Closing the Customer Feedback Loop: Turn Insights into Action

Nov 17, 2021 | Blog

Subscribe

Stay up to date with the latest CX expert tips and news.

Closing the Customer Feedback Loop

Closing the customer feedback loop is considered a milestone in building trust and loyalty with your customers.

As Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey stated in their article*:

“Closing the loop is a central element of the Net Promoter System℠. To close the loop is not only to let customers know that you have heard their feedback but also to bring the customer’s voice right inside the organization. Employees get a direct line to the people they are serving. They see and hear how they are creating or destroying loyalty and what they can do to improve matters. The feedback provides immediate, compelling reasons to up their game, fix problems and come up with innovations that will make for a better customer experience. It offers the satisfaction of a job well done when the comments are positive, and it provides course corrections and incentives for improvement when they are negative.”

Most voice of customer programs include listening to customers through surveys, social media and other channels as well as analyzing their feedback in combination with other data such as CRM and financial data. But acting – quickly – on feedback is the most skipped step by companies although it improves customer loyalty when carried out correctly. Closing the feedback loop is a personal, one-to-one communication that shows your customers that you’ve heard them and built what they asked for. It gives you credit for building what your customers want. Why that matters to your customers:

  • Know me: Use what you know to provide me with what I need
  • Hear me: Listen, learn and act on what I say
  • Value me: Demonstrate that you value our relationship

– How it works

Closing the feedback loop is a perpetual work in progress. It is useful to think of this process in terms of four sequential stages: Listen, Analyze, Act, Monitor. But in reality, these stages should occur simultaneously as well as repeatedly.

Listen: First step is listening to your customers and gathering data.

Analyze: Once you gather the data then it is time to analyze smartly using advanced analytic tools.

Act: Now, you need to take actions based on what you’ve learned.

Monitor: Continuously track results of your actions.

– Some common pitfalls and how to avoid them

  1. Acting on only for dissatisfied customers: Both dissatisfied and satisfied customers are important for designing the close the loop process.
  2. Keeping at only operational level: Closing the customer feedback loop requires cross functional and coordinated efforts across the company so any level (from frontline to C-Suite) should be part of the process.
  3. Jumping to immediate solutions without understanding the root causes: A well-defined structural problem-solving approach such as PDCA, 6-Sigma, etc would be helpful to find the root causes.
  4. Not prioritizing the drivers affecting the score: Driver analysis helps to identify what to prioritize for getting the most impact thru the system. Don’t allocate your resources and energy randomly.
  5. Not touching to structural and strategical issues: Operational issues can be solved quickly and often lead to quick score increases. Structural and strategic issues typically take more time to solve but lead to higher NPS increases over time.

– Conclusion

Closing the customer feedback loop is one of the easiest ways to reinforce a positive experience or fix a negative one. Your customers want to know that their time and opinions are valued. There is nothing more frustrating than giving constructive criticism and never receiving a follow-up.

Understanding and responding to customer feedback is an ongoing process, thus make sure to constantly keep up with your customers needs and increase their loyalty.

https://www.bain.com/insights/closing-the-loop/

 

 

Related Resources

Benefits of AI-Enhanced CX Management Systems

by | Apr 12, 2023 | Blog | 0 Comments

Cross-functional projects, listening to customers, understanding consumer insights, closing the loop are the top phrases used over and over again ad nauseam. However,...

Predictive Customer Analytics

Best Real-World Examples for Predictive Customer Analytics

by | Nov 17, 2022 | Blog | 0 Comments

From the birth of civilization until 1900, beneficial knowledge doubled every hundred years approximately. Following World War II, these intellectually fertile periods...

Close the loop

Don’t Ghost Your Customers! Close the Loop

by | Oct 11, 2022 | Blog | 0 Comments

Do you try to win your customers back with a free item or discount when they are unhappy with the service agent’s attitude? Do you consider to bolster staff training?...

Three Unique Ways to Boost Customer Retention

Three Unique Ways to Boost Customer Retention

by | Aug 27, 2022 | Blog | 0 Comments

What does Customer Retention Mean with Today's CX Expectations? Let's say you’ve decided to watch one of your favorite Netflix series on a quiet weekend evening at...

Customer Obsession

Customer Obsession: Vital Component of Growth

by | Aug 3, 2022 | Blog | 0 Comments

What is Customer Obsession? Before pointing out the connection between customer obsession and sustainable business growth, let’s agree on the terminology. In lots of...

sentiment and emotion analysis

Going Beyond Sentiments: Emotion Analysis

by | Jun 28, 2022 | Blog | 0 Comments

Emotions do matter: Sentiment and Emotion Analysis You have done everything you can to please your customers. In every aspect, your team of professionals provided the...

CSAT vs NPS vs CES Customer Experience Metric Selection

Customer Experience Metric Selection

by | May 30, 2022 | Blog | 0 Comments

CSAT vs NPS vs CES: The Complete Comparison The first step before deep diving into customer experience metric selection is to understand the main areas to address when...

Four Areas to Address When Measuring Customer Experience

Four Areas to Address When Measuring Customer Experience

by | May 24, 2022 | Blog | 0 Comments

Measuring Customer Experience Measuring customer experience gives companies the opportunity to determine whether their customers have a problem and understand how to...

CX Signals and Slack Pair for a Perfect Fusion in Organizational Culture

CX Signals and Slack Pair for a Perfect Fusion in Organizational Culture

by | Apr 25, 2022 | Blog | 0 Comments

Slack has come a long way since its inception back in 2009.  Currently, users send over 1.5 billion messages per month. According to Slack statistics from 2021, 88,000...

Request a Demo

Seeing is believing

Learn how to apply AI to analyze all the various CX ”signals” generated by your customers via surveys, text, complaints, social media, and other interactions. Discover how to quickly identify and flag the most important problems and opportunities, and then better prioritize your investments.