What to Do When You Can't Get Viewing Feedback

First, check it’s actually a pattern

One unresponsive viewer out of eight isn’t a problem — some people simply won’t answer a feedback request no matter how it’s framed, and that’s normal. It’s worth acting on this only once it’s a pattern: most viewers on a listing not responding, or a consistent gap between viewings booked and feedback received across multiple properties.

If it’s one or two viewers: report the gap honestly

The simplest fix, and often the right one, is to just tell the vendor the truth: “5 of 7 viewers gave feedback; here’s what they said. The other 2 didn’t respond after a follow-up.” That’s a more credible update than either chasing indefinitely (which delays the vendor update for no real gain) or quietly dropping the missing responses without mentioning them.

If it’s most viewers on a listing: check the process, not the questions first

Before assuming your questions are wrong, check three things that are more commonly the actual cause:

1. Is the request going out the same day? A request sent two or three days after the viewing will get a much lower response rate regardless of how good the questions are.
2. Is it going to the right channel? If you’re only emailing and most of your viewers are younger or time-pressed, a text or WhatsApp link (see text templates) will usually outperform email.
3. Is the form actually short? A form that looks like ten questions on a phone screen will lose people who’d have answered five.

See how to get viewing feedback from buyers every time for the full breakdown of what raises response rates.

If it’s a specific type of viewer

Some segments respond less reliably than others — notably viewers who came via a portal enquiry rather than a personal referral, or viewers who were clearly early in their search rather than close to a decision. If a particular source of viewings consistently under-responds, it’s worth noting that as context for the vendor rather than treating it as a process failure (“enquiries from Rightmove have had a lower feedback response rate than word-of-mouth viewings, which is fairly typical”).

When silence is itself useful information

A viewer who won’t spend a minute on a short, anonymous feedback form was, in a meaningful proportion of cases, not seriously considering the property. That’s not a certainty — some genuinely interested people are just bad at replying to messages — but it’s common enough that non-response is worth treating as a weak negative signal rather than a neutral data gap, particularly when combined with other signs (e.g. a short viewing, no follow-up questions on the day).

A worked example

A three-bed semi has ten viewings over a month, and only four viewers respond to the feedback request. Rather than treating this as a failed process, look at what the four responses do say: if all four mention the price, that’s still a usable signal even with a 40% response rate — the pattern doesn’t need every viewer to respond to be meaningful, it just needs enough responses that a repeated comment is unlikely to be a coincidence. The vendor update in this case might read: “4 of 10 viewers responded; all four mentioned the price as a concern, and the average rating was 4/5” — honest about the response rate, but still genuinely useful.

Is this a sign your process needs software?

Not necessarily — a low response rate is just as often a timing or framing issue as it is a volume issue, and neither is fixed by adding a tool on its own. Where automation does help is in removing the two most common causes of a poor response rate: a delayed request (because someone forgot to send it that day) and a missed follow-up (because nobody remembered to chase). If you’ve already got the timing and framing right and response rates are still low, that’s a genuine signal worth investigating further — but check those two things first.

What not to do

• Don’t keep chasing past one follow-up. It rarely raises response rates and risks making the next request feel like pressure.
• Don’t fill the gap with a guess. If you don’t have an answer, say so rather than writing “the viewer seemed positive” from memory — that’s exactly the kind of unstructured, unreliable summary that structured feedback is meant to replace.
• Don’t let a low response rate delay every vendor update. Report on the viewings you do have data for on schedule, and note the gap, rather than holding the whole update back.

The wider fix

If non-response is a recurring issue across most listings rather than an occasional gap, it’s usually a process problem rather than a viewer problem — see our guide to viewing feedback for estate agents for the full approach to collecting feedback consistently, and how to get viewing feedback from buyers every time for the specific levers (timing, channel, form length) that most reliably improve it.