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.

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.

Does the thought of having to write or update your customer service representative resume make you want to pull your hair out?

Before you do that, I’m here to help! Writing an effective resume isn’t as challenging as it sounds. In my own experience, using a resume template helped me craft a winning resume. Now, when I want to apply for a new position, I just update my resume template and send it to the hiring manager.

Easy as pie.

Let’s go over what should be included in a customer service representative resume, plus learn a few tips and tricks to ensure your resume stands out from the rest.

Table of Contents

• What should be included in a customer service rep resume?
• Customer Service Representative Resume Examples
• Customer Service Rep Resume Templates
• 5 Tips for Writing a Customer Service Rep Resume
• Use a Template to Craft Your Resume with Ease

What should be included in a customer service rep resume?

In the past, customer service was my jam. I loved working the service desk because each day brought new challenges, allowing me to flex and develop my customer service skills. If you’re a customer service representative, you know how technical and specialized your job can be.

And, you need a resume that speaks directly to your skills and training. Not any resume will do, though. A generic resume leaves out critical information that signals to the hiring manager that you are the right fit for the role and what unique value you can bring to the role.

Let’s look at the elements of a customer service representative resume, so you can understand how to best highlight your skills for your own resume.

1. Professional Summary

There’s debate on if a summary is a necessary element of your resume. In my opinion, if you’re applying for a role within customer service, you need a quick summary. Customer service duties vary from one position to the next, so summarizing your skills and work experience can be a great way to showcase your expertise.

2. Contact Information

Theoretically, when a hiring manager reviews your application, they most likely have all your materials in hand, including your application, resume, and cover letter. But this doesn’t mean you should skip adding your contact information to your resume.

Think of your resume as your calling card. Adding your contact information to your resume makes it easier for the hiring manager and eliminates potential frustration from the need to search for your info.

I cannot stress this enough: make sure your contact information is easy to find.

3. Professional Experience

The professional experience section of your resume is your place to explain your past work history. Be careful not to over explain your work history, though, as space is limited on your resume.

4. Education and Training

Depending on the role within customer service, the position might require an advanced degree or technical training. Be sure to include this information on your resume. You can also mention any relevant achievements in this section, like awards or certifications you may have received.

5. Key Skills

Recruiters only spend about six to eight seconds looking at your resume. That’s not a lot of time, so it’s safe to say most recruiters skim resumes without initially looking at them too closely.

One section of your customer service representative resume should highlight your skills that are relevant to the job description. Matching your skills to the job description helps recruiters quickly understand your qualifications. Plus, with the increasing use of AI for applicant screening, matching your skills to the job description is a must.

Let’s take a look at some customer service resume examples to get a better idea of how to format your resume.

Customer Service Representative Resume Examples

Reddit is the place to go when you need a real-life example of, well, anything, including customer service representative resume examples. Reviewing examples can help you understand what to include in your resume and what not to include.

Let’s take a peek at three customer service representative resume examples that I found on Reddit.

Customer Service Representative Resume: the Recent Grad

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If you’re a recent graduate, it might feel as if your resume is lacking. This customer service representative resume example is from a recently graduated student, which makes it the perfect example for those looking for a fresh start after graduation.

Although this student does not have substantial relevant work experience, they do have relevant experience thanks to personal projects. It is okay to list personal projects on your resume, especially if you’ve gained skills from those projects that will serve you in your new role.

What I like: I like that this person used their experience teaching a painting class to portray their customer service skills. Often, a customer service role involves teaching users how to best use a product or service. If you have relevant experience helping others accomplish something, add it to your resume.

What I would change: If you’re a recent graduate or transitioning to a new field, it is okay if your resume feels a little sparse. The trick to an effective resume is to format it in a way that’s easy to read and highlights your skills. For this example, I would change the flow of the resume. Instead of listing relevant skills first, I would start with my work experience.

And, speaking of the skills section, making a bulleted list of skills is easier to read. The more concise and clear your resume can be, the better.

Customer Service Representative Resume: Five Years of Experience

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According to this resume’s summary (listed as “Qualifications”), this person has over five years of experience in customer service. Their resume template is visually appealing, and there’s an easy-to-follow flow of information. A close look at their work history confirms they do, indeed, have over five years of experience in customer service.

What I like: I like that this person used colors to help break up their resume while still keeping the design simple. Their contact information is clearly visible. And listing the skills in a dedicated section quickly tells a recruiter if they possess the qualifications for the job.

What I would change: While this is an overall good example of a customer service representative resume, there are a few things I would change about it. First, the organization of the resume could be better. For example, I would start by listing my contact information, and then my experience, education, and skills.

I would also rearrange the work history section. Instead of listing my experiences chronologically, I would reverse them and start with my previous experiences first.

Let’s look at another example.

Customer Service Representative Resume: Staying Functional

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This customer service representative resume is straightforward and to the point. Looking at this resume, you get a pretty good idea of their background and experience. The necessary information is easy to find, and it is not too long.

What I like: I like that this person keeps their previous work experience to a minimum and only lists the job functions that are relevant to a customer service role. I also appreciate the use of bolding important information. This helps keep my eyes moving down and across the resume.

What I would change: Overall, this is a great resume. However, just by looking at it, you would never know that the person intends to use this resume to land a customer-facing role. Adding a summary or objective can help better explain your career goals and connect your experience to the role you are applying to.

Customer Service Rep Resume Templates

If you’re ready to start writing your resume, take my advice: use a resume template. A good resume template can save you a lot of time and frustration. (I can’t be the only one who lacks formatting skills, right?)

Here are three of my favorite resume templates that you can download for free to use for your customer service representative resume. Just fill in your information, and you’re good to go.

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I am a fan of colors. I like that this resume template incorporates colors to help draw the eye to important information. I also like that the “Professional Profile” section includes space for your website. Adding a link to your portfolio, website, or social media account invites the recruiter to learn more about you and your work.

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Depending upon your location, a professional photo on your resume might be a nice touch. Or, it could be an unwelcome section. I like that this template includes a photo, because, as I said, I sometimes struggle with formatting. To use this template, all I need to do is insert my own photo right into the photo’s spot.

I also appreciate that this template features an “area of expertise” section and an “awards” section. Both of these sections can help better explain your qualifications.

Pro tip: Never use a selfie or an AI-generated photo for your professional photo. Professional headshots are best.

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It can be tricky to know exactly what to put in each section of your resume. I appreciate that these templates guide you through each section.

It can be tough to know how to list your work experience so that it best demonstrates your skills and abilities. On my own resume, I have always treated my internships as a job under “work experience.” But, I like that this resume template counts it as “freelance work.” With this template, I can focus more on my paid work experience, but also highlight the internships that have helped qualify me for the role.

5 Tips for Writing a Customer Service Rep Resume

Writing a winning resume on your own can be tough, but it’s definitely doable. To help me (and you!) get a better idea of how to write a customer service rep resume, I turned to the experts.

Here are the five tips HR professionals and hiring managers gave me for writing an effective customer service representative resume.

1. Keep it simple, but specific.

There’s a fine line between a great resume and a terrible one. Your resume shouldn’t be overly wordy. If it is, you risk hiding critical information in the midst of unnecessary clutter.

Vit Koval, a global hiring and remote work advocate at Globy, says, “Cluttering your resume with irrelevant work history is depriving the more important details in your resume. Rather, emphasize roles and experiences that would put to light different skills and competencies with regard to the customer service field. Even if your previous jobs are not exactly linked, focus on things like your communication skills, problem-solving, and teamwork.”

Take a look at your resume and focus on the most relevant skills and experiences. Then, cut the rest.

2. Customize your summary.

You may have heard the advice to “tailor your resume to each job description.” This is actionable advice that can help you get noticed by recruiters. There is one section of your resume that can easily be tailored to match a job description — the summary.

Heather O’Neill, CPRW, says, “Consider this section your elevator pitch. In 3-5 sentences, highlight your most relevant skills, experience, and professional achievements. Since it sits at the top of your resume, writing a strong summary customized to the job ad can entice a recruiter to continue reading your resume.”

Don’t skimp on your summary!

3. Use stats to highlight your experience.

Stats are a fantastic way to show off your relevant skills and accomplishments. Including stats in your resume also gives recruiters a better understanding of your performance.

Matthew Warzel, CPRW and president of MJW Careers, says, “Stats and figures are resume gold for both accomplished professionals and new grads. They add credibility and instantly grab a recruiter‘s attention. New grads can leverage this power by quantifying their academic achievements, course projects, and even volunteer or internship experiences. Highlight a GPA or Dean’s List placement.”

Remember, a single impactful stat is more memorable than overloading your resume with numbers. So, even a small achievement quantified can make a big difference for a new grad.”

4. Keep your resume brief.

The gold standard for resume length is typically one to two pages. If you have a ton of relevant work experience, it can be tempting to list every job you’ve held in the past. And, if you do this, your resume may end up being entirely too long.

Daniel Space, senior human resources business partner director (FAANG/F100) and content creator at DanFromHR, says the ideal length of your resume depends on your work experience.

Space says, “There‘s no set length, but one to two pages is usually going to be your ideal and should match how long you’ve been working. For example, someone with four years of experience at one job should be on one page. And, someone working for 18 years at six jobs [might] need two.”

5. Your photo can make or break your chances.

In certain global job markets, a profile photo is a necessary addition to your resume. However, in the United States, our experts are conflicted about the addition of photos.

When I asked Space if he recommends including a photo on a resume, he flatly answered, “Never.” And Warzel agrees with him.

Warzel says, “This can harm your chances of passing the applicant tracking system (ATS), because the computer most often cannot parse data from photos, and thus, sometimes will kick you out of competition just because it couldn’t retrieve your data. Less is more!”

But, Cache Merril, founder of Zibtek, says, “I also really like the picture. Employers are going to look people up on social media anyway, so bring a picture to the table.”

So, if you’re worried a picture will decrease your chances of getting an interview, leave it off your resume. It might also be helpful to think about your desired sector, too. Some sectors, like marketing or design, are more laid-back than others.

Use a Template to Craft Your Resume with Ease

An effective customer service representative resume speaks to your customer service skills and abilities. Even if you’re a recent graduate or you lack relevant job experience, highlighting your skills, like communication and task management skills, on your resume can help improve your chances of getting an interview.

If you’re ready to start writing your own resume, check out these free templates. With a good template, you can craft a compelling resume that’s sure to attract recruiters and keep your phone buzzing with interview requests.

The rise of artificial intelligence poses a unique opportunity and risk to customer support as we know it. As someone who‘s spent a good chunk of the last ten years mixing tech into customer conversations, I’ve seen the landscape change with my own eyes. What I‘ve learned is this: AI isn’t here to take over — it’s here to team up with us.

To better understand how AI matches up to customer service reps, I put some tools, like HubSpot’s very own ChatSpot and a few other smart tools, through the wringer. I’ve watched how it handles tricky stuff that usually needs a human touch.

From firing off emails to navigating chatbot conversations, I‘ve kept a close eye on AI’s moves, seeing how it stacks up against the human knack for empathy and on-the-fly thinking.

So, how does AI really measure up when customer service gets complex? Is it edging out human reps, or is it giving them a new way to shine?

Let’s review what I found, see where AI nails it and where it doesn’t quite hit the mark, and discover why those of us in the business might start seeing AI less like competition and more like a co-conspirator in making customers happy.

Table of Contents

• AI Service Response Challenges
• Perks of AI in Customer Care
• The Bumps on the AI Implementation Highway
• The Extra Edge AI Brings to the Customer Service Table

AI Service Response Challenges

In this section, we‘re squaring off human customer service pros with AI to see who comes out on top in the real-world arena. I’ve lined up some challenges that play to human strengths — let’s see if AI can keep up.

As a benchmark, I presented all of these scenarios to Jonathan Dorosh, a senior customer success manager at HubSpot. He’s got almost five years of experience in the customer success realm. Let’s see how AI squares up.

Scheduling a Meeting

In the first challenge, I matched a seasoned pro against ChatSpot, HubSpot’s AI-powered CRM. In my fictional scenario, the customer needed to reschedule an important demo at the last minute, which required quick and precise coordination.

Human Response: For this simple task, Dorosh says he would note that rescheduling is no problem, sending an email to make the process super easy.

“I‘d insert a few specific availabilities for my calendar over the next few days. And if none of those work, I’ll note that you could book anything anytime I’m free via my HubSpot [calendar] linked in my email,” Dorosh says.

The Prompt: I have a customer who needs to reschedule an important demo last minute. Our original call was for December 16 at 12 p.m. ET. Please write me a response with available timeslots on the 17th. I am free at all times except 10 a.m.-1 p.m. ET. The call will last 50 minutes.

AI Response: ChatSpot efficiently recognized keywords related to scheduling and provided immediate automated responses with alternative slots. This took just as much time as writing the email. If your schedule is packed, you can hand off a simple task like this to a chatbot.

However, be sure to insert a calendar link like Dorosh recommends so people have the option to book time with you beyond these slots.

Takeaway: AI can help craft standard, professional language for your tasks. This is a great way to save a few minutes or draft an email on a busy day.

Understanding Complex Requests

Next up, a head-scratcher of a support ticket: think product specs, price tags, and how it all plays nicely with the tech they already have.

Let’s say a current customer is considering upgrading their account from a professional plan at HubSpot to an enterprise plan. They want to support 15k marketing contacts. The customer wants to know if an upgrade is worth it, considering they have a tight budget. How would you go about recommending a plan?

Human Response: If presented with this scenario, Dorosh says he would lead with clarifying questions. This would help him better understand their needs and what plan would suit the customer best.

“The first thing I would do is dig a little bit more into their intention behind the upgrade,” says Dorosh. “So what specific features they’re looking for that are good behind the enterprise that they see value in. I think when it comes to marketing contacts, enterprise has more beneficial economics for the pricing.”

However, there’s more than just pricing. Dorosh says he would discuss the other benefits that come with an upgraded account, like reporting features and other tools the account holder would get access to.

“Those would probably be the two areas I focus on first,” Dorosh says. “And then from there, I personally would loop in our sales staff… This helps speak a little bit more to discounting options, promotions, anything we’re running, and lead the pricing conversation from there.”

The Prompt: I have a current customer who is wondering if they should upgrade their account from a professional plan to a HubSpot enterprise plan. They have 15k marketing contacts. They have a tight budget and want to know if it’s worth the upgrade. Please write me a response and recommend how I should respond.

AI Response: The AI took a stab, sectioned the question, and clarified the basics of features and costs. But when things got technical with integrations, it threw in the towel and tagged a sales rep in for backup. Additionally, the AI email response doesn’t sound very human. It does little to highlight the benefits of the upgrades in a specific way.

Takeaway: AI has the chops for slicing up questions, but it‘s not ready to cook up the full meal deal yet. It’s the one you tag in for the opening act, not the main event. Real reps have a better understanding of your product. They can tailor solutions and content customers to other people on relevant teams to get the job done.

If you’re new to the role, AI can help you build an outline for a plan of action. However, be sure to add information based on your knowledge or tap a colleague for help.

Handling Sensitive Customer Scenarios

Time for the touchy stuff: A customer is upset that there was a product outage when they have a major presentation. They need to pull data from their CRM to get the task done. If they can’t get the information, they’ll miss a deadline.

However, it’s not possible to solve the outage immediately. What do you do?

Human Response: Dorosh says that he has experience dealing with outages, though perhaps nothing as extreme as I described in my fictional scenario. However, he was all in.

“Leading with empathy and a bit of an apology up front definitely helps level with them and hopefully de-escalates the emotions, which I’m sure are pretty high,” he starts.

From there, Dorosh says he would share the most recent update about the outage as an internal employee.

“I acknowledge that there‘s something wrong and that our team’s working to resolve it,” Dorosh says. “Sometimes we have valid phone numbers. If we do, I’ll give them a quick call and explain the situation. I think it comes off a little bit better via phone than email.”

From there, Dorosh notes he would follow up with any resources that can help and provide status updates as they become available. He wants to be “a point of contact that they can reach out to” as the issue gets fixed.

The Prompt: I have to respond to a customer complaint about a product outage. They have a major presentation tomorrow and are not able to pull data from the CRM. We do not know when the issue will be resolved. Please write me a response with empathy.

AI Response: The response from AI feels canned and lengthy. Having a customer read a long apology won’t do much to resolve the issue.

Takeaway: On the emotional battlefield, humans are the undisputed champs. AI’s just not equipped for the front lines when the heat’s on. Plus, your human helpers can get in touch with people over the phone or video chat. They can provide up-to-date information that they’ve heard from teammates.

Outages are no fun, but customers are more forgiving when they have top-notch service. AI responses feel canned and may make your users feel less valued.

Sounding Human

Here’s a curveball. Emails from humans sound personal. They may mention something about the receiver — how are the kids or how was your vacation? Or, perhaps they say something about the sender. How we use language varies by region. That may include local lingo and homegrown expressions.

Let’s see how humans and AI use expressions and personalization to connect with real humans. Our reason for reaching out: a check-in email.

Human Response: During our interview, I asked Dorosh to write me a check-in note. He responded to me with a message that acts as a starting point for his email. We chatted in mid-December, so his note had a festive flair.

From there, he’ll find ways to add personalization.

“I’d insert some product-specific things that I‘ve picked up on to personalize it a little bit further so it’s not just like a general checking-in message,” Dorosh says. “If there‘s anything notable from a previous conversation, the last time we connected, I’ll insert that — or anything specific to their brand.”

Dorosh says he gets a better response rate if his messages have a personal touch and don’t feel general. However, he notes it’s important to sound authentic.

“I’ve seen…examples of sales emails that try to be personable to a degree, but it just comes off as not authentic,” he says. “I try to avoid anything too out there.”

The Prompt: I’m based in Boston. Please write me a check-in email for my customer that shows I live in the area. Use regional expressions or slang where possible.

AI Response: For fun, I used two AI tools with the same prompt. ChatSpot took a buttoned-down approach. It mentioned that I’m in Boston, but it seems to assume the customer lives there as well. All of the responses are about the product tied to Boston. This wasn’t the tone I was going for.

ChatGPT got a little closer but took its tone way too far. The response feels like a caricature of a Bostonian. Can you say, “Park the car at the Harvard Yard?”

Takeaway: When it comes to cultural savvy, humans take the cake. It‘s about reading the room — or, in this case, the globe — and AI’s not quite world-wise yet. Don’t ask your bot to sound like they’re from a certain region. It leads to hilarious (but unprofessional) results.

Perks of AI in Customer Care

Automates Customer Service and Saves Time

Time is the currency in today’s whirlwind of a world, and AI is like having a high-speed printing press for this currency, cranking out savings left and right. Imagine a world where “hold please” becomes ancient history, where AI is the maestro of quick-draw responses to the FAQs that can clog up the works.

By automating the customer service routine, AI comes in to handle the grunt work, giving businesses the superpower to allocate more time to genuinely connect with customers, understand their stories, and forge relationships that are not just transactions but true bonds. It’s the difference between a customer feeling like a ticket number and feeling like a VIP — every single time.

Enhances Customer Engagement and Personalizes Interactions

McKinsey’s & Company’s research found that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, even through customer service channels. AI’s the backstage wizard, churning through data mountains to customize the chit-chat and recommendations.

Improves Accuracy and Aids Decision-Making

AI is our data detective, digging through the digital evidence to hand businesses the magnifying glass. It’s about precision—no guesswork here.

AI lays out patterns and predictions with a clarity that sharpens decision-making. It’s like having a strategy board where every piece is an informed choice, and every move is calculated to leapfrog over the competition.

Elevates the Overall Customer Experience

Imagine customer service that knows what you need before you do — AI makes that a reality. It‘s not just about speed; it’s the tailored experience that feels like it’s been crafted just for you.

AI’s predictive powers mean anticipating customer desires, making customer experiences seamless and intuitive, as if it’s reading minds and hearts, making every interaction a winner.

Bolsters Safety and Compliance

AI is a vigilant enforcer of the rulebook, scanning for compliance slip-ups and wrapping customer data in a security blanket. From privacy policies to industry regulations, AI ensures businesses play it safe, keeping customer trust intact and the compliance scoreboard clean.

The Bumps on the AI Implementation Highway

Communication and Comprehension Gaps

AI thrives on clarity, but human conversation is often anything but.

When the script gets flipped, and colloquialisms or emotional nuance come into play, AI can get tangled up. This can leave customers feeling like they’re playing charades — trying to make themselves understood, while AI misses the mark.

Smoothing out these wrinkles requires AI that doesn’t just hear but truly listens and understands the shades between the lines.

Building Trust With Customers

Deploying AI into the mix isn’t about having the shiniest tech on the block—it’s about reliability and that gut-level trust customers need to feel.

Trust is built with every accurate and helpful interaction and every smoothly-resolved issue. It’s a relationship built over time, with customers needing to see that AI is more than a robot — it’s a dependable extension of the team they already trust. It’s about consistently delivering that “good morning” reliability, cup after cup, conversation after conversation.

Addressing Bias and Ethical Issues

When it comes to AI, it‘s like raising a kid in the digital world. The stuff we teach it (i.e., the data we feed it) shapes its worldview. And just like with kids, we need to be mindful of the influences we’re exposing it to.

Unchecked biases in training data can slip into AI’s decision-making, leading to some cringe-worthy faux pas that can alienate customers and stir up a PR nightmare.

Training and Supervision Requirements

Deploying AI in customer service isn‘t plug-and-play. It’s more like teaching an orchestra to play symphonies flawlessly — a lot of practice sessions and a sharp conductor are non-negotiable.

The “musicians” (our AI tools) need to first learn the notes (company protocols and customer service nuances), and this comes down to comprehensive training.

This training is a rigorous process involving technical data and the subtler aspects of human communication—things like tone, context, and cultural sensitivities. And the work doesn‘t end once the AI is live. Ongoing supervision ensures that AI remains in tune with the company’s values and customer expectations.

Securing Customer Data

Picture customer data as the most VIP guest at the party — you wouldn’t skimp on the security detail. This means having the digital equivalent of laser grids, two-meter-thick vault doors, and uncrackable codes. Because when it comes to customer data, even a tiny leak can sink the ship. This is why it’s so important to guard customer data and ensure privacy is always intact.

Balancing AI With Human Touch

Striking that perfect harmony between AI smooth operations and the warm fuzzies of human interaction — that’s the high-wire act. Sure, AI’s slick for the routine, but it’s still learning to hand out those virtual hugs.

Clutch’s research found that 88% of customers prefer to speak to live customer service agents, highlighting the importance of balancing AI with a human touch.

The Extra Edge AI Brings to the Customer Service Table

Chatbots are the ultimate support sidekicks.

Chatbots are the unsung heroes in customer care, zipping through questions like pros and dishing out help on the double. These AI-powered pals are the virtual shoulder customers can lean on, solving problems in a snap and keeping things smooth in the support lane.

You can feel the customer pulse with sentiment analysis.

AI’s not just smart — it’s getting emotional, too. Sentiment analysis is AI’s way of reading between the lines, picking up on customer moods and vibes. It’s like having a mood ring for customer chats, giving businesses the lowdown on switching up the game plan for happier customers.

You can use data sleuthing for customer connection.

Throw AI into the data jungle, and it’ll come out with the treasure every time. It’s about getting the lowdown on what tickles the customers’ fancy and then spinning that into the kind of service that locks in loyalty for the long haul.

You get turbo-charged solutions with AI automation.

AI in customer service is like hitting the fast-forward button. It’s all about getting customers from “Hey, I’ve got a problem” to “Wow, that was quick!” without burning cash or cutting corners.

The Winning Combo of Human Smarts and AI Smarts in Customer Care

Customer service is getting a facelift with AI, but the real secret sauce is when human smarts and AI smarts hang out. HubSpot understands this balance: our AI empowers service reps, but it doesn’t replace them.

Human reps have an edge: empathy, nuanced understanding, and the kind of problem-solving that can‘t be programmed. While ChatSpot can sift through volumes of simple questions, it’s our human team that crafts each customer story into a positive experience.

It‘s clear that the best customer service isn’t AI or human — it’s both.

Losing customers without any plan to mitigate the situation is a surefire path to ensure your business goes under. If you’re seeing a decline in customers, there could be various reasons for why that’s the case, like poor customer service, inconsistent pricing, or lack of training for your sales reps.

Digging into why you’re losing customers doesn’t need to be a big mystery to solve. However, understanding why you might be losing customers is essential so you can create and implement a plan to recover and retain your clients.

Let’s look at a few possible reasons you might be losing customers.

9 Reasons You’re Losing Customers

1. Poor Customer Service

Your organization’s customer service starts from the moment a customer contacts a representative of your company. And the number one reason you might be losing customers is poor customer service.

The best sales representatives understand customer service is more than closing a deal.

Excellent customer service involves building relationships with clients and connecting with them personally. 82% of sales reps agree this is the best part of the job, too.

Once your sales reps establish a genuine connection, they can better understand and serve their clients, offering only the best care and service.

Pro tip: Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask yourself: “Would I be satisfied with the level of customer service that I’m receiving from my representatives?” If the answer is “no” or even a meager “maybe,” it’s time to consider how you can boost your customer service game.

2. Confusing Pricing

A second reason you might lose customers is inconsistent pricing. You know the worth of your product and the value it provides for your customers. However, if you do not price it correctly and clearly define your offerings, this can cause confusion for customers. It gives them a reason to walk away from your business.

The best sales reps know to look at their products or services from a customer’s perspective. From a customer standpoint, it makes the most sense to look at options from lowest to highest when it comes to pricing, which is why 84% of SaaS companies price their products from lowest to highest.

Tiered pricing and subscriptions are great pricing models. Still, if you’re not clear on what you are offering, your tiers heavily overlap, or you present the highest option first, you’re potentially misrepresenting the value your product or service offers.

Pro tip: Consider reconsidering your pricing and accurately defining what you’re offering customers to eliminate confusion.

3. Lack of Training

Think like a customer for a second. Have you ever been in a situation where you were ready to make a purchase, but it was clear the sales professional did not understand the product, how it could benefit you, or the art of the sale? For a customer, nothing is worse than dealing with a sales professional who lacks the necessary training.

As a business owner or department manager, you know what it takes to help your sales representatives excel in their jobs: training and sales enablement.

Over half of sales professionals rely on sales enablement content daily. And 79% of those sales pros agree that sales enablement is vital to making a sale. With the proper training and enablement, your sales representatives can provide the utmost customer service for your clients.

Pro tip: Review your sales enablement documents and training plan. This can be the difference between losing clients and retaining them.

4. Over-Promising and Under-Delivering

You probably know the phrase “Honesty is the best policy.” The same concept applies to sales, meaning your sales reps should never hype up a product or service so much that it fails to deliver what is promised.

Over-promising and under-delivering fall flat when it comes to customer satisfaction, which is likely why customers walk away from a brand. The best sales reps understand that a customer’s trust in a brand must be protected. Once the trust is gone, it is hard to gain it back.

Pro tip: When training your sales reps, ensure they understand the key aspects of your product or service to help them better convey the product or service’s promise.

5. Underrepresenting Your Product or Service

Just like overpromising a product or service’s value, underrepresenting it can cause a loss of customers. With the internet at their fingertips, 96% of customers research a product or service before speaking with a sales professional.

This means your customer likely already has a good understanding of what your product or service offers. What they might need help understanding, though, is how the product or service can benefit them directly.

There is a reason great sales professionals spend time connecting with their customers. This time is spent understanding their customers’ specific pain points. Because customers have already researched the product or service, a salesperson’s time with a customer is better spent explaining how the product or service can benefit them than explaining the product’s features.

Pro tip: Encourage your sales teams to talk with customers about their pain points. This will illuminate new ways your product or service can help them.

6. Slow Response Times

With 65% of revenue coming from existing customers, an organization should consider ways to maintain those customer relationships. Putting customers on hold or slowly responding to their queries and emails is not a suitable retention method and can be why your company is losing customers.

It’s no secret that sales professionals are busy people who have more on their plate than just sales. Data shows only two hours of a sales rep’s day is spent on sales, which is why more and more star sales reps are turning to AI tools to help them automate specific time-consuming tasks.

With the time saved with AI automation, those sales reps are free for other things, like responding to customers and helping solve issues.

Pro tip: Use AI tools like HubSpot AI to automate tasks and enable your reps to work on other customer-facing tasks.

7. Lack of Personalization

Do you know the warm and fuzzy feeling you get when someone says your name? That’s the feeling you should give your customers to let them know you and your team care.

Impersonal interactions between a customer and sales rep often feel cold and leave the customer feeling as if they are not important. For those customers, it’s easy to leave one brand behind for another who has taken the time to personalize the customer experience.

Personalizing a customer’s experience with your brand doesn’t have to be complicated. 66% of sales professionals use AI tools to help personalize every step of the sales process for their customers.

Good sales professionals also know that customers love to hear their name and will actively say it during conversations with clients.

Pro tip: The more your sales reps can personalize the sales process, the better.

8. Resistance to Change

With the introduction of AI, there is no denying that industries are constantly changing. And that includes the sales industry, too. These rapid changes demand sales professionals be flexible and open to change, even if it requires throwing out what they’ve always done to close a deal.

Being resistant to change means you are closing a door to potential sales and likely not meeting the needs of your current customer base. Good sales reps understand that to retain customers successfully, they must adapt to the times and keep up with trends.

Pro tip: Keep an eye on your and your customers’ industry to stay up-to-date with new trends.

9. Being a Product, Not a Partner

Are your sales reps selling a product or a partnership? The immediate answer might be “a product” because that’s precisely what your organization sells. However, positioning your brand as just a product might be where you lose customers.

Customers don’t want just another product. They want to be confident in their purchase and know that if they need help, your brand is in their corner. The best sales reps understand they are not just selling a product or service.

Instead, they are forging a partnership with the client and your brand. And the most successful sales professionals use collaborative words, like “we” and “us,” to help promote and maintain partnerships with the customer.

Pro tip: Train your sales professionals to use collaborative words, like “we” and “us,” to help promote partnership.

How to Turn Your Strategy Around

If your company is losing customers, don’t fret. Although losing a customer is not fun, use it as a learning opportunity to improve your business operations. There are several things you can do to bring your customers back and increase customer retention.

Use these tips from experienced customer service professionals to create a plan to regain your clients.

1. Analyze customer behavior.

If you notice that you’re losing customers, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly why that is the case. Sure, there are reasons like those listed above, but you won’t know until you ask your customers.

As a customer service coordinator, Jackie Ryan suggests “conducting customer feedback surveys and interviews and analyzing customer behavior to better understand why they are leaving.”

Asking for meaningful feedback through a survey is a great way to gather customer retention metrics to help you better understand a customer’s decision to stay with or leave your brand.

Survey responses can highlight areas you and your team can improve to help mitigate customer loss and improve retention. Make sure to ask appropriate questions and provide your clients with the opportunity for open-ended discussions.

2. Propose solutions and offer support.

Customers need to know they’re not just another number for your organization’s bottom line. However, they’ll feel like “another number” if your team does not offer personalized support and solutions when they experience an issue.

Gene Caballero, co-founder of GreenPal, says, “It’s not just about fixing the issue, but also offering support and reassurance. In my experience, personalized solutions greatly enhance customer satisfaction.”

If you’re able to see the breakdown in a customer relationship before it completely crumbles, you and your team should propose personalized solutions to fix the issue and offer your customer support to bring them back to your brand.

3. Quickly respond to customers.

One of the reasons you might lose customers is a delayed response time. An obvious strategy to fix this issue is to make it a priority to respond to customers quickly.

Joel Wolfe, president and founder of HiredSupport.com, says, “Customers value being heard, and part of being heard is being heard right now. And not being heard tomorrow or two days from when the initial complaint was made. That further deteriorates the customer relationship you’re trying to salvage.”

The longer you and your team wait to respond to their queries, the higher the chance a customer will be unsatisfied with your company.

4. Ensure your team is on the same page.

Remember how we mentioned that overpromising and underrepresenting your product or service are two reasons you might lose customers? There is a way to mitigate those issues to keep your clients with your company, and that is to ensure that every member of your company, whether that’s customer success or your receptionists, is on the same page.

Mike Bonventre, an entrepreneur and business consultant, suggests that customers leave a company because “the employees that are doing the job are not in sync with sales.”

In other words, your customers receive conflicting information from one department to another. This leaves the door open for overpromising or underrepresenting your product or service.

You can mitigate this by training your departments on the features and benefits of your product or service so that only accurate information is passed on to your clients.

5. Treat all customers as a priority.

This goes without saying, but your customers are your most important priority. Without customers, your business is sure to go under. However, one way to retain your customer base is to make your customers feel like they are your and your team’s top priorities.

Mike Bonventre says, “Forget about the money. Every minute you are thinking about money, you’re not thinking about providing customer service. Remember your priority.”

Mike’s suggestion might seem to go against the grain, but when your customers are your first priority, you can be sure you’re providing them with the best customer service possible. Customers who are satisfied with your customer service are likely to stay with your business.

Plus, happy customers are also more likely to tell others about your brand.

It’s important to take the time to understand why your customers are leaving and what you can do as a team to bring them back. To learn more about customer retention and strategies you can implement today, check out our free library of customer retention resources.

Implementing a Retention Strategy to Stop Churn

Losing customers can feel as if it’s the end for your business. While losing clients certainty impacts your revenue, it doesn’t have to be the end for your company. With the right strategy in place, you can recover from it.

Have you ever received a message from a friend or family member and couldn’t tell if they were joking or not? If so, you’re not alone — and that’s exactly why sentiment analyzers are helpful. Businesses constantly experience this challenge on a large scale. When communicating with customers in a non-face-to-face setting, it can be tricky — or downright impossible — to determine the tone of the message. That’s where sentiment analysis comes into the picture. 

In this post, we’ll explain what a sentiment analysis tool is and provide a list of the best options available for your team this year.

Benefits of Adopting a Sentiment Analysis Tool

Want to dive deeper into the benefits of utilizing a sentiment analyzer? I’ll walk you through the five most critical reasons brands consider sentiment analysis worthwhile. 

1. Streamlined Feedback Management

If your company provides an omnichannel experience, a sentiment analysis tool can save your team valuable time organizing and reporting customer feedback. With the help of a sentiment analyzer, your team won’t have to spend time tracking down feedback. Instead, it will be aggregated in one easy-to-access place. 

2. Better Problem Resolution

Automating the process of analyzing customer feedback enables your customer service teams to respond more effectively to your customers.

Rather than going through each tweet and comment one by one, a sentiment analysis tool processes your feedback and automatically interprets whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral. This will allow you to proactively address issues before they escalate, improving the overall customer experience.

3. Improved Product and Service Quality

Gaining insights into customer sentiments and pain points allows you to adjust your products and services. This will enable you to enhance quality and meet your customer expectations. For instance, if your sentiment analysis tool repeatedly tags mentions of the same issue, you know it’s worth digging into deeper. Without the assistance of the sentiment analyzer, you wouldn’t be able to put the puzzle pieces together as quickly as you can with it. 

4. Informed Business Decisions

Many sentiment analysis tools combine your data and display it in charts or graphs that clearly outline trends in your customer response. These insights enable you to make informed business decisions to boost customer satisfaction. Without sentiment analysis, it would be difficult to identify trends in your customer feedback — which is a large reason why using a tool is so important. 

5. Real-Time Feedback Analysis

Sentiment analysis tools offer the ability to analyze customer feedback in real time, allowing immediate action and response to customer sentiments. You don’t have to wait days or weeks to determine what customers are saying about your business — you can access this information right away. 

Now that you know what a sentiment analysis tool is and how it can benefit your business, let’s look at some of the best tools available in 2024. 

1. HubSpot’s Service Hub

HubSpot’s customer feedback tool

HubSpot’s Service Hub includes a customer feedback tool to break down qualitative survey responses and evaluate them for positive or negative intent. It uses NPS® surveys to clarify whether a customer’s review was good or bad and organizes them based on sentiment. 

Users can analyze the results by looking at one comprehensive dashboard that includes charts and graphs that provide an overview of customer satisfaction.

HubSpot’s Service Hub suite can also analyze customers on an individual basis. You can integrate your CRM with Service Hub and review survey responses from specific contacts in your database. That way, your team can quickly identify customers who are unhappy and follow up with them after they’ve had a negative experience with your brand.

What makes HubSpot’s Service Hub stand out is its seamless integration with other HubSpot modules and over 1,500 leading apps and web services. This ensures that your customer service teams have all the necessary data at their fingertips to conduct in-depth sentiment analysis and make informed decisions.

Remember, 59% of US consumers will walk away from a business after several bad experiences — and 17% will walk away after they’ve had just one unsatisfactory experience, according to PwC. This gives your team an opportunity to intercept unhappy customers and prevent potential churn.

What we love: HubSpot’s Service Hub offers tailored onboarding and free online training. With guidance from certified solutions partners or dedicated onboarding specialists, navigating the tool becomes seamless for your service team. 

Price: $20/month for a CRM Suite starter plan, $18/month for a Starter Plan, and $450/month for a Professional plan. (You can also get started with some of our tools for free.) 

2. Idiomatic

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Idiomatic builds customer sentiment analysis models based on your specific business. Idiomatic’s sentiment labels are calibrated to the specific channels of your customer feedback.

For each data source (app reviews, support tickets, etc.), Idiomatic has different sentiment analysis models. As a result, you can track more accurate sentiments by channel.

With Idiomatic, you can also track changes in sentiment by channel and customer segments over time. As a result, you can evaluate channel and customer segment performance and improve issues causing frustration and negative sentiment.

What sets Idiomatic apart is its custom data labels, organized into easy-to-understand categories and issues. This innovative feature bridges the gap between the language of your customers and the way your business describes issues. 

By creating a comprehensive and custom set of labels for each of your unique data sets, Idiomatic can surface trends that may have previously gone unnoticed. This results in unified and up-to-date insights on an ongoing basis, allowing you to stay ahead of customer needs and expectations.

What we love: Idiomatic leverages AI to ensure that the insights derived are both accurate and reliable. This helps you unlock the “why” behind customer feedback, offering a complete, data-driven voice of the customer.

Price: $399 a month for a simple data sources plan; $1,999 a month for a complex data sources plan.

3. Talkwalker

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Talkwalker’s “Quick Search” is a sentiment analysis tool that’s part of a larger customer service platform. This tool works best with your social media channels because it can tell you exactly how people feel about your company’s social media accounts.

Quick Search looks at your mentions, comments, engagements, and other data to provide your team with an extensive breakdown of how customers respond to your social media activity. This helps your team plan and produce effective campaigns that captivate your target audience.

What makes this tool highly effective is its aspect-based sentiment analysis. This feature provides granular insights into customer feedback by focusing on specific elements influencing opinions and satisfaction. 

It enables your business to pinpoint exact areas of contentment or discontent, allowing for targeted improvements in products or services. 

What we love: Talkwalker analyzes support tickets and emails, helping you identify common customer issues and concerns. This feature is useful in refining customer support processes and aligning products & services closely with customer expectations.

Price: Talkware offers a listen plan, analyze plan, business plan, and premium plan. Pricing for all plans is available upon request.

4. Reputation

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Powered by NLP (Natural Language Processing), the Reputation platform breaks down customer sentiment and analyzes feedback to highlight trends and topics in real time.

Their advanced text analytics determine what people are commenting on and whether the comments are positive or negative. This allows users to surface customer pain points across multiple digital channels or locations.

Reputation’s real-time alerts & mentions feature enables you to set alerts for mentions of your brand and trending keywords. The feature helps manage customer communications and address potential crises. This ensures your business maintains a positive relationship with your customers and swiftly responds to their needs.

What we love: Reputation offers real-time sentiment analysis reports that allow you to analyze customer sentiment minute-by-minute. This feature is crucial for measuring experiences and making immediate improvements for better customer satisfaction.

Price: Available upon request.

5. Repustate

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Repustate has a sophisticated text-analysis API that accurately assesses the sentiment behind customer responses. Its software can pick up on short-form text and slang like lol, rofl, and smh. It also analyzes emojis and determines their intention within the context of a message.

For example, if I use a 😉 emoji, Repustate tells you if that’s a positive or negative symbol based on what it finds in the rest of the conversation.

Repustate also lets you customize your API’s rules to have it filter for language that may be specific to your industry.

If there’s slang or alternate meanings for words, you can program those subtleties into Repustate’s system. This way, you have full control over how the software analyzes your customers’ feedback.

Additionally, Repustate uses sentiment analysis to identify what is working well in your customer service and what requires improvement. It achieves this by classifying customer feedback into various categories, such as pricing, service, location, and ease of use, providing a complete overview of customer satisfaction.

What we love: Repustate’s multilingual sentiment analysis supports over 20 languages. It breaks down language barriers and provides actionable insights from diverse customer feedback. This feature significantly enhances customer service by enabling you to understand and engage effectively with a global customer base.

Price: $199 a month for standard plan; $499 a month for a premium plan.

6. Brand24

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Brand24 is a media monitoring tool that automatically performs sentiment analysis around your brand or any topic related to your business.

It collects publicly available mentions from the Internet, including social media, blogs, forums, websites, news sites, customer reviews, videos, podcasts, and other places.

Brand24 uses advanced machine learning algorithms and NLP techniques that analyze the text in real-time and assign the appropriate sentiment based on the words used.

With sentiment analysis, you can quickly check which mentions are positive, negative, or neutral. Their robust analytics allow you to see how often people talk about your brand and competitors, social media reach, top influencers, and more.

What makes Brand24 exceptional is its ability to let businesses discover real-time discussions about their brand. This feature facilitates immediate engagement in relevant conversations with just a single click. This ensures that any arising issues are addressed quickly, thus enhancing customer satisfaction.

What we love: Brand24’s alert system notifies your business of significant shifts in discussion volume or brand-specific mentions. This approach enables you to swiftly respond to changes, especially negative mentions from high-traffic profiles, safeguarding your brand’s reputation.

Price: Free 14-day trial, then $99 a month for an individual plan; $179 a month for a team plan; $249 a month for a pro plan; or $499 for an enterprise plan.

7. Meltwater

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Meltwater’s sentiment analysis utilizes advanced natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to evaluate the sentiment expressed in social media posts, articles, and other online content.

The Meltwater offers comprehensive sentiment analysis, providing text processing, lexicon-based analysis, contextual understanding, weighting and scoring, and aggregation & summarization.

There are several advantages to using Meltwater for sentiment analysis: comprehensive data coverage, accurate sentiment interpretation, customizable sentiment analysis, real-time monitoring, comparative analysis, and integrated analytics and reporting.

Additionally, Meltwater’s Consumer Intelligence Suite is designed to assist in understanding what customers really think, want, and need. It applies AI, data science, and market research expertise to a live feed of global data sources, transforming unstructured data into scientific predictions. 

What we love: Meltwater intelligently categorizes and structures customer data using AI. It enhances the accuracy and efficiency of sentiment analysis by eliminating spam and false positives. This feature ensures that the data used for analysis is relevant and reliable, leading to more insightful and dependable results.

Price: Book a demo for pricing.

8. Lexalytics

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Lexalytics offers a text analysis tool that explains why a customer is responding to your business in a certain way.

It uses natural language processing to parse the text and then runs a sentiment analysis to determine the intent behind the customer’s message.

Additionally, Lexalytics can extract themes or topics from large volumes of text, allowing you to identify and address specific concerns that customers are discussing. It concludes the process by compiling the information it derives into an easy-to-read and shareable display. 

While most sentiment analysis tools tell you how customers feel, Lexalytics differentiates itself by telling you why customers feel the way they do.

What we love: The Symantria API by Lexalytics can detect customer intentions in the text, such as intent to purchase, intent to leave, or intent to recommend. This insight can help your business predict customer behavior and take measures to enhance customer satisfaction.

Price: Pricing available on request.

9. SentiSum

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SentiSum can be used to centralize all your voice of customer insights and make them available to wider teams in the company.

Integrating directly with leading support platforms like Zendesk, Dixa, HubSpot, and Intercom, SentiSum’s clever AI learns how your customers express themselves to give accurate insights into customer sentiment. It analyzes and tags every customer conversation across various channels like emails, chats, phone calls, surveys, and reviews in over 100 languages, providing valuable insights such as sentiment and the reason for contact.

With a simple one-click integration, SentiSum quickly identifies the top reasons for customer contacts, sentiment, and the true drivers of NPS and CSAT in just a few minutes. By gaining a deeper understanding of customers’ sentiments, you can respond quickly and effectively to their needs, improve their experience, and increase their loyalty.

What we love: SentiSum’s “Dig In” feature, a part of their Generative AI series, allows you to delve deep into your tickets quickly. It extracts valuable insights and summarizes crucial details, such as the causes of issues or what customers love about your product, improving the understanding of customer feedback.

Price: $2000 monthly for a pro plan; book a demo for enterprise plan pricing. 

10. Critical Mention

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Critical Mention differs from the other options on this list because it analyzes news and other publications that reference your business. This way, you can see the sentiment behind stories that are rapidly surfacing to the public.

Since news coverage is now a 24/7 affair, it helps to have software that can monitor the internet and alert you to any buzz your business is making.

Critical Mention can even alert you to stories that appear on television. You can search through video files for mentions of your company and easily clip videos to share with other employees.

If your business gets positively mentioned on a live broadcast, quickly access the video segment and share it on your social media channels. This can help you create effective online content that capitalizes on timely marketing opportunities.

One of the impressive features of Critical Mention is that it offers results within 60 seconds and provides real-time notifications about the latest mentions and sentiments, ensuring you are always updated.

What we love: Critical Mention is built on modern cloud technology, offering real-time alerts and in-depth analytics. This provides reliable media monitoring and insights you can trust.

Price: Pricing available on request.

11. Brandwatch

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One of the coolest features of Brandwatch is its “image insights” tool, which can identify images associated with your brand.

For example, say you upload an image of your brand’s logo. Brandwatch surfs the web for images that include that logo. Then, it compiles the images into a list and highlights exactly where your brand’s logo appears.

Additionally, Brandwatch’s software provides interesting insights into each image it finds. This includes metrics like mention volume, aggregate followers, and latest activity. With Brandwatch, your team sees where your brand’s images are appearing and how those images are performing with your target audience. 

Impressively, Brandwatch has invested 17+ years in developing industry-leading AI optimized for analyzing fast-changing, unstructured data. Using this AI technology, Brandwatch can automatically surface insights, discover objects, scenes, actions, and logos in images, and instantly find relevant data on any brand or topic.

What we love: Brandwatch’s Consumer Research provides instant access to the world’s largest archive of consumer opinions. This feature can be very useful in times of planning or crisis, allowing decision-makers to make the right decision based on historical consumer data.

Price: Pricing available upon request.

12. Sentiment Analysis Ticket

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Sentiment Analysis Ticket is a HubSpot integration designed to analyze the sentiment of conversations related to your tickets using AI. 

By intercepting and studying the tone and context of customer request conversations, it offers valuable insights to enhance your customer service. The application is capable of providing real-time sentiment feedback by analyzing the text of emails associated with a ticket in HubSpot. 

What makes this tool effective is its ability to summarize the sentiment of the conversation in the ticket property, indicating whether the message’s sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral. This data can be effectively utilized in your workflows or reports, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of customer interactions.

What we love: Sentiment Analysis Ticket provides real-time insights into what people say about your brand. The platform alerts you of any significant changes in discussion volume or mentions, enabling you to discover and address these changes quickly.

Price: Free plans are available; €9 a month for a starter plan; €29 a month for a pro plan; €49 a month for an ultra plan, €99 a month for an enterprise plan.

13. Social Searcher

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Social Searcher is a social media monitoring platform designed to monitor public mentions across various platforms, including social networks, blogs, forums, news sites, and more. It also includes a free sentiment analysis tool that lets you know whether the buzz surrounding any particular keyword, hashtag, or username is positive or negative.

It also breaks reports down by social media platforms so you can see exactly how your brand performs across different apps and channels.

One of the standout features of Social Searcher is its ability to distill negative feedback from social networks, allowing you to address concerns before they escalate. 

What we love: Social Searcher’s real-time monitoring and immediate email alerts ensure you never miss out on crucial customer feedback. Additionally, its capability to analyze sentiment in multiple languages and across various digital channels makes it an excellent tool for brands aiming to maintain a positive online reputation.

Price: Free to start; €3.49 a month for a basic plan; €8.49 a month for a standard plan; €19.49 a month for a professional plan.

14. Rosette 

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Rosette is a text analytics and discovery platform specializing in processing human language using AI. It is great for international businesses because it can review text-based data in over 30 languages. This means you won’t have to translate conversations before you upload them, which is not only faster but ensures greater accuracy.

Since most customers will use shorthand or slang, third-party translation tools can inadvertently change the meaning of their text.

With Rosette, its system is built to analyze text in the language that it’s written, so you won’t lose any valuable feedback, even if it’s written informally. One of the standout features of Rosette is that you can train Rosette for custom domains (like tech or e-commerce) or additional languages using the Rosette Classification Field Training Kit.

What we love: Rosette’s sentiment analysis capability is trained on tweets and reviews, enabling it to understand strong positive and negative sentiments in a text.

Price: $100 monthly for a starter plan, $400 a month for a medium plan, $1,000 a month for a large plan.

15. MonkeyLearn 

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MonkeyLearn is a sentiment analysis tool that’s easy to customize. All you have to do is create categorization tags and then manually highlight different text parts to show what content belongs to each tag. Over time, the software learns on its own and can process multiple files simultaneously.

MonkeyLearn also provides its customers with a free “Word Cloud” tool that tells them what words are frequently used within each categorization tag. This can help businesses discover common customer roadblocks by looking for repeat mentions of specific products or services.

If you notice one product is consistently listed under a negative categorization tag, this would suggest there’s an issue with that product that customers are unhappy about.

MonkeyLearn stands out with its business templates tailored for various scenarios, equipped with pre-made text analysis models and dashboards. These templates simplify the analytics process, allowing users to upload data, run the analysis, and instantly visualize actionable insights. 

What we love: Leveraging artificial intelligence, MonkeyLearn provides instant data visualizations and detailed insights, enabling you to understand your customer sentiments better. The platform’s ability to connect seamlessly with apps and BI tools through native integrations, SQL connections, or APIs further enhances its utility. 

Price: Starts free, $299 monthly for a team plan, $999 a month for business plans.

Understanding the Voice of Digital Consumer

Understanding customer feedback is more crucial than ever in this digital age. With so many text-based customer interactions flooding your business daily, sentiment analysis tools have become a “must-have” to understand your customers better. These tools not only help decode the tone and intent behind each message but also empower you to tailor your strategies based on genuine customer insights. 

We hope you found this list helpful as you embark on your sentiment analysis journey. Always remember, customer engagement is not just about hearing the words; it’s about understanding their sentiments.

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 article was originally published February 2021 and has since been updated for comprehensiveness.

I take classes at a local Pilates studio at least once a week. After signing up for a class through an app, I get SMS updates communicating class changes and reminders. My favorite kind of text is the one letting me know I’ve been moved off the waitlist and into the class. These real-time updates wouldn’t be possible without customer service texting software.

Customer service texting, or SMS customer service, is an essential part of an omnichannel messaging strategy and an increasingly important element of customer service overall. And when customer service is critical to the rest of the business’s success, SMS software is not something to overlook.

Table of Contents

• What is customer service texting software?
• How does customer service texting software work?
• 10 Best Customer Service Texting Software

What is customer service texting software?

Customer service texting software is a program or platform that allows businesses to communicate directly with customers via text messages. Also known as SMS customer service, this form of communication enables businesses to answer customer questions, resolve issues, share appointment reminders, or send order updates in a way that’s convenient for everyone involved.

Including SMS in your customer service strategy — in addition to phone, email, social media, and live chat — allows you to meet customers wherever they are. Taking an omnichannel approach is key to providing good customer service.

Not only does texting provide instant support when customers need it — which can be a fast and convenient way to resolve an issue when they have a question — but it also enables agents to help customers asynchronously. Helping customers over text is much more efficient than talking on the phone, which means agents can handle more tickets in one day. This, combined with the automation that customer service texting software provides, helps your company save time and money. And if you want to learn more about how those intertwine, check out our 2024 State of Customer Service report.

How does customer service texting software work?

Customer service texting software works like other tools in your tech stack. Once you set up a business number or enable texts on your existing one, you can use your software to create and send messages to your contacts. The software can be standalone, or you can choose one that integrates with other tools to create a connected workflow, like the HubSpot’s customer service software.

Most SMS services offer mass texting, two-way conversations, and sometimes MMS (multimedia messaging service), which enables you to send images and GIFs. If you’re focused on using SMS for customer service purposes, the ability to have two-way conversations is the most important feature to look for — especially when you consider that 61% of consumers want the ability to text a business back.

If you have a business landline, you can text-enable your existing number. Or, you can choose a new 10-digit local or 800 number. You can also opt for a five to six-digit short code.

Once you have your SMS number and your software set up, you are ready to start helping customers over text.

10 Best Customer Service Texting Software

I receive texts from businesses all the time, but I never thought about how they could actually text me until I started looking into customer service texting software.

Here are some of the top customer service texting services I found for a range of industries and businesses of all sizes.

1. SimpleTexting

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As its name implies, SimpleTexting makes SMS conversations easy for businesses of all sizes. Whether you want to send product updates or marketing announcements to a list of 500 people or engage in two-way conversations to resolve a customer inquiry, you can do it all in one dashboard.

Some of SimpleTexting’s helpful customer service features include templates for saved replies, self-cleaning lists, link shortening and tracking, and polls. SimpleTexting also makes it easy to launch your texting strategy, even if you’re starting from scratch, by offering multiple options for setting up a number to text from.

What I like: The idea of sending a text to your customers can feel daunting if you haven’t done it before. That’s why I appreciate that SimpleTexting’s free trial allows you to text your own number *first* to see how it all works.

2. Textline

Textline is a popular customer service texting platform that offers secure ways to send bulk SMS, collaborate via group messages, send media attachments, and have two-way conversations. Textline’s pricing plans support anywhere from three to 50 agents, making it a smart SMS software for teams of all sizes.

Plus, Textline integrates with tons of tools that your support team likely already uses, such as HubSpot and Slack, making it easy to create a seamless workflow.

What I like: With Textline, you can send text surveys to directly collect feedback from customers and ultimately improve the customer support process.

3. EZ Texting

EZ Texting is an SMS marketing service used by teams in marketing, sales, operations, and customer service. Plans include unlimited two-way texting and incoming messages, which means you don’t have to worry about missing a customer inquiry.

One of my favorite features of EZ Texting is AI Compose, which uses generative AI to help compose personalized texts for your audience. Using AI to help generate texts is the fastest way to scale your customer service texting operations.

Pro: If you plan to send MMS or multimedia content, you can tap into EZ Texting’s massive library with millions of free images from Shutterstock. There’s even an image editing tool.

4. Twilio

If you’re tech-savvy, consider using Twilio’s SMS API. Geared toward developers, Twilio offers an API that can be used to build your own messaging system, making it a customizable solution.

With Twilio, you can send and receive text messages at scale, and the pricing structure is pay-as-you-go, so you only pay for what you use. This can be a cost-effective way to scale your customer service texting strategy as long as you know how to use the API or have a developer on your team who does.

Best for: Twilio is a developer-friendly SMS tool, so it’s best for those with technical skills.

5. Textedly

Textedly is an SMS marketing service equipped for a range of industries, from retail and restaurants to schools and nonprofit organizations. All of the Textedly plans include unlimited contacts, free incoming messages, picture messaging, one toll-free number, and one 10-digit phone number (10DLC).

While the service is geared toward SMS marketing, Textedly enables businesses to conduct customer service through its two-way texting, personalized messages, and text message analytics. It also helps businesses collect customer feedback by enabling review requests sent through text. This can be a helpful way to automate the process and generate more Google reviews for your business in the process.

Pro: Textedly integrates with over 3,000 apps like HubSpot, Mailchimp, Shopify, and Facebook, so you can connect every tool in your workflow to save time.

6. Heymarket

Heymarket is a business texting platform that lets you connect with customers, leads, and employees on SMS and popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Some of Heymarket’s most helpful features for customer service include automated texting through keyword-triggered responses and a shared inbox so your support team can tackle multiple ticket requests at one time. Heymarket also offers AI-assisted messaging so you can create responses faster and more efficiently.

What I like: Heymarket’s AI-assisted messaging helps translate messages in English, French, Spanish, and Chinese which enables your support team to help even more people.

7. Textmagic

If you’re looking for an all-in-one business texting solution, Textmagic is another great option. The platform offers two-way texting, mass texts, SMS marketing, and SMS surveys. Plus, it integrates with other support channels so your support team can take an omnichannel approach to customer service.

Textmagic’s pricing structure is a prepaid service. You choose a credit package based on how many texts you plan to use and only pay for texts you send or receive. Add-on features include dedicated virtual numbers, the ability to send MMS, and voice calls.

Pro: In addition to texting, Textmagic makes it easy to use email or voice for customer service interactions so your team can help customers in whatever way is most convenient for them.

8. MessageDesk

MessageDesk is an SMS inbox for business texting. Like other texting platforms, MessageDesk enables you to text-enable your existing business landline or VoIP phone number or sign up for a new local number.

The platform’s main feature is the team inbox. The shared inbox allows your support team to manage conversations together from one phone number, which helps boost visibility and organization across the customer service team.

Con: You have to talk to a member of the sales team to get started, which may deter some people who prefer self-service.

9. Google Voice

Looking for a no-frills business texting option? With unlimited texting and plans that start at just $10 per month, Google Voice is a great option for small businesses and individuals who aren’t looking to add another tool to their tech stack.

As part of Google Workspace, Google Voice is an easy way to set up business communications within your current workflow. Voice integrates with Google Meet and Calendar, so all of your business communications are synched. If you’re already familiar with the Google Workspace interface, you’ll have no issues navigating Google Voice.

Best for: Google Voice is an easy, budget-friendly option for small businesses or individuals looking to set up business calling and texting, especially if you already use Google Workspace products.

10. OpenPhone

If you’re looking for a full-scale communication system, OpenPhone is a business phone system that includes texting. Some of OpenPhone’s most helpful features for customer service texting include auto-replies, saved message templates, and internal threads so your customer support team can handle inquiries behind the scenes.

All OpenPhone plans include unlimited calling and texting in the US and Canada, and they start at $15 per user per month.

Best for: Businesses who prioritize both calling and texting will benefit from one connected system under OpenPhone.

Use SMS Support to Meet Customers Where They Are

Customer expectations have evolved with the technology that’s available to them. The more time people spend on their phones, the more likely it is that they’ll want to interact with businesses in the same way.

In my experience, the customer service interactions that were the most positive and memorable for me were the ones that were resolved quickly by friendly and supportive customer service agents. I can’t think of a better way to do this than through texting (because, yes, I am a millennial who hates talking on the phone).

Your business needs to be equipped with SMS support to meet customers where they are and address their issues in a way that’s convenient for them. Customer service texting software enables your support team to resolve tickets swiftly and efficiently without spending all of their time on the phone, which benefits everyone involved.

Customer experience (CX) is the impression you leave with your customers, which results in how they think of you as a brand and ultimately creates brand loyalty. And if I know one thing about customer experience it’s this: measuring with customer experience metrics is important if you want to boost customer retention.

Customer experience tracking can help you improve your practices to cater to the entire customer experience. I like to track certain metrics such as how quickly I can solve a customer’s problem. The quicker I can solve a problem, the more likely a client will stick with my business.

As a small business owner, I’ve learned that positive customer experiences can lead to repeat business, and it’s easier and less costly for my business (and yours!) to retain clients than to seek out new customers.

In fact, 49% of customers are likely to leave a company based on a poor customer experience with the brand. So by lowering the customer effort score (CES) by providing simple, easy-to-use products and services means 76% of customers are more likely to recommend my brand to others.

With that in mind, let’s review the top metrics you can use to measure — and improve — the customer experience.

Jump ahead:

• What is customer experience?
• Measuring Customer Experience
• Customer Experience Metrics
• How to Accurately Measure Customer Experience

What is customer experience?

Customer experience (CX) is the journey or combination of interactions a customer or potential customer has with a business.

For me, it’s helpful to think that a customer’s experience starts from the very moment a client becomes aware of my business and follows the purchasing process. Plus, CX includes the weeks, months, or even years later that a customer uses my product or service.

If your business is like mine, you probably work hard to get a customer in the door to make a purchase. But, it’s important to look at the whole picture, too. That might mean providing support to your customers, even years down the line.

Why is this extra effort and money worth it to the business? It costs more money to add a new customer than to retain an existing one, and 65% of people say they’d ditch a brand after a poor experience.

Yikes. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to end up with a negative review that may deter other customers from doing business with me. Negative customer experiences can be costly!

Measuring Customer Experience

Surveys, journey maps, and a variety of other metrics are necessary for measuring CX. If you meticulously track your metrics, this process is complex and can span several years for some customers. But just because it’s complex and time-consuming doesn’t mean you should write it off. You need this data!

I like to think of customer experience as a puzzle. Customer service is just one piece of the puzzle. You want clients to have positive reactions to your advertising and marketing efforts. They should have an easy time using your products or services. And they should get quick responses from your team. Each of these things are pieces that make your customer experience a positive one.

Ways to Measure Customer Experience

I love surveys, and surveys are one of many ways to measure CX. We’ll dive into specific surveys that help measure customer experience in a few, I promise. However, there are tons of ways you can survey your customers.

For example, you may send out surveys after a customer makes a purchase or interacts with your support line. You might survey clients for feedback on a new product or service. Engaging with customers through surveys can help you get an idea of your business strengths and areas where you can improve.

Creating customer journey maps is another way to measure CX. If you’re nosey like me, customer journey maps can help you figure out how your customers are feeling and why they respond to your business in the way that they do.

This process tracks a customer‘s interactions and can help you pinpoint why a customer doesn’t follow through on a sale or chooses one product over a different one you offer.

For example, you might notice a customer finds you through a social media ad, goes to your website and fills their shopping cart, then doesn’t end up making a purchase. A journey map helps you visualize the customer experience and find points of friction based on customer actions and emotions.

Although 20% of service professionals who responded to HubSpot’s State of Service survey say that measuring the impact of their team’s efforts is challenging, there are plenty of metrics you can use for customer experience tracking. You can (and should!) use a variety of CX metrics together for the most complete picture of the customer’s journey with your brand.

As highlighted above, let’s discuss eight key metrics in more detail. Plus, I chatted with a few experts who graciously shared how they use these metrics to effectively improve their customers’ experience. (It’s okay to steal their ideas!) This should help you get a better idea of how to use these metrics in your own business.

1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

31% of service professionals who responded to HubSpot’s State of Service survey said one of their goals is to increase their customer satisfaction score. Personally, I’ve found that the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is one of the most straightforward ways of measuring your customer experience.

While typically used as a customer service metric, CSAT can also give you an idea of the customer experience, considering support interactions are one major component of CX. This is a simple survey that gauges how satisfied a client is following an interaction with your business.

I’m sure you’ve seen CSAT in action. Think of those surveys at the end of customer service calls.

For example, after a customer talks to a live representative via online chat, they can rank the support agent’s response based on how satisfied or helpful the solutions are. Or, after a client purchases a product or service, you can ask how satisfied they are with that product or service.

Calculating CSAT

To calculate CSAT, all you need to do is send a survey immediately following a purchase or interaction. This survey will ask how satisfied a customer is with their experience on a corresponding scale. The CSAT is the average score of that survey.

Featured Resource: Customer Survey Templates

Download for Free

Pro Tip: Edita Vaskeviciute, Director of Customer Support at Omnisend, says her team relies on the CSAT.

“We use the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) to measure the satisfaction level of customers after contacting our customer support team regarding inquiries or issues with the Omnisend product,” Vaskeviciute says. 

This enables her team to identify areas for improvement, track customer sentiment over time, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the overall customer experience.

“The best tip is to listen to your customers, consistently analyze the feedback they provide, and use it to improve your products, services, and support processes,” Vaskeviciute notes

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the main methods to measure customer experience. Your NPS will let you know the percentage of customers that love, are neutral, or aren’t a fan of your brand. I understand that it might sting to learn that some customers aren’t a fan of your brand, but this information is vital so that you can make crucial changes to improve the customer experience.

Calculating NPS

To calculate NPS, you’ll send a survey to your customers with an NPS question asking them how likely they are to recommend you to a friend, on a scale of 0-10. Scores 0-6 are detractors, scores 7-8 are passives, and scores 9-10 are promoters.

Your NPS is the percentage of detractor responses subtracted from promoter responses.

With this score, you can instantly tell how many customers are happy enough with their customer experience that they’ve become ambassadors for your brand.

Featured Resource: Net Promoter Score Calculator

Download for Free

Pro Tip: Paige Arnof-Fenn, Founder & CEO at Mavens & Moguls, says that although the net promoter score isn’t a perfect indicator of the customer experience, it’s still a beneficial metric.

According to Arnof-Fenn, NPS is a simple way to get a quick read on consumer sentiment, allowing it to be widely embraced and implemented to make sure their customers are happy. And even though NPS is not a perfect tool, it’s still valuable to companies where most business comes from word of mouth.

“Customer satisfaction and NPS matter because repeat customers and referrals are key, the most cost-efficient way to build a business and scale your brand in my experience. Would they recommend it to others? This is important to understand for insights into why your brand matters,” Arnof-Fenn says.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

If your customers are anything like me, they want simple interactions. Your website should be easy to navigate. Your products should be easy to assemble and use. And your customer service team should be easy to connect with for the client.

You can use a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey to allow customers to rank an interaction with a company or its products and services as easy, neutral, or difficult.

Calculating CES

To calculate CES, you take the sum of your customer effort ratings and divide it by the total number of survey responses you received.

If customers are ranking a product difficult to use, you want to innovate ways to make it more user-friendly. Like if it‘s hard to find the menu on your website, you’ll need to redesign the site or install a simpler template to improve the CX.

Pro Tip: Will Yang, Head of Growth and Marketing of Instrumentl, says his team keeps track of the customer effort score to measure their customer’s effort levels when it comes to interacting with the company.

“The customer effort score (CES) helps us measure how easy it is for customers to deal with our company. High customer effort leads to dissatisfaction and affects loyalty. The use of CES in identifying the pain points along our customer journey aids in streamlining our processes and making interactions more effortless. This analysis often results in simplified user interfaces and fewer steps involved in critical processes.” Yangl says,

4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) tells you how much one customer has brought to a business in the entire relationship. In other words, how much they’re “worth” to a business. The calculation also takes into account how much a business is spending to keep that customer.

It’s a good customer experience metric because you can see over time whether a customer is satisfied and making more purchases or if they spend less with your business.

Calculating CLV

To calculate CLV, you multiply the customer value times the average customer lifespan.

Typically, the better the CX, the higher the CLV. But if you start to see the customer spend less over time, you can determine why and create solutions to raise the CLV.

Pro Tip: Tom Golubovich, Head of Marketing at Ninja Transfers, says the customer lifetime value is an important metric for his customer experience team.

Golubovich says, “Customer lifetime value is important to us as we were one of the first companies to bring DTF Transfers to market. We want to ensure that our customers remain loyal and continue to come back time and time again.”

Golubovich notes that his team looks at customer reorders by account and the customers who have signed up for the “Ninja Rewards” program. “Ninja Rewards” is a loyalty program that allows customers to 5x points on every order while accessing promotional rewards. 

“We identified who were the most valuable customers to our business not just by looking at the customer lifetime value of existing orders and making projections but by sending out a survey and having customers self-identify … how much they were looking to spend on DTF transfers within the next 12 months,” Golubovich says. 

According to Golubovich, this allows his team to pivot our marketing strategies to focus on this more lucrative demographic.

5. Customer Churn Rate

Churn rate is the percentage of your customers or subscribers who cancel or don’t renew their subscriptions during a given time period.

20% of service professionals find it challenging to prevent customer churn. While churn is inevitable, it’s still important that you learn why churn is happening in your company so you can reduce it as much as possible.

Calculating Churn Rate

To calculate your churn rate, designate a time period and tally up the total number of customers you’ve acquired and the number of customers who churned during that time period.

Then, divide the number of customers who churned by the total number of customers acquired, and multiply that decimal by 100% to calculate your churn rate.

This metric should help you nail down why customers are leaving. Is it because of a lack of engagement? A poor user experience? Or perhaps it’s a lack of support? Either way, measuring and analyzing your churn rate will help you figure out how to reduce it.

Pro Tip: Derek Bruce, Operations Director at First Aid at Work Course, understands how useful the customer churn rate is to any business.

“A recent report suggested that a 5% drop in churn can increase profit by 125%, so this is an important area for improvement,” Bruce says. “A high churn rate soon after initial training might indicate an absence of value in the post-training support, so we introduced follow-up webinars and refresher courses, reducing our churn by 4.8% within 12 months.”

In the early years, Bruce says his team focused on the acquisition of new customers as opposed to the retention of old customers, which led to a temporary increase in churn.

“An important learning was that retention of customers is as important, if not more so, than continually acquiring new ones,” he says.

6. Customer Retention Rate

Customer retention rate is essentially the opposite of the churn rate, and 31% of service professionals say increasing customer retention is an important goal of theirs. This CX metric measures how many customers a business retains over a set period of time and helps determine customer loyalty.

Retention rate is slightly more challenging to calculate, though, because you will need to take into account the customers you retained, the customers you lost, and the customers you gained in a set period of time.

Calculating Retention Rate

To calculate retention rate:

• Set the time period, which could be a week, a month, a year, etc.
• Start with the number of customers you have at the end of that set time period.
• Subtract new customers gained during the set time period.
• Divide the resulting number by the number of clients you had at the beginning of the time period.
• Multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage.

Ideally, you want a high retention rate while also bringing in new clients that later become loyal customers. If you have a low retention rate but high sales, you’ll want to determine why customers are making one or few purchases and then leaving your business.

Pro Tip: Joel Wolfe, President of HiredSupport, keeps a regular check on their customer retention rate. This helps his team understand the degree of satisfaction that customers drive from HiredSupport’s products. 

“It’s a great way to understand what needs to be improved and what’s causing low retention rates. A great way to measure this metric is choosing a specific time period for analysis. It can be monthly, quarterly, or even annually, depending on the business cycle,” Wolfe says.

7. Customer Journey Analytics

Another technique to measure the customer experience is to use your analytics to look at the customer journey. 23% of service professionals have made it their goal to better understand the customer journey for a better customer experience.

Your customer journey map can answer questions about customer motivations, needs, and pain points. It‘ll also help you understand all the touch points a customer experiences on their journey. And this is how you’ll gather your customer journey analytics.

Analyzing the Customer Journey

To analyze the customer journey, you’ll probably want to start by pulling data from your social media, ads, website, company events, product reviews, onboarding, customer loyalty programs, emails, and surveys. Then, you can create a page or tab on your customer journey map dedicated to reporting the metrics of your touch points, so you can evaluate your customer experience.

Featured Resource: Customer Journey Map Templates

Download for Free

Pro Tip: Most of the experts I chatted with had quite a bit to say about customer journey analytics, so that tells me this is one of the most important metrics you can gather.

Bruce says when his team collects customer journey analytics, they start by examining every touchpoint a customer has had with the brand, from the very first visit to the website to online course registration — all the way through to course completion and beyond. 

“It’s about really looking at how the customer is engaging with us. We must understand their journey so we can see where we can improve it,” Bruce says. 

For example, Bruce recently saw that, during the registration process for one online course, there was a very high drop-off rate. So, his team incorporated suggestions from their analytics and introduced a simplified registration form, as well as clear instructions on how to fill it in. This resulted in a 2.5% increase in course registrations. 

“We also once launched a marketing campaign promoting advanced first-aid training. The messaging of this campaign was not a good fit for our customer base, despite it being a very relevant course for our existing audience,” Bruce says.

Bruce notes that they had a lot of people signing up for the course because it was a hot topic, only to see a dip in the satisfaction scores afterward. Bruce notes that the messaging for the campaign resonated poorly with those who signed up. 

“Now, we have learned to tailor our communication strategies towards specific customer segments depending on their needs during different stages of their journey,” he says.

8. Customer Support Ticket Trends

48% of service professionals found that the number of customer service requests they received in 2023 increased. You can take a look at your customer support tickets to pinpoint trends impacting the customer experience.

Are there recurring issues that cause pain for your customers? If so, try to improve them as they come up. You might decide you need to create clearer instructions, explainer videos, or product tweaks because of the trends you identified.

Analyzing Customer Support Ticket Trends

Key customer support ticket metrics and trends to analyze are first response time, average handle time, and first call resolution. These analytics can help you improve the customer experience from a customer support perspective.

Pro Tip: Smitha Baliga, CEO/CFO of TeleDirect Communications, says looking at their customer support ticket trends is a great way to identify areas of need.

Baliga says, “[Customer support trend tickets] are reviewed to gain insights into ticket volumes, common issues, handle times, and resolution rates. This analysis helps us identify areas where we may need to provide more self-help resources, enhance our products, or provide additional training to deliver faster and more effective support.”

How to Accurately Measure Customer Experience

CX metrics are the key to effectively measuring the customer experience. You can use a combination of surveys, retention and churn rates, and customer trend data to determine how satisfied your customers are at every step of the journey — and whether or not they’re willing to come back or refer your brand to others.

Start customer experience tracking so you can make the business improvements necessary to retain more clients and generate more revenue.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in October 2022 and has since been updated for comprehensiveness.