Closing the customer feedback loop

Dear Customer,

“This call may be recorded for quality and training purposes.”

“If you liked our services, please leave us a rating and a review.”

“We have sent you an email for your valuable feedback.”

These words have become synonymous with customer interactions these days. With the current times where a customer is limited to phone calls or social media to getting their queries heard, it is even more important to capture their feedback and to act on it.

While nascent CX programs have been deployed by most businesses, in the age of instant gratification, a customer expects to be heard as soon as their complaint is raised. Is your system robust enough to go beyond measuring their feedback to actually acting on the given feedback?

What does closing the feedback loop mean?

While feedback is being generated on a near-constant basis, what really happens to that feedback? Does it disappear into a blackhole, never to be heard from again? Or is it acted upon?

Closing the feedback loop would mean a simple following up on a feedback that has been left by a customer. Imagine how a customer would feel if after leaving a negative feedback, they receive a phone call from an executive, offering them a solution. Is that customer likelier to come back to you or disappear, just like you?

Feedback and net promoter score

How likely are you to recommend this brand/business to a friend or colleague?

Word of mouth is still a powerful marketing tool for a business and a customer who is likelier to recommend you is happy with you and thus will make sure their friends and colleagues also give you a try. This is what net promoter score (NPS) is.

NPS is easy to gather and gives you the data you need in a format that makes sense. For example, a positive NPS means you’re doing well. A negative or neutral NPS score means you need to go through the feedback received, find pain points that your customers have raised and chart out a course of action.

NPS and the internal customer

While frontline employees have the pulse of the customer, it is important that all your employees, right from the frontline to the senior management is committed towards customer advocacy. This can be achieved via Huddles.

Huddles can be quick daily or weekly team meetings that ensure your team is thinking about the customer while taking management decisions. The meetings can foster not only customer advocacy but also sharing of problems and garnering solutions among team members and across departments.

Huddles are a great way to keep the customer front and centre of all your decisions. And a business where the senior executives spend the time to think about their customers sends a powerful message across its chains of command that this is important employee behaviour. It facilitates organizational culture and developing a sense of ownership among the employees for a great customer experience.

NPS and the external customer

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) has 3 types of scores: promoters, passives (or neutral) and detractors. These scores indicate the different levels of customer experience. How you take action on this feedback i.e. how you close the customer feedback loop shows your commitment to a good customer experience.

Closing the loop with promoters

These are the customers who are the happiest with you. It’s imperative that you create a strong relationship with them since they will be your business’ staunchest advocates. Don’t take them for granted. Show your gratitude via thank you cards, referral codes, reward points, first update privilege, etc. Nurture them by showing them how much you appreciate their loyalty.

Closing the loop with neutrals

These are customers who have tried your product/service and have liked it but aren’t enthused about it. It is difficult to close the feedback loop with them since they are less likely to tell you where exactly they think you could improve. But they also present you with an opportunity. You can offer them exclusive discounts, or upgrades or send them tutorials since it’s also possible the reason they’re less than enthused about you is because they don’t really understand how you can help them.

Closing the loop with detractors

Simply put, these customers are unhappy with you. They’re the ones who would have given you detailed feedback on what did not work for them. It may be unpleasant to deal with detractors but their feedback can also serve as a goldmine for places of improvement or how you can best serve them.

The best way to tell them that their feedback is important to you is by showing them that you’re working towards rectifying your mistakes. A personalized email/reaching out to detractors to show your intent can work wonders. And if you’re able to resolve their issue, they can quickly turn into your biggest advocates.

A word of caution

It’s not an easy task, gathering and acting on customer feedback. Even if you do quarterly surveys, your response time needs to be quick. Gathering data, finding point of convergence, sending them to the right departments to take action and then to gather data on what that action led to is a long process that requires time, commitment and resources.

While numerous NPS feedback systems are available online, these small-scale platforms lack reporting, analytics and security capabilities. While they help you to listen, actionability is completely missing.

To have a sophisticated system, you need an enterprise-scale CEM platform that is equipped to handle the large influx of data and provide you with a solution system.

Close the loop with LitmusWorld

LitmusWorld’s Act module is one such enterprise-scale CEM platform that can help you efficiently close the customer feedback loop in real-time. To know more about our platform, request a demo here.