Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM): definition, benefits, best practices

Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) is essential to deeply understanding customer needs and improving their experiences. This process bridges the gap between customer feedback and actionable insights across multiple channels. Customer-centric businesses use EFM to understand customer perception, sentiment, effort, and more. A robust EFM platform optimizes survey data, making it accessible across all levels of an organization. 

According to recent data from Statista, the Enterprise Performance Management Software market is growing significantly: The worldwide Enterprise Performance Management Software market revenue will reach US$5.53 billion in 2025.

Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) describes the business process and software that enterprise-level companies use to collect, analyze, and implement customer feedback programs.

Enterprise Feedback Management software collects, analyzes, and distributes actionable customer feedback to various teams. An effective EFM strategy leverages multiple feedback channels to gather comprehensive customer insights. EFM solutions help organizations gather feedback through:

Analyzing feedback data is crucial for understanding customer preferences and driving business decisions. Additionally, customer segmentation is vital in tailoring feedback collection to enhance customer satisfaction and retention.

An Enterprise Feedback Management system makes getting input and reacting to it a scalable and profitable endeavor. Now that you understand the primary capabilities of an EFM system, let’s dive into some key features.

EFM helps nurture customer relationships by enabling companies to gather and act on feedback effectively. Additionally, EFM plays a crucial role in understanding and segmenting the customer base, allowing for more targeted and personalized interactions.

Wondering if it’s worth it to invest in Enterprise Feedback Management? Consider some of the top benefits:

EFM involves utilizing customer feedback to better meet or exceed expectations. With direct customer insights, teams can make improvements to drive better customer relationships and loyalty. For example, data may reveal that customers encounter friction during the checkout process. In this case, you can update your checkout process to provide a more seamless experience.

Collecting and acting on customer feedback using an EFM system reduces negative feedback. Customers who post negative reviews online aren’t always trying to hurt your brand reputation. In many cases, people just want their complaints heard and valued by a business. Implementing an EFM system tells customers you care about identifying and resolving their issues before negative reviews are posted.

EFM is closely tied to a business’s customer experience management strategy. EFM software enables companies to work more closely with customers by gathering feedback, showing them that your business takes their experiences seriously and continuously works to improve them. Ultimately, improving CX impacts your bottom line, from driving more sales to improving retention.

Creating profiles for customers based on shared characteristics enables businesses to tailor their offerings and enhance CX. With an EFM, businesses can sharpen profiles of their audience with advanced information that uncover more details. Additionally, sharpened customer profiles aid in product ideation, marketing strategies, and enhanced support to address pain points.

What’s better than effectively addressing negative feedback? Addressing issues before complaints are even made. EFM supports proactive service recovery to enhance customer experience and boost brand reputation. Sending well-timed surveys allows teams to address areas for improvement promptly, preventing other customers from experiencing the same problems. 

EFM supports enhanced decision-making by equipping teams with the most up-to-date customer data. Employees at every level can utilize insights from feedback to make informed decisions. By taking their input to heart, you can make decisions that positively impact your customers. You can even use benchmarks and performance metrics to compare your survey results to others in your industry or a global audience. 

Identifying trends in customer feedback is essential to understand what is working well for your business. Feedback from surveys or focus groups can be analyzed for patterns. Trend identification enables teams to see common views among customers and how they impact their perceptions. EFM makes trend identification easy with real-time analytics and intuitive dashboards for viewing data. 

What’s the best way for a business to implement Enterprise Feedback Management? We’re going to share a handful of best practices to help streamline the integration of EFM. Use these recommendations to promote effective EFM for your business.

Establish clear goals for your EFM program and choose an appropriate platform like SurveyMonkey Enterprise to support them. Clear objectives guide your survey creation strategy, while the right tools provide the AI-powered analytics needed to uncover valuable insights.

Involve relevant teams—from product development to marketing and CX—to ensure feedback impacts key performance indicators like customer lifetime value, acquisition, and retention. Customer-centric companies ensure feedback reaches everyone who needs it.

Create consistent feedback processes across channels while implementing automation to scale your program. Set up triggers to automatically send surveys at critical touchpoints like purchase completion or support interactions, ensuring quality data collection while saving time and maintaining consistency.

Target feedback collection based on demographics, buying behavior, and usage patterns to understand the distinct needs and pain points of different customer groups, ensuring more relevant insights.

Identify patterns, trends, and statistically significant findings in your data, then translate these into clear action items to improve products, services, and customer experiences.

Demonstrate your commitment by acting on feedback and communicating changes back to customers, creating a continuous improvement cycle that drives innovation and positive change.

Regularly evaluate your EFM program against original objectives, refining your approach over time to maximize impact and ensure customer feedback continues to drive business improvements.

Implementing an Enterprise Feedback Management program is well worth the time it takes. Reap the benefits of following these steps to start an EFM program.

Easily collect feedback for your EFM program by adding a survey to your website (for example, using a pop-up survey). Asking for feedback increases website engagement while simultaneously gleaning customer insights. Your audience is already spending time on your website, so why not give them the chance to voice their opinions?

Email footers are another fantastic place to add feedback surveys. Collecting email feedback helps define how customers feel at a specific stage of the journey. Teams can add links to relevant feedback forms to emails to boost the number of responses received. Asking for feedback in a customer’s inbox is a great way to connect with them after key interactions.  

Don’t let technology become a barrier to speaking with customers. Host focus groups or one-on-one interviews to collect candid feedback about your brand. To make customers feel appreciated for their time, offer an incentive for participating. Incentives can include free products, gift cards, discounts, etc.

Enterprise Feedback Management provides a framework for consistently gathering customer feedback. Conduct customer surveys regularly to build a foundation you can compare to over time. You will yield valuable metrics by frequently sending surveys to gather feedback at various touchpoints. Taking a consistent approach aids in comparing against industry benchmarks, too. 

Net Promoter Score® (NPS) should be part of your Enterprise Feedback Management program because it measures customer satisfaction and loyalty. Send NPS surveys to ask participants how likely they are to recommend your business or product to a friend or colleague. This simple NPS survey template helps businesses gather detailed input on satisfaction and brand loyalty. 

Enterprise Feedback Management solutions enable businesses to use actionable insights to improve CX at scale. With SurveyMonkey Enterprise, you can create and distribute questionnaires, analyze the results using AI, and act. The platform's sophisticated capabilities enable teams to monitor key metrics.

Use these customer feedback survey templates to support your EFM program:

See how SurveyMonkey Enterprise can immediately elevate your business. 

NPS, Net Promoter & Net Promoter Score are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.