How to Collect Customer Feedback Using Instagram Stories

Back in 2006, when Facebook and Twitter became available to users around the globe, no one could have predicted that companies would use social media to get customer feedback.

With the 420 billion social media users who discuss brands and their customer experience online, social media platforms are a valuable source of candid consumer opinion.

As a result, brands gather customer feedback on social media to learn more about their customers’ pain points, preferences, needs and wants.

And if you want to start with one social media platform, make it Instagram. In the last few years, Instagram has grown in popularity as a customer service tool. Instagram is the second-most popular social media platform for customer service after Facebook.

Although there are several ways to collect customer feedback on Instagram, using Instagram Stories, short-lived content that creates a sense of urgency, is one of the best ways to encourage your engaged customers to share their feedback.

In this post, we'll explain why companies should use Instagram Stories to gather customer feedback as well as seven great ways to do it.

Why Use Instagram Stories for Collecting Customer Feedback?

The phenomenon of short-lived content isn’t new. Snapchat introduced its "Stories" feature in 2013 and Instagram applied it in 2016. Just within one year after the launch, Instagram Stories’ daily use surpassed Snapchat.

According to Scott Chow of The Blog Starter, "Your blog or website is great for converting qualified prospects, but social media engagement through Instagram Stories is better suited for pre-qualifying leads and learning more about what they want."

To understand why Instagram Stories gives businesses a great way to gather customer feedback, we first need to look at a few statistics.

First, Instagram Stories remain active and viewable for only 24 hours, so it encourages users to watch Stories so they don’t miss out on something important. In fact, over 500 million people use Stories daily.

Next, ephemeral content engages users in meaningful conversations and 58% of people become more interested in a brand after seeing it in Stories. Plus, ⅓ of the most-viewed Stories come from brands.

Finally, Instagram has a great number of business-specific features for Instagram Stories that help brands interact with their engaged followers with ease. From poll stickers and emoji sliders to clickable links and the question sticker, it’s easier for brands to collect customer feedback with the help of Instagram Stories.

Now that we know the importance of using Instagram for customer feedback, let's take a look at seven proven ways to collect it on this platform.

1. Poll Your Followers

It's no secret that customers are reluctant to share their feedback with brands unless you know creative and interactive ways to ask for their thoughts.

When you ask for customer feedback, it's important to make it easy for customers to share their thoughts with you. As a result, it's a great idea to start with a one-question poll sticker that allows followers to tap the right and see real-time results.

Asking customers a question with the poll sticker is another way to engage followers in a meaningful conversation. You could ask what their favorite product is or what their opinion is about new features.

Remember that you're not limited to the yes/no answer -- you can customize this field to any A/B question. Or you can create a series of Instagram Stories with the intro post that guides users on what action they should take, just like BaliBody did it in the example below:

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2. Ask About Customer Preferences

To get a better understanding of your customers' preferences, you can use the emoji slider that adds a layer of emotional context and therefore helps those answering understand your tone and answer accordingly.

Moreover, it's an interactive feature that most Instagrammers love. In fact, 92% of online customers use emojis. With this feature, viewers have to drag the emoji to the left or right to make their decision and release the emoji. Then, they will also see the current average of others' results in real-time.

Check out how ASOS uses this feature to get closer with their followers and ask their preferences:

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If you don't want to use one of the most popular emojis, you can always choose the right emoji from your library that best matches your question’s mood.

3. Collect Customer Questions

Practically every customer has questions about your product or service from time to time. If you can answer these questions fast, you can earn customer trust and loyalty.

One of the best ways to collect customer questions is to share the question sticker and invite followers to submit their questions to answer them publicly. Not only can you show customers that you take care of them, but you can also avoid replying to the same questions from different people.

When it comes to collecting customer feedback, this sticker is also actionable. Let's take a look at how Lacoste uses the question sticker to ask followers what collective means to them:

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Using this sticker is a great way to analyze your customers' thoughts or even get more customer testimonials on Instagram--just stay creative and use it the right way so that it encourages followers to interact with your brand, sharing their thoughts and beliefs about your company or its products/services.

4. Reach a Wider Audience with Instagram Story Ads

Instagram has grown to 25 million businesses on the platform which means it's getting harder to reach out to your customers. Plus, not all your customers follow your brand on Instagram.

To reach a wider audience on Instagram and ask more people to share their thoughts about your company, it's a great idea to run Instagram Story ads.

Let's take Dunkin, for example. In honor of its new product launch, the company ran Instagram Story video ads with the poll sticker, asking viewers to designate their choice of donuts or fries.

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According to one report, 9 in 10 advertisers say video ad format is the most effective component of their ad placement campaigns and video ads are 5x more effective than static media ads.

This campaign proves it: Just within 10 days, the campaign resulted in a 20% lower cost per video view for ads with the polling sticker versus ads without, and 20% of people who watched the ad voted in the poll.

But if you want to reach your existing customers, advanced targeting is here to help you. For example, you can create an audience of your existing customers based on their contact information and run an Instagram Story ad with the Swipe Up function that redirects interested viewers to the customer satisfaction survey.

5. Invite Followers to Contact You

Modern customers have high demands. They want to feel special, so it's important to make each customer feel like an individual. The most effective way is to start a meaningful and private conversation via direct messages on Instagram.

If you want to provide excellent customer service on Instagram, it's important to know your customers' pain points in advance. That’s why you can invite your followers to contact you. The direct message sticker allows you to encourage your community to send you a direct message and therefore start a private conversation with interested users.

For instance, Blume has a separate Instagram Story Highlight album dedicated to FAQs. The company invites its in-house marketer to answer customer questions who also encourages viewers to ask additional questions with the question sticker, just like in the example below:

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6. Create a Quiz for Followers

Another great way to collect customer feedback with Instagram Stories is to start with the quiz that keeps your audience engaged and hooked. With the quiz sticker, you can share multiple-choice questions to test your customers' knowledge of your product and track the results.

The best thing about this sticker is that participants can see the results whether they got it right--and you can get access to the analytics to see how many votes your options received and how each follower voted.

Check out how Booking did it in the example below:

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But if you want to collect customer feedback, you can also use this sticker to ask customers' preferences. For example, you can ask your followers what product they love most and provide several options to analyze the data and understand their preferences.

7. Organize a Q&A Live Session

Like many social media platforms, Instagram allows businesses to go live and interact with their followers in real-time. Not only does it create a sense of urgency that encourages users to join your live stream, but it also keeps your audience hooked and engaged.

According to a recent report, internet users watch 1.1 billion hours of live video, and live streaming is expected to account for 82% of all internet traffic.

To ease the worried minds of customers and create a bond to ask them for customer feedback, it's a great idea to run a Q&A session so that your followers can get answers to their questions in real-time. For example, you can use a Q&A live stream to tell your followers how to start a clothing line and then invite participants to share their customer stories with you.

However, never forget to inform your following about the Q&A live stream in advance so that people can plan their participation. Check out how Drumcode Records did it:

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Collecting customer feedback on social media might seem as simple as asking what your followers think. However, there are many creative ways to collect feedback with Instagram Stories.