End-to-end sales success doesn't stop when a rep closes a deal.

A significant proportion of your revenue comes from retention and expansion through renewals, upselling, and cross-selling.

Plus, we all know that attracting new customers is much trickier than keeping hold of existing ones. Once you’ve done the hard work of getting them through the door, reducing churn is essential. It's notoriously difficult to win customers back once they slip through your grasp.

As Bryan Grobstein, Director of Revenue Enablement at Lunchbox, puts it:

“If you’re customer-facing, you’re in sales. Your job is to either land, expand, or retain.” No matter what your enablement role is called, you’re really there to support the entire Go-to-Market structure.”

Why is customer feedback so vital to customer success?

Customer success teams play a critical role in reducing churn and increasing retention. To help yours achieve that, you first need to get back to basics and find out what's working and what's not.

Then, ask why what’s broken is broken, and figure out what you can do to fix it.

Remember, customers mold companies, not the other way around. Only they can provide the perspectives you're looking for.

Without your customers’ honest feedback, you're taking a stab in the dark as to why churn is up, and customer lifetime value (CLTV) is down; why previously loyal customers are dropping at the end of their contracts; and why your upselling and cross-selling initiatives aren’t working.

What is customer feedback?

Sometimes confused with win/loss interviews, customer feedback is the process of quizzing new and existing customers about their experience, post-purchase.

For instance, companies may ask their target market questions to establish:

  • How easy a product is to use.
  • Whether they've ever had to speak to someone in customer service.
  • If there was anything in the sales process they disliked.

Unlike win-loss interviews (which take place approximately four weeks after a deal is won or lost), you can collect customer feedback at any point throughout the customer journey.


If you're an SEC member, you can find your customer feedback questions masterlist here. (If not, find out what you're missing 😉.)


How often should you collect customer feedback?

There’s no definitive time frame in which you need to collect customer feedback; it’s an ongoing process, and will vary.

When we speak to product marketers, too, there’s no consistent answer. Some conduct customer feedback daily, whilst others check-in fortnightly.

Either way, the more regularly you check in with customers, the faster you’ll be able to spot (and fix) recurring issues.

How to collect customer feedback

When collecting customer feedback, use all the resources and contact points available to you.

While interviews over voice or video call are best, you might struggle to book them. There are alternative options, including:

  • Internal data: Speak with your sales and customer success teams to ensure they’re using their data to its fullest potential.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): A metric that tracks the likelihood of your customers referring your business to others. It's a useful indicator of customer experience, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty.
  • Online reviews: Encourage customers to leave reviews. Wearing your reputation on your sleeve builds trust, and gives you extra incentive to make sure every customer interaction is excellent.
  • Surveys: Sending out surveys in standalone communications, or embedding them in your email footer, are quick, scalable ways of gathering feedback.
  • Social media: With 3.8 billion registered users, popular social media platforms are great places to generate and collect feedback from your target market. Tools like polls help you capture customer opinions in an engaging, interactive way.
  • Email: Email contact forms are simple, but effective for collecting feedback.
  • Online tools: Analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Hotjar offer statistical insights into product performance. Website heat maps indicate which areas of a website attract the most clicks, while statistics like bounce rates reveal whether your content is engaging.

Even with all these options, the question remains…

What do you ask people?

Here are some sample questions that’ll help improve your org’s customer success function:

  • How did you find our onboarding process?
  • How would you describe our customer service?
  • How satisfied are you with the time it took your agent to resolve your issue?
  • How friendly was your customer success agent?
  • How satisfied were you with the overall experience when you contacted us on <date, time>?


How should you incorporate feedback into your strategy?

Once you’ve collected feedback from your target market, it’s important to be proactive, and implement that feedback into your customer success enablement strategy.

For example, if your feedback suggests you’re targeting the wrong market, reassess your strategy and your buyer personas.

Or, if feedback suggests customers are unhappy with their customer service experience, introduce appropriate alternatives.

For instance, if they want around-the-clock support, a live service, like a chatbot, could be a solution.

Or, if they’re struggling to understand part of your product, a how-to video could offer a quick fix.

And remember, feedback isn’t just about acting on negatives. If you find that tons of your customers are seeing value in a feature you weren’t previously promoting, you’ve new, useful data that can spark fresh sales messaging, or even a new marketing campaign.


Looking for next steps?

A few clicks are all that separate you from discovering:

  • Exactly what sales enablement is (and what it’s not), so you can start doing it the right way. ✅
  • The five core pillars of sales enablement (plus a special bonus pillar that’ll help you to work faster and more efficiently). 🔑
  • A simple-to-understand mental model of the sales enablement function, giving you clarity and confidence as you navigate enablement challenges. 💡

Discover the pillars now. 👇