Flowcharts as a Visual Tool to Analyze Customer Reviews

“Happy customers are your biggest advocates and can become your most successful sales team.” Lisa Masiello

Feedback from buyers and customers, when viewed as a vital business input, holds significant potential to improve, revive, and rejuvenate a brand or business. Such feedback can populate the core of initiatives designed to overhaul business processes, re-invent commercial mechanisms, and elevate the quality of customer service, among others. Therefore, the modern enterprise has a duty to solicit and analyze customer reviews at regular intervals. According to some gurus, “Feedback analysis involves identifying the needs and frustrations of customers, so that businesses can improve customer satisfaction and reduce churn. When done automatically, it enables companies to sort huge amounts of data from various channels in a timely and accurate way.” In this context, a flowchart emerges as a prime platform that allows business operators to identify key components that animate customer reviews, track improvements in service delivery standards subsequent to such reviews, systematically locate and resolve pain points of customers, and create fresh context within which to examine the tenor of feedback and reviews.

The mission to analyze customer reviews, when prosecuted across multiple levels, must categorize feedback data into different buckets. A flowchart empowers, for instance, operators of commercial aviation services to delineate the nature of feedback offered by customers. Pain points that require an immediate resolution find a position at the top section of the flowchart, followed by customer inputs that require resolution over the long-term. The subsequent panels can analyze customer reviews that point to minor improvements already in play, suggestions that require substantial capital outlays, etc. By pursuing such a paradigm, operators can simultaneously assess the various flavors of customer review and seek solutions that embellish and fortify their avowed value proposition. Such illustrations also enable the modern enterprise to refresh service standards and gain endorsements from new customers.

Digital tags, when affixed to different aspects of customer feedback, impart notable speed to ongoing actions that seek to analyze customer reviews. An operator of a modern e-commerce platform could venture to design tags that pertain to efficient service, speed of delivery, choice of merchandise, payment mechanisms, ease of website/app navigation, refunds policy, etc. Subsequently, the operator could classify customer feedback and affix these tags in a bid to create silos of information emanating from clients and customers. This technique to analyze customer reviews, when expanded inside a flowchart, generates momentum in analysis and indicates the path to resolution and redressal. In addition, the number of tags inside each silo allows operators to assess the customer’s mood, track improvements therein, and subsequently implement constructive changes in business practices.

The modern enterprise must analyze customer reviews because such bodies of information tend to influence the perceptions and decisions of large segments of consumers. Bearing this in mind, business operators could frame policies that mandate regular appraisal of customer reviews, extract action points from such reviews, monitor the tone and content of reviews, examine new product/service ideas suggested in reviews, and utilize such information to bolster unique value propositions. These acts essentially hinge on listening to the voice of the customer and therefore, must gain buy-in at the highest levels of the corporate hierarchy. Flowcharts can assist in the development of sets of such actions; these inter-connected illustrations allow business operators to analyze customer reviews from different perspectives, thereby tapping into sustained veins of prevalent consumer sentiments.

Recent research indicates that roughly 90% of shoppers in the US read online reviews prior to a purchase decision. In this context, more than 94% of online shoppers stated negative online reviews about a brand/product convinced them to consider expanding their shopping choices. In light of these facts, brands and businesses must analyze customer reviews and undertake corrective actions to counter negative sentiments. Flowcharts can aid such efforts by delineating the locations of counter action such as improving product quality, revising service delivery guidelines, implementing internal mechanisms that monitor customer sentiments, initiating a dialogue with groups of customers, unfurling public relations campaigns to mitigate damage to a brand name, etc. These locations can also emerge as individual hubs of activity within the master illustration, thereby creating a high definition image of an ongoing corporate campaign designed to placate customer sentiment.

Product pages on company websites represent prime locations that allow the modern enterprise to analyze customer reviews. Comments and ratings from buyers, when visible on such pages, allow the sponsor enterprise to gain social proof and attract new buyers. In this context, business operators can encourage consumers and buyers to reinforce social proof by offering them digital discount coupons for each instance of a completed customer review. Market observers note the concept of social proof remains critical because it allows new buyers to evaluate a product or service at first glance. Therefore, this plank must remain central when operators set out to analyze customer reviews and undertake relevant actions. Flowchart diagrams can bolster such efforts by positioning social proof as a central plank; subsequently, new ideation around a brand can generate positive impressions in customer reviews.

The use of digital review tools empower business operators to encourage customer reviews and receive a higher quantum of feedback from consumers. In line with this, businesses can append such tools to their websites and analyze customer reviews that follow. This method of initiating a dialogue with buyers and consumers allows interesting information to reach the eyes and ears of a business. Flowcharts can assist in the effort by chalking the subsequent actions of the sponsor enterprise, and creating special grounds for business to consumer interactions. In addition, such illustrations can assist business operators design customer service strategies that resonate with buyer communities, thereby elevating the utility value of analyzing customer reviews.

Customer reviews can impact the quarterly revenue numbers of a company; in cognizance of this fact, business operators can undertake to analyze customer reviews from all available platforms on a regular basis. A flowchart, for instance, can help a Big Box retailer monitor customer sentiment and utilize said information to boost revenue numbers. A variety of commercial devices such as deep discounts, same-day delivery, a refreshed range of products, special discount coupons, and exotic merchandise can assist the retailer to steer consumer sentiment and win accolades from the average shopper. These elements can reinforce the value proposition offered by said retailer and empower it to steal the proverbial march vis-à-vis the competition. We note certain additions such as special sale days and promotional gifts can accelerate the generation of positive customer reviews, thereby creating momentum in revenue numbers for each quarter.

The paragraphs above enable us to appreciate the use of flowcharts in the task of analyzing customer reviews. The graphical nature of such illustrations empower modern businesses to ideate in minute detail and locate the various components that animate feedback from customers. Meanwhile, digital technologies enable flowcharts to evolve into digital dashboards that visually describe the troughs and crests of consumer sentiment in real time. In addition, flowcharts serve as a repository of legacy information pertaining to customer reviews, thereby playing a role in the creation of future strategy. Further, business analysts can compute upticks in brand performance and co-relate such events with the prevailing tone of customer feedback. Such actions empower business operators to expand the use of public information in shaping company policy in modern times.

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