A Deep Dive into the Customer Feedback Loop
Picture yourself looking for a new car. In a car, you know what you want, but you are not picky on where you get it from, so you start looking for the right one online and in showrooms.
Now, think about the service that you hope to get. What advertisers want to know more about is your experience, whether positive or poor or just plain average. So, you communicate with the brand in a meaningful way at the end of your visit; maybe you are given a survey to complete, asking you basic questions to get a sense of how your dealership visit was. Or you just get in contact with the brand and ask for a solution to a problem. If you purchased a car from our scenario or a car-related service, then you could receive a survey sent to you asking about your product or service experience. These are two very clear examples of how even the smallest touchpoints, the smallest customer-brand experiences, are used by insight practitioners to create insights that can supercharge organizational change through customer input.
The Customer Feedback Loop
A perfect method for gathering and applying customer reviews is the Customer Feedback Loop. If you want to get a working understanding of the interactions of your consumers with a product, website, service, etc., this is one of the most important techniques to incorporate.
The Customer Feedback Loop consists of four general phases:
1. Asking/Receiving Feedback
Feedback can come in several different forms: from NPS surveys, surveys of experience, an invitation to join a panel or group of online market analysis, an interaction through social media or customer service processes, etc. Each contact with your brand is a chance to gain insight into the views, requirements, and experiences of your clients.
2. Analysing Feedback
When this data is gathered, you can now recognize what they are providing input on, and choose main data themes. These themes are critical signposts that will guide you in the right direction to strengthen all your organization's CX touchpoints. The other crucial consequence of this is that you will gain insight into the overall patterns of customer satisfaction over time since finding problems with your product or service.
3. Actioning Feedback
When you know exactly what consumers are and are not satisfied with, you can start the process of cementing the positive aspects of your customer service in place and adjust the aspects that cause the most trouble. This is a pretty clear one. This last part of the process would require some agile market analysis, so you can be confident that the bad things are changing in a way that will improve the consumer experience as a result, rather than guessing what will make it better. The customer's voice is truly the secret to achieving and sustaining a successful relationship with those customers.
4. Closing the Loop
You can't please everybody, obviously, but you can take on the most frequent issues and try to please those affected. There are ways for those who are left to respond to this feedback and show that you are taking it on board, even if you are not directly running it, that will help build their trust in your brand. The key to closing the loop is open communication, whether it is like Allianz managing expectations as to how long it will take for the front-line customer service process, or Grohe 's plan to rework its customer relationship management approach with three defined goals to rekindle a bond between the brand and its customers.
To put it quite clearly, a brand's positive feedback is an indicator of what you're doing well, and bad feedback is an indicator of what has been improved and refined to be more appropriate, easier to use, and more desirable to your consumers in general. But pay attention to the nuances of that feedback to move it further, as it can help figure out what needs to improve and in what way to make your consumers have the best possible experience with your brand.
Not only does the Consumer Feedback Loop directly influence the creation and evolution of your brand, product, service, or brand experience, it indirectly influences other very critical aspects:
· Consumer Trust (in your brand)
· Brand Perception
· Customer Relationship Management
· Marketing/Sales Procedures
· Market Research Success Rates
Using the Customer Feedback Loop to Gain Trust
When a customer has a bad experience, this instantly colours their view of your brand-they will then spread this impression via word of mouth and you may lose a large number of potential customers from that one bad experience. I have briefly discussed the idea of rekindling consumer interest in
What's more, second chances aren't growing on trees, and it's tougher than ever to fight for a chance to change their mind once a customer is turned off your brand. But with a bit of work, this is fixable. It is something that can be achieved by integrating CX research and this consumer feedback loop into your market research plans to change your brand perception.
For customer-cantered organizations, the Customer Feedback Loop is an important tool, and organizations such as Allianz, JetBlue, and Slack use them on a regular basis to help move their businesses forward. In particular, the Slack CEO notes that they "take consumer input in whatever way [they] can get it," which includes in-app input features as well as robust market analysis and support services for social customers. The strong emphasis on customer experience allows all workers around the entire company to consider the experience of consumers with pain points, and the feedback from those pain points are incorporated at all levels in and decision-making process.
The consequence of this is that most, if not all, consumer insights are applied and have a significant influence on the way the business works, the path it takes, the goods and services it delivers, and the way it interacts with consumers, all based on their terms. Believe it or not, when they don't conflict with the company, consumers recognize these improvements, and then a degree of confidence is built up over time. Take a read through our whitepaper on the topic here to find out more about how confidence can benefit a company.
Working the Customer Feedback Loop into your MRX Strategy
The Customer Feedback Loop is a type of market research that targets customers who have already engaged with you in a very specific way. The Customer Feedback Loop can be incorporated with this very particular focused market into a broader market research strategy to include all required customers.
The Customer Feedback Loop offers feedback from various outlets, most of them external outlets such as social media, and customer service enquiry sources that recognise problems with customer experience across all possible touchpoints, but it is difficult to reach them later to see if the problem is solved to their satisfaction. Online dedicated research groups or panels, as described above, are extremely valuable assets to a customer-cantered, insight-oriented company and are right on the tap to address any questions you have while solving certain problems found via customer feedback loop sources.
To help you minimize or completely eradicate any pain points in the customer experience, they will provide valuable feedback that informs each stage of the agile research and development process.
A strategy composed of a number of different research components is the sign of a mature insight strategy, with each strategy thoroughly customized to the company that it supports. There will be a few common components within that personalized approach, with one being the frightfully powerful Customer Feedback Loop.