Suppose a customer gives feedback to your company. A complaint, a suggestion or just a compliment. And then ... The person never hears anything more about it. Talking to a wall would have been just as effective.
That doesn't feel good. And yet this is how it goes in most organizations. Especially at the larger ones.
They invest time and money in surveys and get thousands of responses a month. But then most of that feedback gets lost in a big pile of data. Individual votes get lost in the masses.
The result?
Customers don't feel heard. And you miss the opportunity to turn negative experiences into real success stories and to make your team happy with nice compliments. Time to change this.
And psst ... in the meantime, make sure that you better meet standards such as ISO 9001. More on that later in this article.
An interesting phenomenon exists. Research shows that customers who had a negative experience and then received excellent service end up being more loyal than customers who had an average experience from the beginning.
This is called the service recovery paradox. A customer who gives a 3 and goes to an 8 because of your intervention often becomes a stronger ambassador than someone who immediately gives a 7 or 8. Why? Because that customer has seen that your organization is there when it really matters.
The problem is that you can only take advantage of this opportunity if you detect negative feedback in time and have the right person respond to it. So it's important to set up a good system for this. Especially if you receive very large volumes of feedback.
It's not only about complaints. Positive feedback also often disappears into thin air.
Imagine: a customer gives a 10 and writes: "Bas helped me fantastically, he really took the time for my problem." Where does that feedback end up? Often not in a place where Bas gets to see it.
What a missed opportunity. Compliments are one of the most powerful motivators there is.
So both complaints and compliments deserve a better fate than ending up in a pile. A closed-loop feedback system solves this problem.
It means that you not only collect feedback, but take systematic action on it. You "close the loop" by feeding back to the customer what you did with their feedback. And by making sure feedback gets to the right person internally.
A good closed-loop feedback system has three components:
The system automatically recognizes which feedback deserves attention. This could be complaints (e.g. scores of 6 or lower), but also compliments that you want to share with the team.
Feedback is automatically sent to the right person. Not to a general e-mail address where it ends up in a new pile, but directly to the person who can do something with it. That could be the handling employee, the team leader or a specialist who knows exactly how to handle this type of situation.
The recipient not only receives a notification, but also all the context he needs to respond appropriately. What did the customer say? What score did he give? Which employee was involved? And importantly, it tracks whether action is actually taken.
A good closed-loop approach has an additional benefit: It helps you meet important quality standards.
ISO 9001, the globally recognized quality management standard, has specific requirements for how organizations handle customer feedback and complaint handling. Organizations must be able to demonstrate that they collect, analyze and take improvement actions on feedback.
A closed-loop feedback system makes this a lot easier:
During an audit, the right checkmarks are quickly set.
With Insocial, closed-loop feedback becomes easy, even for large organizations that receive large amounts of feedback.
The platform detects which feedback deserves action. You set the rules yourself: for example, all feedback with scores of 6 or lower and 9 or higher. You also set who the feedback should be forwarded to, based on metadata. For example, set that feedback on a ticket always goes to the person who handled the ticket. Or automatically forward all feedback about the sales department to the sales manager.
To send feedback to your team, create your own email templates in Insocial. This way you always communicate in a way that suits your organization. For example, add confetti to your mail in case of forwarded compliments. And refer to handy resources for complaints.
A handy dashboard shows exactly how many cases are open, how long they have been open and what priority they have. So you can see at a glance where action is needed and ensure that nothing falls between the cracks.
Collecting feedback is the first step. But only when you systematically take action on it does it become valuable. A closed-loop feedback system ensures that every complaint becomes an opportunity to win a customer for life. And every compliment a moment to motivate your team.
What's more, you immediately kill two birds with one stone. Not only do you improve the customer experience, but you immediately take a step toward meeting important quality standards.
When will you take the step from collecting feedback to taking action?