Your Feedback Form is Costing You Customers

Why static forms don’t cut it anymore—and what your customers really want instead ft. Jacob Jaber, co-founder and former CEO of Philz Coffee. 

A customer’s worst moment is usually when they’re asked to rate their experience.

The food was late and, not to mention, cold. The refund didn’t go through and now you’re on the phone when you should be picking up your daughter from school. The delivery driver left the order on the wrong doorstep…And then—ding—a cheerful email lands in their inbox asking, “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?” 

It’s a kind of emotional whiplash. And worse, it's impersonal.

As shared by Jacob Jaber, Co-founder and former CEO of Philz Coffee, the problem isn’t that brands don’t care about feedback—it’s that they ask for it in the most lifeless, transactional way possible.

And he’s right. Brands aren’t trying to be tone-deaf. They’re just stuck using tools, such as surveys, that weren’t built to handle real human nuance. These tools were designed for data—not for recovery, not for care, and definitely not for connection. 

That’s exactly the shift we’re championing at BeHeard: away from passive collection, toward active care.

For decades, we’ve been conditioned to believe that feedback lives in static forms that take the shape of dropdown menus, one-click ratings, and emoticon faces on likert scales. These forms existed to generate and pull data from you, but not to create a dialogue. They capture sentiment, sure, but flatten the context, nuance, and most importantly, the feeling. 

As customer expectations have evolved to be more demanding than ever, that gap has only grown. Today, loyalty isn’t built through dashboards. It’s built through moments.

People don’t want to be reduced to a checkbox. They want to feel seen, understood, and met with curiosity. They want a response. A moment of connection. A sense that what they said actually mattered and proof that a change was made. 

At BeHeard, we’re building a tool rooted in real-time, emotional intelligent conversations that fundamentally differentiates how businesses engage their customers. 

Imagine this: You’ve had a frustrating experience at a store. Maybe something was out of stock. Maybe the staff seemed overwhelmed or careless. You walk out with that slightly sour feeling, the kind that might turn into a complaint... or just a decision not to come back. But then, just a few minutes later, you get a text. “Hey! Saw that your visit might not have gone as expected. Want to tell us what happened?” 

It’s not a form nor a survey—it’s a message that feels like someone actually noticed and more importantly, like they care enough to ask. Our system at BeHeard reaches out at the right moment, with the right tone, and holds a short, conversational exchange that helps people share what actually happened, not just what box they checked.

Sometimes that means recovering an unhappy customer or prompting natural questions to find a recurring issue no one had flagged. And other times, it leads to the best kind of outcome: someone who feels understood, even if the experience wasn’t perfect. Although we recognize conversations won’t fix everything, we also believe that having them does something that static surveys can’t: build trust. Our conversations give customers the dignity of detail, making it more likely that someone speaks up and more likely that they come back.

As Jacob often emphasizes, the goal isn’t to extract feedback—it’s to earn it.

That’s why our approach at BeHeard is built on the belief that the future of customer relationships should feel intuitive and safe. We use emotionally intelligent conversations to ask short, thoughtful messages that show up at the right moment, prompt the right questions, and adapt in real time based on how someone responds.

When a customer has a bad experience, they don’t want a satisfaction scale. They want someone to notice. To follow up. To be heard. And when someone has a great experience? They want to share it—on their terms, in their tone, not crammed into a 5-star rating. We’ve built a system that honors both of those moments.

This isn’t about being polite or transactional. It’s about building relationships and touchpoints in the moments that define how a customer sees your brand and builds trust. And when you stack them up over time? You don't just get better data, you get better loyalty.

So no, we’re not just another AI tool. We’re a new way to talk to the people who keep your business alive. If you’re ready to stop collecting scores and start building actual connection, we’d love to show you what BeHeard feels like in action.

Check our prices at gobeheard.com or text us at 1.650.420.1022. .

We’ll listen. And we’ll show you how your customers will, too. It’s time you let them Be Heard.