What is Customer Feedback?

Customer feedback is the information customers share about their experience with a company's products, services or support — ratings, comments, complaints, suggestions and reviews. Businesses collect customer feedback to measure satisfaction, find problems early and decide what to improve next.

Feedback can be positive or negative, asked for or volunteered, a number or a sentence. All of it is useful: positive feedback tells you what to keep, negative feedback tells you what to fix.

Examples of customer feedback

• A 2 out of 5 rating after a support chat, with the comment "I had to explain my problem three times."
• A score of 9 on the question "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?"
• A product review saying the sizes run small.
• An email to support suggesting a feature: "Could I export my orders to a spreadsheet?"
• A social media post praising fast delivery.
• An answer to an unsubscribe survey: "Too many emails."

Types of customer feedback

• Solicited (active) feedback — feedback you ask for, such as a survey after a purchase or a support ticket.
• Unsolicited (passive) feedback — feedback customers give on their own: online reviews, social media comments, emails to support or a feedback button on your site.
• Direct feedback — said to you, for example in an interview, a chat or a survey answer.
• Indirect feedback — observed rather than stated: what people say about you elsewhere, or behavior such as cancellations, returns and unsubscribes.
• Quantitative vs qualitative — scores you can track over time (a 1–5 rating) versus open comments that explain the "why" behind the score.

How to collect customer feedback

• Online surveys sent by email or embedded on your website — the most scalable method. See online survey.
• Metric questions: Net Promoter Score (NPS) for loyalty, Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) for a specific interaction, and Customer Effort Score (CES) for how easy something was.
• Reviews and social listening on review sites, app stores and social networks.
• Customer interviews and support conversations for in-depth, qualitative insight.
• Exit or unsubscribe surveys asking customers why they leave — see unsubscribe surveys.

Keep surveys short, send them soon after the experience, and ask one clear question per topic. Our guide on customer satisfaction surveys has question examples, and a ready-made feedback survey template or customer feedback form gets you started in minutes. Collecting feedback does not have to start with a license: our roundup of the best free survey software covers the tools that handle rating scales and exports on a free plan.

Customer feedback questions to ask

• How satisfied were you with your purchase today? (1–5)
• How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? (0–10)
• How easy was it to find what you were looking for?
• What is the one thing we could do better?
• What almost stopped you from buying?
• Is there anything you expected that was missing?

Pair each rating question with an optional open question, so you get both the score and the reason. Need the wording for the invitation itself? See our feedback request email templates.

Why customer feedback matters

Customer feedback shows where expectations are met or missed, which features or services to prioritize, and which customers are at risk of leaving. It also gives you real customer language for your marketing and testimonials, and it shows customers that their opinion counts — which supports loyalty and retention.

How to act on customer feedback (close the loop)

1. Centralize responses from surveys, reviews and support in one place.
2. Analyze scores and group comments by theme to spot recurring issues.
3. Prioritize and act on the changes with the biggest impact.
4. Close the loop: reply to the customer, thank them and tell them what changed. Follow up quickly with unhappy respondents. A simple thank-you email works well here; our customer thank-you email templates give you ready-made designs.
5. Measure again with the same questions to see whether the score improves.

How to respond to negative feedback

Answer quickly, thank the customer, acknowledge the problem without excuses, and offer a concrete next step (a fix, a replacement or a refund). Then tell them when the issue is solved. A complaint handled well often builds more loyalty than a smooth experience nobody noticed.

Collect customer feedback with Mailpro

With Mailpro you can create an online survey, send it to your contacts in an email campaign and follow the results in the survey statistics. To track loyalty, start from the NPS survey template.

Planning research before a launch? See our guide to the market research survey, with 60 example questions.

Customer feedback FAQ

What is the best way to collect customer feedback?

For most businesses, a short email survey sent right after a purchase or support interaction, with one rating question and one open question. Add reviews and support conversations for the full picture.

What is the difference between customer feedback and a review?

A review is one type of customer feedback: public and usually unsolicited. Customer feedback also includes private survey answers, support messages and behavior such as cancellations.

How often should you ask for feedback?

Ask after key moments (purchase, delivery, support case) and run a broader survey, such as NPS, once or twice a year. Avoid surveying the same customer every week.

How do I get more customers to answer?

Keep it to a few questions, say how long it takes, send it soon after the experience and send one reminder to non-respondents. More ideas in how to boost survey response.