How to Understand Customers Who Do Not Leave Feedback

At times, your customers' silence may seem like a good thing. After all, there are no complaints, negative feedback, or tickets to handle. However, when evaluating a customer’s experience, silence can be a misleading signal. The fact that customers aren't reaching out isn't a sign of their satisfaction. Sometimes, they just disengage, fail to provide feedback, and ignore your brand.

This is why you also need to understand the silent followers and find a way to market to them. Some customers suggest that the silent majority holds the most important insights, as they are often confused and have unmet expectations. The fact that they haven't reached out isn't because they have nothing to say; it could be that they find the feedback process doesn't feel easy, valuable, and timely.

Why Customers May Not Leave Feedback

Many customers choose not to provide feedback or file complaints, making it hard for brands to understand their feelings. While their subscription may be ongoing, they have already checked out. Since these are the social media lurkers, they are frequently ignored when creating a social media strategy. Some of the common reasons why customers fail to provide feedback could be:

• Survey fatigue. When customers receive many requests to leave feedback, they often feel overwhelmed. The 2-minute survey is often seen as a chore.
• Ineffectiveness. At times, users may feel that they will not see any meaningful changes from their responses.
• Passive satisfaction. At times, customers may not be unhappy, but they are also not entirely happy. Since they are on the middle ground, they choose to quietly disengage.
• Lack of time. It takes time to leave feedback, and this may be scarce, especially on a workday. If your survey responses aren't often convenient, users may find them unworthy to complete.
• Friction in your feedback process. At times, the survey materials appear difficult to find, too lengthy, or poorly timed, making it inconvenient for some users to complete them.

Risks of Ignoring the Silent Followers

If your customers don't leave feedback, you are left with an incomplete view of the customer's experience. This may come with various risks such as:

A Wrong Assumption of Success

At times, when your customers don't leave feedback, you can assume that everything else is going well. Similarly, you may not get the correct picture when you only get feedback from your happiest or unhappiest users. In fact, if 90% of your users are not providing feedback, you can't tell if your content strategy is successful or not. This makes it hard to create content that converts.

Unnoticed Churn or Loss of Revenue

At times, the churn occurs gradually and fades slowly. Some of your customers will begin to log in less, slow down on the features they use, and eventually leave. If you only check the support tickets and survey results, you may find it hard to miss the warning signs. When customers leave, it can be challenging to determine the reasons for their departure.

Miss Opportunities for Product Improvement

When silent users face a challenge with your product or service, they never report. Since you never get feedback on the areas of your product or service that need improvement, you can miss important product improvement opportunities.

Unresolved Issues Damage Your Reputation

At times, customers may be unhappy but choose not to speak with you; instead, they address their concerns to their audience. They may also be providing negative reviews on your products on other platforms, such as their social media pages, third-party sites, etc. This leaves you no chance to respond, improve their experience, or retain them.

How to Understand Customers Who Don't Leave Feedback

Unlike what some brands think, audience feedback isn't only about the written or spoken word. The most powerful feedback results from what the audience says rather than how they say it. You can use these tips to understand customers who don’t leave feedback.

Action and Product Analysis

You can observe customers' behaviors, such as session replays in your software, to identify any sales funnel issues the customers may encounter before they choose to abandon it. Some of the actions you can monitor include:

• User behavior. Check actions such as feature usage, login frequency, and in-app activity to anticipate signs of disengagement.
• Drop-off points. Observe the points of your sales funnel to see where most of your users are churning out from.
• Session recording and heat maps.
• Internal search data. Consider whether customers frequently consult your FAQ for the same question multiple times. If they do, this is a sign of a gap that needs to be addressed.

Sentiment Analysis and Social Listening

The fact that social media users aren't talking to you doesn't mean they aren't talking. They may provide feedback on social media or sites like TrustPilot. To understand these customers, you can:

• Check the social platform. Social media users often vent their frustrations on platforms such as Twitter and Reddit. Since they may not tag you in their comments, you should actively look for this information. Sentiment analysis tools can help you spot negative feedback on these platforms.
• Study communities and forums. Check for unanswered questions and repeat themes or discussions in your communities that may indicate friction.

Checking Engagement Rate

When you get data on your engagement, you also have a rough estimate of the audience that isn't engaging. Therefore, you can use the engagement and churn rates to:

• Determine the decline in usage. Look for fewer sessions, a sudden drop in activity, or lower engagement depth. These will indicate dissatisfaction.
• Churn risk alert. Some tools, such as Zapier, can enable you to build workflows so you notice when engagement drops.

Leverage AI Trolls

Surveys may not be the most effective way to gauge customer sentiment. Instead, you can use AI tools to:

• Analyze your channels. They can show you the behavior of your feed, social listening metrics, churn rate, and product analytics.
• Predictive analysis software. These can provide silent followers with data.

How to Engage Silent Followers

After identifying your silent followers, you must take the necessary actions to engage them. Here are the steps to follow when doing that:

Make it Easy to Provide Feedback

One of the best ways to encourage your customers to engage is to make the entire process feel easy, genuine, and natural. Avoid using long surveys and instead focus on a question or two. Ensure that the study's timing is also accurate. It's advisable to engage the customer immediately after they have interacted with your business or completed a task. You can use simple methods to gather feedback, such as thumbs up or down to indicate customer satisfaction.

Identify High-Risk Users

A good way to reduce the churn rate is to identify at-risk users before they go silent. You can achieve this through various steps, such as setting inactivity alerts, building scorecards, and combining different signals, including ticket volume, login frequency, and feature adoption. If you notice a dip in activity, you can take action quickly to re-engage users.

Reach Out Before Disengagement

After determining that you are at risk, you can check out users who haven't interacted in the recent past. To do that, you can leverage simple tools such as in-app messages or emails to keep the conversation going. Before you can collect feedback from your customers, you need to explain why you are seeking their input. You can ask them different questions, such as:

• Which area of our customer experience do you want us to improve (content marketing and onboarding)? Target the different aspects of the customer's journey to determine which one will better benefit from the insights.
• What plan do you have for collecting the data? If you have no plan for acting on the collected data, then the whole process is in vain. For instance, you might realize that the product UI is confusing. Then, you should be ready to improve it before you begin collecting the customer’s feedback.
• What’s your preferred customer feedback channel?

How to Turn Silent followers into Passionate Brand Advocates

Don't be content if your passive followers start engaging. Instead, turn them into passionate brand advocates by making them feel valued. Remember that brand advocates don't just happen; they are created through shared purpose and intentional connections. Here are tips on how to do that:

Explain to Your Audience

You need to explain to your audience what you are doing and why you are doing that to build a deeper connection with them. That doesn't mean you should add an About Me post. Instead, you should weave the story into everything you share. For instance, if you only share content about your sustainable fashion brand and promotional posts, you will see a drop in engagement.

Instead, you can focus on sharing the moments of your first sewing machine, how the fabric became beautiful dresses, and more. That way, your customers will understand and feel part of your story.

Provide Ownership

While your goal is to turn followers into brand advocates, remember that it is not your brand they fall in love with, but rather the experience of becoming part of it. Therefore, instead of considering your followers as an audience, you can see them as your community. 

Also, instead of focusing on your win, you can focus on your followers' wins. By doing that, your followers will transform from liking your posts to sharing their stories using your hashtags while feeling as if they are part of your brand.

Create Shared Rituals

For your audience to become advocates, you need to have recurring rituals, such as branded hashtags, weekly challenges, or monthly events, that will provide a rallying call for your audience.

Provide Exclusive Perks

If you want your silent followers to turn into brand advocates, you need to make them feel special. You can reciprocate their support by offering them incentives and rewards that demonstrate your appreciation and motivate them to share information about your brand enthusiastically. 

One way to achieve this is by creating a loyalty program that rewards your followers for engaging with your content. They can, in turn, redeem the points for some exclusive perks. For instance, you can give your followers access to special discounts, new products, or even unique experiences that may not be available to the public. Also, utilize members-only programs and contests to add a bit of spice.

Your goal should be to give your members a sense of exclusivity and belonging. You can increase their enthusiasm once you appreciate their engagement, turning them into passionate brand advocates.

Encourage Trust and Communication

To turn silent followers into brand advocates, you must maintain consistency in your messaging and brand voice. Ensure that you have open and honest communication to reassure your audience that they can trust the brand. While collecting customer feedback is essential, it is even more important to act on it. You can then refine the product using their input. By doing that, you will be showing your silent followers that their feedback isn't in vain. 

They will feel valued and are more likely to commit to your brand. This also helps to improve your product offering and show your attentiveness and responsiveness to the user’s needs. Therefore, go ahead and engage your silent followers in crafting your messaging. This will not only make them loyal, but their followers will also become brand advocates.

Final Thoughts

According to one quote, 96% of unhappy customers don't complain. However, 91% of those never come back. This summarizes the power of the silent customers. Therefore, even as you focus on customers who raise complaints, you should also focus on those who don't complain. After all, they are the silent majority. If you are wondering how to do that, our detailed guide will help you.