How to build a feedback form: 11 customer feedback examples

Gathering customer feedback is essential for any business that wants clear insights into customer interests and needs. With the right feedback form, you can collect valuable insights from your customers to help you identify areas of improvement.

Getting feedback may seem simple. Ask people what they think! Right?

It’s not that easy.

Did you know that only one out of 26 customers share their negative feedback with a business? That means you need to be persistent, ask the right questions, and use the right format to find information that will be useful.

In this article, I’ll help you understand what customer feedback is, and why it’s important. I'll then share 11 examples of customer feedback to help you ask for feedback effectively.

Let’s dive in.

What is customer feedback?

Customer feedback helps businesses better understand their customers and improve their customer experience. When analyzed effectively, it provides insights into what customers think of your products or services. Feedback also helps you identify customer pain points so you can make improvements.

There are two types of customer feedback. The first is passive feedback. This is the feedback that customers leave in reviews, comment sections, or even when they call with an issue. It’s not feedback you actively seek. That’s why we call it “passive feedback.”

The advantage of passive feedback is that customers will tell you whatever's on their mind. They may have a problem with something that’s not even on your radar.

The second is active feedback. This happens when you actively pursue customers to hear what they think. You can use various methods to collect this feedback. Customer opinion surveys, feedback forms, and app notifications are just a few options.

By actively collecting customer feedback, you can target what you’re interested in learning about. If you want to know more about the online purchasing process, you can ask that directly. Active strategies provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction levels throughout their buying journey. Use this information to create a better customer experience for the future.

Why is it important to get customer feedback?

Listening to customers is the most important reason to get customer feedback. It’s straightforward enough: without your customers, you have no business! They’ve given you their business. Their voice deserves to be heard.

Of course, the benefit is that listening to them will make your business more profitable. Customer feedback is essential for any business to stay competitive and provide the best product or service possible. It helps you identify areas of improvement so you’re always meeting customer needs, so you can keep and grow your business.

Finally, there are some people who believe that negative sentiment, particularly in reviews, can affect your Google ranking factor. While there’s no evidence this is true, remember that how customers feel about your brand will affect what they share about you. And that will result in more or less potential customers visiting your website, which does impact your search ranking.

Thanks to the immense data available, you can now collect a wide range of customer feedback rather easily.

11 examples of customer feedback

Let’s look at 11 great examples of customer feedback to help you build your next feedback form.

1. Uber

Uber is an international rideshare company. After a ride with one of their drivers, Uber sends you an in-app feedback form. It’s a star rating with an option to tap pre-selected buttons to describe the experience. This is a fantastic way to get instant feedback. How often have you been asked for feedback from a purchase or experience hours or days afterward? Uber takes advantage of the customer’s fresh memory: they just experienced the service.

The downside to Uber’s form is that the buttons are pre-selected, so the user may have experienced something other than what’s listed. The bigger problem is that the feedback form doesn’t ask how the customer felt - there's no option for them to expand on their answer.

When you’re seeking feedback, discovering why your customer is happy or frustrated is your buried treasure. Sometimes excavating it isn’t that difficult. Just ask, “How did this make you feel?”

2. Apple

Apple focuses on NPS – Net Promoter Score –in its customer surveys. This example comes from a survey for their Apple Watch. The goal is simple: to see how many customers will answer a 9 or 10. That means they are “promoters” of the brand.

After this question, the customer can answer open-ended questions to clarify.

This isn’t revolutionary. What Apple has done is ensured their question is highly specific and designed it beautifully so people want to answer.

3. Facebook

Multinational tech giant Facebook, Meta’s social media platform, takes an open-ended approach to feedback. Users can select the category they want to give feedback about. Then they’re able to write a detailed description of their idea or suggestion.

Facebook users may also receive a feedback survey from time to time. Facebook welcomes customer input because the feedback they’ve received, they say, has helped them re-design their products, improve their policies and fix technical problems.

4. Hyatt

Hyatt has created a page for customers to share about their stay. It’s more robust than others we’ll see on our list. But it helps them gain valuable insight into what they can do to provide better service.

The form allows customers to select their feedback type from a dropdown list, leave an open-ended reply, and then select if they’d like Hyatt to contact them.

5. Dollar Shave Club

Staying consistent with its light and humorous marketing approach, Dollar Shave Club (DSC) uses fun, one-question email surveys. Well, maybe asking about razor burn isn’t fun. But these seemingly random questions help DSC design products for specific customer needs.

What’s great about this survey is that it gets to the real-life, everyday use of DSC’s product. So many surveys are about what customers think or feel. This question is about what the customer experiences–what drives them to use (or not use) a particular product.

When you consider your industry, ask yourself, “What pain point do our customers likely experience often?” Now formulate that into a question. It’ll get their attention.

Our only recommendation? Give customers a chance to expand on their answer in their own words.

6. Xbox

You’ve probably tried to reach out to brands on social media when you have trouble with something. How often do you get a response? Seldom, right? Well, Xbox has an entire Twitter account devoted just to support.

With over 120 million users who are online virtually all day, why not have a team that dedicated to social media? It allows Xbox users to give instant feedback and for Xbox to meet needs in real-time.

This isn’t a feedback form in the traditional sense of sending an email survey. But who said gathering feedback had to be traditional? Do whatever it takes to get feedback –and act on it– and you’ll likely find that customer loyalty and satisfaction will shoot through the roof.

Don't have the time -or resources- to track feedback on social media? Consider using a feedback analytics solution to analyze social mentions in real time.

7. Slack

Slack, the instant messaging and team collaboration tool, uses email to send out surveys to certain users. It’s a traditional approach, but it can be effective. Some users may be enticed by the fact that they were one of the few selected for the survey.

One of the downsides of this survey is that seven minutes is a bit long. Compared to the one or two-question feedback surveys other companies send out, this may feel like a marathon.

But Slack has something else in its favor. The app has incredibly loyal users. Not only because it’s easy and fun to use but because it allows users to control their flow of communication. Because of this, Slack has (perhaps) earned the right to do a longer survey.

8. Sephora

Cosmetic superbrand Sephora takes a similar approach to Slack with a lengthy email survey. But Sephora takes it up a few notches. They do weekly drawings to give away a $250 gift card to survey respondents.

You may not be as big as Sephora and can’t give away $250 each week. That’s okay. But can you give away something on occasion? Sometimes you need to offer incentives so you can beat the one out of 26 odds I mentioned earlier.

One of the largest brands to use Shopify for its e-commerce platform, Sephora knows a thing or two about creating a loyal following. Are you an e-commerce business using Shopify like Sephora? Check out the best email marketing for Shopify to help with your customer feedback surveys.

9. Walmart

We could have put just about any large retailer in this spot. Like many other big-box-type stores, Walmart asks for customer feedback right on their receipts. Just go to a link and fill out a short survey for a chance to win a monthly giveaway (sometimes as much as $5,000!).

This model isn’t replicable in terms of the prize money for most companies. But if you are a brick-and-mortar store, a survey on the receipt is an easy thing to do. Maybe you can give something small away once a month.

You could consider making a QR code available. Even better, send an email to the customer directly after they check out (if your payment system is capable of this).

10. Amazon

Amazon changed online retail forever. What’s great about Amazon is they aren’t content. They’re always seeking improvement for customers.

The image above is a feedback form after purchasing on Amazon. Customers have the option to leave a full review. But this short form covers a few categories related to the product. A quick tap of how well the product does is easy to do. It will take 10 seconds.

As well all know, Amazon products get rated more than any others on the planet. The lesson? Keep the feedback short and sweet and people will tell you what they think.

11. Tile Bar

Tile Bar is a retail store that carries a huge selection of tiles for kitchens, bathrooms, showers, pools, and more. While most of their sales are online, they have a showroom in New York City.

Their feedback form also comes through email. The questions differ a bit from what we’ve seen so far. They ask about basic info (email address, what you ordered, and what type of buyer you are). But other questions focus on the website experience and how the customer found Tile Bar.

If you’re a smaller company or you only sell online, how your customers found you will be helpful to know.

Wrapping Up

Customer feedback can help take your business to the next level. Without it, even with a solid marketing and sales strategy, your business may not grow.

To begin, start thinking about what type of customer feedback form or survey will work for your company. The 11 examples of customer feedback in this article should give you some concrete ideas.

There are some basic rules you should follow when creating your feedback form. Keep in mind that what may work for your competitor may not work for you. Be conscious about what questions to ask your customers and realize how valuable their time is.

Instead of inundating your customer with 20 questions, narrow it down to five (or less!) that matter. This will increase the chance that they complete the form and give you valuable feedback data.

Finally, once you have collected feedback from your customers, have a plan in place to put it into action. A lot of companies collect tons of data and simply store it in their system.

In your company’s growth stage, a simple Google form could work where you can analyze responses and compare what customers are saying. This will allow you to have a comprehensive view of all of the feedback you have received and analyze the most common issues your customers face.

Once your company hits a certain volume of feedback, feedback analytics software is your next logical step in the right direction.

Freya is an SEO consultant that helps brands scale their organic traffic with content creation and distribution. She is a quoted contributor in several online publications, including Business Insider, Fox Business, Yahoo Finance, and the Huffington Post. She also owns CollectingCents - a personal finance blog that she grew from the ground up.

You can reach out to her at freya@collectingcents.com