Closed-loop tools enable you to follow-up with customers who leave you feedback.
16/09/2024; 4 min to read
So you’ve launched your VoC program and you’re collecting and analysing customer feedback. Now it’s time to level up your program and start acting on customers’ feedback.
A great place to start is with closed-loop follow-up. Closed-loop tools enable you to follow up with customers who leave you feedback.
Closed-loop feedback, or closing the loop, is the practice of following up with customers who have provided feedback to you. Rather than just treating feedback as useful data, companies that practice closed-loop feedback see it as the start of a conversation with the customer that can yield further benefits for both sides.
Closed-loop feedback is central to any customer experience management strategy. It is the crucial technique you will use to respond to customer feedback, ensure action is taken, and reduce churn.
Instead of just collecting feedback, you’re acting on it
The goal of closing the loop is to provide a positive customer experience, whether that means resolving a problem effectively, acknowledging praise or suggestions, or answering a customer’s questions. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate to your customer in a direct and personal way that their feedback is important and you care about the outcome.
Closed-loop feedback is not only focused on stopping dissatisfied customers from turning into detractors, but it is also valuable for reaching out to neutral customers and converting them into promoters. Additionally, some companies utilize closed-loop feedback to engage with promoters, encouraging satisfied customers to spread the word about the product or service to others or participate in a customer advocacy program.
Close the loop: A way of ensuring that customer feedback reaches the right people and is properly addressed.
Don’t just get in touch with customers who left negative feedback or a low NPS rating. Negative feedback is important and needs to be acknowledged quickly to hopefully win back customers who might be ready to stop doing business with your company, but there is a lot to be learned from neutral and positive feedback as well.
Paying close attention to verbatim comments can be an effective trigger for reaching out to customers. All customers enjoy a bit of personal attention and personalization, and it isn’t difficult or expensive for you to offer this to them. Letting them know that their feedback matters to your business and what actions you’re taking, if any, is important to keep them coming back.
Pro tip: Follow up with your detractors within 24 to 48 hours after providing feedback in order to address the issues they raise and, ideally, solve them. |
A powerful tool to increase your strengths
Following up with customers after they leave feedback can also be a tool to strengthen the bond, as they probably don’t expect you to reach out. Showing them that you care will set you apart from competitors. In addition to that, you will definitely benefit from the knowledge you gain by discussing with your customers regarding potential pain points and areas of improvement.
So, briefly, Feedback closed-loop is focusing on Inner loop aiming to understand what exactly is going on with customer experiences and potentially solve pain. But also it is a subject of acting upon the discoveries - Outer loop - assuring that the experience for the customers is improving. And thus, increasing your competitive advantage in the market.
Action is needed
As I have already discussed a lot about the Inner loop in Launch a Meaningful Voice of a Customer Program here I will focus more on Outer loop.
Building an outer-loop process might contain the following stages:
1. Gather and identify: Identify the top pain points by priority journeys. Root cause analysis is a joint effort; the more diverse the discussion groups are, the more accurate the root cause is.
Key: Integration of all voices of customers and partners at THE journey level to prioritise and focus resources, which might be limited, make the difference.
2. Select & prioritise: Identify and route 'easy fixes' directly to relevant teams; Root structural issues to the next level.
Key: To make NPS insights actionable, it is not sufficient to define key battles only; many pain points are addressable with existing projects; an exhaustive list of existing projects is a must-have for efficiency.
3. Formulate & make decisions: Structural issues are gathered into key battles; Key battles are prioritised and manage as projects.
Key: Prioritisation will be most effective when done at three levels: strategic priorities, issue priorities, and battle priorities. Make decisions and pursue getting shit done.
4. Manage: Manage and follow-up on action plans. Be sure to secure a budget for improvements.
Key: Standardised backlog tracking structure across business functions and units for advocacy projects ensures robust tracking and managing project implementation.
5. Communicate: Communicate internally and externally until resolution. Ensure that project owners provide full visibility to the advocacy team on the progress.
Key: Change management / communications is a must-have in order to establish mentality that consider pain points as an opportunity, not as a blame.
Everyone is invited
The outer-loop process is essential to the success of a customer experience program as it translates the feedback and insights you collect into customer-centric actions and decisions, carried out by groups across the organization.
Champions across the organisation will support well the building of a customer-centric mindset and also the understanding that finding pain points is valuable for the business, as the company has the chance to solve them and improve the whole experience.
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Good luck!
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