Marketers want to know how customers feel in the moment.
‘Feedback’ doesn’t quite capture the essence of what marketers need to know when end-users experience a product through any of the senses, whether it is the texture, the taste, the solid feel to a product, the design on the packaging or when one smells a product. Marketers like to know what customers feel when experiencing a product. They need ‘feelback’.
Feelings can be fleeting. A feeling can’t be captured by on online form asking one to check boxes and write a paragraph. Feelbacks must be captured in the moment for them to be authentic and useful.
When you try on a new jacket or a new pair of glasses, you might ask your family members, “So, what do you think?”, and regardless of what they say, you are going to look for those non-verbal cues. The pause in search of the right words, the crinkled eyebrow, the suppressed chuckle, the instant jaw-drop or backslap – that first blush reaction is what you value. You know how they feel about that jacket even before they say anything. That’s hard to pull off in marketing without invading privacy. Not everyone’s comfortable to be on camera providing video feedback in the moment.
However, as a marketer, such instant emotion is the kind of feedback you want captured. Even if it’s imperfect, you want to know the gut feeling, the "thumbs-up/thumbs-down" popularized by movie critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.
There’s the innovative ‘Happy Or Not’ machines you can see set up at service establishments. I like the idea, except when I saw one outside the men’s room, probably at the Heathrow airport, the wrong place for a touch-screen survey. Besides, only curious marketers and curious kids may take the time to complete such surveys. Consumers, whether at a store or online are usually too busy or distracted to bother to stop and leave feedback if they are happy with a product or service.
However, when service is bad, you can be assured they will take the time to not only let you know, but sometimes, let the world know with detailed commentary and even a video posted on social media. Perhaps, a mere ‘Not Happy’ button might suffice, but how would a brand capture the feelings and the reason for a user being unhappy.
Can retail stores offer a mechanism for brands to capture instant reactions to products on shelves? Store shelves ought to enable shoppers to leave a voice memo about a product. The mother who’s appalled at the packaging of a shampoo that resembles a half-gallon of fruit juice must be able to slam a button in fury right at the shelf and give the brand owner a piece of her mind. The Costco sample station man said he observes and relays reactions back to the company whose product is being sampled.
Brands cherish feelback, served hot, as soon as their product elicits a reaction.
