We caught up with Ian Blackwell, Owner of Canoe2 — canoe hire and multi-day bundles that offer overnight accommodation on The River Nene, an hour north of London, UK — to learn how they use customer feedback in their business, and what they do with the hundreds of feedback they now receive. Since using Yonder, Canoe 2 now gathers over 10x more customer feedback than they did through online reviews alone.
For Canoe2, customer feedback is gold. Gathering direct feedback from customers gives them direct insight into how the business is performing — validating that they’re providing great customer experiences and highlighting areas for improvement. With the help of Yonder and their Booking system Checkfront, Canoe2 now has over half of their customers providing feedback after their trip giving them an impressive amount of customer data and reviews to help guide their business operations, and be showcased on their website to help increase website bookings.
An average of 50% of customers provided feedback over summer
“We decided to start using Yonder because we wanted more data from customers about what they thought of the trip. We were getting some feedback, but not enough to get a full picture. Our Google and Facebook reviews have been increasing but TripAdvisor has really dried up over the last year. Overall, we never felt we were getting enough feedback. “
“Getting direct feedback from customers through Yonder has been absolutely fantastic. 50% of our customers over the summer season leaving feedback is just amazing, I was astounded! “
“Feedback is incredibly valuable to us, both the good and the bad. Gathering regular feedback lets us know if there’s anything customers are unhappy with. It may be things that are out of our control, for example the weather, but at least being aware of it means we have the opportunity to address anything that comes up.”
“In terms of good feedback, with Yonder we can now publish all of our good feedback on the website and use it as a promotional tool. I love that bit, and people love seeing real, recent and relevant customer feedback when they’re deciding whether to book with us.”
"The Yonder website plug-in to show live reviews on the website is the most exciting thing we’ve done on the website this year. So much positive to it. It's fabulous to be able to install specific reviews on a page."
"It was super easy to drop it in via the Checkfront website editor — I wish I put them on sooner actually! I waited until we had lots of reviews but they work immediately when you connect your Google account, and it’s just the most recent 10 (with comments) that are shown."
"Previously, I was cutting and pasting the occasional review from TripAdvisor, and often I’d forget to do it for a month. Now it’s all automatic and live, and displays both Yonder and Google reviews combined, only the good ones with 5 stars."
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→ See for yourself on Canoe2.
"The specific trip is mentioned underneath the review, which helps anyone reading that review understand what the review is about, which is huge in itself. "
"Being able to automatically segment the reviews into different tours is awesome too, it means we can easily put the plug-in onto specific web pages, which shows all reviews related to that tour. Having that done automatically without me needing to update anything, is just brilliant."
"The integration with our booking system Checkfront was really easy to set up. It only took me a few minutes to connect and get going, then it was sending surveys automatically for us, with control over which products I wanted surveys sent about, or not."
"The longest part was considering what questions to ask, but in the end we keep it really simple. We’ve stuck with the basics and the Yonder default settings, and it works really well."
"When any negative responses come through, the booking data we get along with it (which Yonder connects together from Checkfront) helps us to pinpoint exactly what the feedback relates to. Having that information — Knowing what reviews relates to, such as the date and exact tour they did, helps us to better understand the broader context of what might’ve happened and how to follow up. This information also enables us to follow up faster than we would without it. "
Proof of 50% completion rate over summer:
For eleven years, Richard, Ian & all the team have been offering canoe hire and multi-day bundles that offer overnight accommodation on The River Nene, an hour north of London, UK. The River Nene is a lovely calm, gentle river, and is perfect for the novice paddler, and wherever required, they include pick-up or drop-off at the start or end of your trip, so you only paddle downstream. Discovering the most beautiful, tranquil stretches of river over 2, 3 or 4 days, you can enjoy overnight stays in carefully selected Bed & Breakfasts, Inns or Hotels, or even camping in a glorious ancient church. There are also pubs to stop at along the way. And wherever you stay breakfast is included, as is our all-important baggage transfer, creating trips you just won’t want to end.
Learn more about using Checkfront.
Learn more about Yonder Reviews and using Yonder with Checkfront.
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