the results will show you where customer needs aren’t being met. This way, you can ensure that you’re providing a valuable experience and making it clear that people can find solutions to their problems with your company’s help.

9. Update your map over time.

Your data analysis should give you a sense of what you want your website to be.

You can then make changes to your website to achieve these goals. This may be adding more specific call-to-action links or writing longer descriptions under each product to clarify its purpose.

No matter how big or small the changes are, they will be effective as they directly correlate with customers’ pain points. With the help of your visualized customer journey map, you can ensure those needs and pain points are always addressed.

How often should you update your customer journey map?

Your map should be a constant work in progress.

Reviewing it monthly or quarterly will help you identify gaps and opportunities to streamline your customer journey further. Use your data analytics and customer feedback to check for roadblocks.

To keep all stakeholders involved in this process, consider visualizing your maps in a collaborative tool such as Google Sheets.

Additionally, I recommend conducting regular meetings to analyze how new products or offerings have changed the customer journey.

Featured Resource: Customer Journey Map Template

HubSpot’s free customer journey map template makes it easier than ever to visualize the customer journey. It saved me time organizing and outlining my customer experience and clarified how a website could impact my users’ lives.

The customer journey map template can also help you discover areas of improvement in your product, marketing, and support processes.

Download a free, editable customer journey map template.

Types of Customer Journey Maps and Examples

There are 4 types of customer journey maps, each with unique benefits. Pick the one that makes the most sense for your company.

Current State

These customer journey maps are the most widely used type. They visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers currently experience while interacting with your company. They’re best used for continually improving the customer journey.

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Day in the Life

These customer journey maps visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers currently experience in their daily activities, whether or not that includes your company.

This type gives a broader lens into your customers’ lives and what their pain points are in real life.

Day-in-the-life maps are best used for addressing unmet customer needs before customers even know they exist. Your company may use this type of customer journey map when exploring new market development strategies.

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Future State

These customer journey maps visualize what actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers will experience in future interactions with your company. Based on their current interactions, you’ll have a clear picture of where your business fits in later down the road.

These maps are best for illustrating your vision and setting clear, strategic goals.

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Service Blueprint

These customer journey maps begin with a simplified version of one of the above map styles. Then, they layer on the factors responsible for delivering that experience, including people, policies, technologies, and processes.

Service blueprints are best used to identify the root causes of current customer journeys or the steps needed to attain desired future customer journeys.

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If you want a look at an actual customer journey map that HubSpot has recently used, check out this interview we conducted with Sarah Flint, Director of System Operations at HubSpot. We asked her how her team put together their map (below) and what advice she would give to businesses starting from scratch.

1. Set a goal for the journey map.

Determine whether you aim to improve the buying experience or launch a new product. Knowing what the journey map needs to tell you can prevent scope creep on a large project like this.

2. Survey customers to understand their buying journey.

What you think you know about the customer experience and what they actually experience can be very different. Speak to your customers directly to get an accurate snapshot of their journey.

3. Ask customer service reps about the questions they receive most frequently.

Sometimes, customers need to be made aware of their specific pain points, and that’s where your customer service reps come in.

They can help fill in the gaps and translate customer pain points into business terms you and your team can understand and act on.

4. Consider customer journey mapping for each buyer persona.

It’s easy to assume each customer operates the same way, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Demographics, psychographics, and even how long someone has been a customer can determine how a person interacts with your business and makes purchasing decisions.

Group overarching themes into buyer personas and create a customer journey map for each.

5. Review and update each journey map after every major product release.

The customer’s buying process changes every time your product or service changes. Even slight tweaks, like adding an extra field to a form, can become a significant roadblock.

So, reviewing the customer journey map before and after implementing changes is essential.

6. Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams.

Customer journey maps aren’t very valuable in a silo. However, creating a journey map is convenient for cross-functional teams to provide feedback.

Afterward, make a copy of the map accessible to each team so they always keep the customer in mind.

Customer Journey Map Design

Now that you know what goes into making a customer journey map, let’s take a little time to dive into design. How you lay out your journey map — from spacing to the colors you use — makes all of the difference. Check out some best practices below.

Create a clear layout and hierarchy.

Your customer journey map should be organized logically with a sequence that makes sense and a clear visual hierarchy.

Headings should make the sections pop. This allows you to differentiate between the stages of your customer’s journey. Bullets make the text easier to read and keep the information on your map clear.

Your goal is to design a journey map that’s easy to navigate and comprehend. A clean layout is essential to accomplishing this goal.

Make the most of icons and symbols.

We want our teammates to read documents, making the most of every word. However, the reality is that everyone skims. A text-heavy document often means that information gets lost.

Icons, symbols, and artistic elements make the reading experience more digestible. You can communicate different touch points, actions, and outcomes that are a part of your customer journey. Beyond that, symbols can communicate emotion without any words.

Leverage color coding.

Color is a powerful design element that can help you group like ideas. You can assign different hues to the stages of your customer journey or to certain touchpoints. This helps you organize information visually and draw attention to the most important parts of your map.

Avoid clutter to create balance.

To reiterate, everyone skims. And just like you want to avoid too much text, you want to avoid a page filled with color, icons, words, and other elements. Adequate whitespace will help keep your document organized.

Maintain consistency.

Your customer journey map should be consistent throughout. Pick a font family, color palette, and font sizes. Then, make sure you follow these guidelines throughout your journey map. Bonus points if your elements align with your company branding.

Customer Journey Mapping Examples

To help guide your business in its direction, here are examples to draw inspiration from for building your customer journey map.

1. HubSpot’s Customer Journey Map Templates

HubSpot’s free Customer Journey Map Templates provide an outline for companies to understand their customers’ experiences.

The offer includes the following:

• Buyer’s Journey Template.
• Current State Template.
• Lead Nurturing Mapping Template.
• Future State Template.
• A Day in the Customer’s Life Template.
• Customer Churn Mapping Template.
• Customer Support Blueprint Template.

Each of these templates helps organizations gain new insights into their customer base and help make improvements to product, marketing, and customer support processes.

Download them today to start working on your customer journey map.

2. B2B Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map clearly outlines the five steps Dapper Apps believes customers go through when interacting with them.

As you can see, it goes beyond the actual purchasing phase by incorporating initial research and post-purchase needs.

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This map is effective because it helps employees get into the customers’ minds by understanding the typical questions they have and the emotions they’re feeling.

There are incremental action steps that Dapper Apps can take in response to these questions and feelings that will help it solve customers’ current problems.

3. Ecommerce Customer Journey Map Example

This fictitious customer journey map is a clear example of a day-in-the-life map.

Rather than just focusing on the actions and emotions involved in the customer’s interaction with the company, this map outlines all the actions and emotions the customer experiences on a typical day.

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This map is helpful because it measures a customer’s state of mind based on the level of freedom they get from certain stimuli.

This is helpful for a company that wants to understand what its target customers are stressed about and what problems may need solving.

4. Future B2C Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map, designed for Carnegie Mellon University, exemplifies the usefulness of a future state customer journey map. It outlines the thoughts, feelings, and actions the university wants its students to have.

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Based on these goals, CMU chose specific proposed changes for each phase and even wrote out example scenarios for each phase.

This clear diagram can visualize the company vision and help any department understand where they will fit into building a better user experience.

5. Retail Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map shows an in-depth customer journey map of a customer interacting with a fictitious restaurant.

This map style is clearly more comprehensive than the others. It includes the customer’s front-of-stage (direct) and back-of-stage (non-direct or invisible) interactions with the company, as well as the support processes.

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This map lays out every action involved in the customer experience, including those of the customer, employees directly serving diners, and employees working behind the scenes.

By analyzing how each of these factors influences the customer journey, a company can find the root cause of mishaps and problem-solve this for the future.

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

To move your business from point A — deciding to focus on customer journeys — to point B — having a journey map — a critical step is selecting which customer mindset your business will focus on.

This mindset will determine which of the following templates you’ll use.

1. Current State Template

If you’re using this template for a B2B product, the phases may reflect the search, awareness, consideration of options, purchasing decision, and post-purchase support processes.

For instance, in our Dapper Apps example, its phases were research, comparison, workshop, quote, and sign-off.

2. Day in the Life Template

Since this template reflects all the thoughts, feelings, actions, needs, and pain points a customer has in their entire daily routine — whether or not that includes your company — you’ll want to map out this template in a chronological structure.

This way, you can highlight the times of day you can offer the best support.

Get an interactive day in the life template.

3. Future State Template

Like the current state template, these phases may reflect the predicted or desired search, awareness, consideration of options, purchasing decisions, and post-purchase support processes.

Since this will take place in the future, you can tailor these phases based on what you’d like the customer journey to look like rather than what it currently does.

Get an interactive future state template.

4. Service Blueprint Template

Since this template is more in-depth, it doesn’t follow certain phases in the customer journey.

Instead, it’s based on physical evidence — the tangible factors that can create impressions about the quality and prices of the service — that often come in sets of multiple people, places, or objects at a time.

For instance, with our fictitious restaurant example above, the physical evidence includes all the staff, tables, decorations, cutlery, menus, food, and anything else a customer comes into contact with.

You would then list the appropriate customer actions and employee interactions to correspond with each physical evidence.

For example, when the physical evidence is plates, cutlery, napkins, and pans, the customer gives their order, the front-of-stage employee (waiter) takes the order, the back-of-stage employee (receptionist) processes the order, and the support processes (chefs) prepare the food.

Get an interactive service blueprint template.

5. Buyer’s Journey Template

You can also use the classic buyer’s journey — awareness, consideration, and decision — to design your customer journey map.

Get an interactive buyer’s journey template.

Charter the Path to Customer Success

Once you fully understand your customers’ experience with your business, you can delight them at every stage of their buying journey. Remember, many factors can affect this journey, including customer pain points, emotions, and your company’s touchpoints and processes.

A customer journey map is the most effective way to visualize this information, whether optimizing the customer experience or exploring a new business opportunity to serve a customer’s unrecognized needs.

Use the free templates in this article to start mapping the future of customer success at your business.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August, 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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