Among the many critical tools and processes utilized to ensure excellent customer experiences and customer success, none has the breadth and depth of challenging a company potential, as well as the value and power of improved company results with an effective Customer Feedback Loop process or Voice of Customer task force.
WHAT IS A CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOOP?
Customer Feedback Loop is the constant cycle of mutual interactions between the customer and the company, where feedback is encouraged and received; it is collected and processed so as to understand its meaning and value; and as importantly is then utilized to implement a “Kaizen”- based continuous improvement process that benefits the customer as well as the company.
WHY IS CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOOP SO CRITICAL FOR ALL COMPANIES?
Among the many benefits that this commitment and process can provide to all companies, these are the most critical ones that help a company stay ahead of the competition:
- Supports the continuous improvement process of products and services.
- Creates better customer experience and improves your brand experience
- Improves customer retention
- Gives potential customers valuable information at the point of decision making
- Measures customer satisfaction
- Turns detractors into promoters
- Boosts your sales and engagement
HOW DOES THE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOOP WORK?
There are 3 critical steps required to build your Customer Feedback Loop, and
2 very critical steps required to close your Customer Feedback Loop,
in order to benefit from all of its potential and power!
3 STEPS IN BUILDING YOUR CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOOP:
- Step One: ASK FOR FEEDBACK
Customer feedback can come from various sources, and you should be looking to gather feedback at every opportunity possible from all types of customers. It is important, however, to use a centralized mechanism to keep it all in one place, so you can better analyze it and keep track of all clients’ communication in one place.
Among some of the most popular strategies to consider to gather feedback are:
social listening; product reviews; satisfaction surveys; staff surveys; live
chats; NPS; interviews; and open feedback forums.
- Step Two : COLLECT FEEDBACK
All the incoming feedback needs to be gathered and organized in one single place.
Products such as UseResponse provide a specialized hub where emails, tickets, chat
conversations, social media contacts are all collected. Customers can also send their ideas
and suggestions or feature requests, and can flag issues or ask questions about the
product.
- Step Three: SORT AND ANALYZE
Feedback that has been collected and organized in a single feedback storage place now needs to be sorted out by key categories such as Ideas, Problems, and Questions.
All incoming requests also need to be given priorities and statuses for decision making.
Products such as Beamer can be used not only to store all feedback received, but also to filter, organize and segment all information received, and to respond directly to users.
Beamer’s analytics tools can also be used to track patterns and find better data-driven solutions to improve any development process.
TWO FINAL STEPS IN CLOSING YOUR CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOOP:
- Step Four: ACT ON FEEDBACK
After defining the ideas for implementation, it is time to turn insights into action and build the Product or Service Improvement Roadmap. At this step, ideas are assigned to specific team members and sorted by priority.
Negative feedback is usually redirected to the Customer Service or Product Development and Improvement Team.
Positive feedback is sent to the Marketing Department to be used on the website and other places as testimonials or as a base for Customer Use Cases.
Some key metrics used to measure the feedback loop are:
- % of requests that were implemented
- Net Promoter Score feedback requests
- $$ of renewals due to implementing the feature request
- Feedback on the new feature implemented
- Step Five: NOTIFY CUSTOMERS AND FOLLOW UP
Once you have implemented your changes, based on the feedback received, it is time to communicate them effectively! The feedback loop will only work if users and customers are aware of what you have been working on.
There are different methods to communicate changes, You can respond to comments, messages, and reviews directly. Some data suggest that 7 out of 10 consumers changed their mind about a brand after a company replied to a review!
Other less direct methods include development blogs and social media posts.
One of the most effective and versatile ways to inform users and push feature discovery is through changelogs, release notes, and news feeds.
Creating a feedback loop is an essential way to keep your product development focused, based on reality, and always working, as long as you learn how to close the loop. You will then improve your user engagement, reduce churn, and take your product or service to the next level. Constantly improving and growing.
CONCLUSION
Building your Customer Feedback Loop and Closing your Customer Feedback Loop will allow you to create a really customer-centric company, reduce customer churn, get more loyal customers, turn your detractors into promoters, and promoters into your company’s brand advocates.