How to Close the Customer Feedback Loop with NPS® Surveys?

Closing the Customer Feedback Loop is as crucial for a business as collecting Customer Feedback. If you are collecting Customer Feedback and not working on the process of Closing the Feedback Loop, all your time and resources spent on gathering feedback is not of much use.

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What is Closing the Customer Feedback Loop?

Closing the Customer Feedback Loop is taking action on the Customer Feedback. It is the process that involves responding to the customers on their feedback, implementing changes in your business as per the customers' suggestions and resolving customer complaints (if any) and telling them that you have worked on their feedback.

The process of Closing the Feedback Loop starts with collecting Customer Feedback. One of the most effective ways to collect Customer Feedback using NPS Surveys. NPS® (Net Promoter Score) has been widely adopted with more than two thirds of Fortune 1000 companies to measure Customer Loyalty. NPS® helps you to measure the level of Customer Satisfaction in quantitative terms. Before moving further on how to utilize NPS for Closing the Feedback Loop, Let's gather some understanding on this Customer Loyalty metric.

What is NPS?

NPS or Net Promoter Score is one of the most popular and effective metrics used to gather Customer Feedback in terms of measurement of Customer Loyalty towards a brand or an organization. A common question is asked to the customers in an NPS survey.

On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you recommend this brand to your friends, family and known ones 0 being "Not at all likely to recommend" and 10 being "Most likely to recommend"?

On the basis of the customers' responses on the above question, the respondents are divided into three categories namely, Promoters, Passives and Detractors.

Promoters are the most satisfied customers who gave a rating of 9 or 10.
Passives are those who gave the rating of 7 or 8.
Detractors are those who gave the rating from 0 to 6.

To calculate NPS, percentage of detractors is subtracted form that of promoters. Let's learn how to use NPS survey results to Close the Customer Feedback Loop.

How to Close Customer Feedback with NPS?

Although, NPS is a simple survey with a single survey question, yet it is real effective! The ultimate question is able to fetch you useful data that can help you Close the Feedback Loop effectively and thus increase Customer Satisfaction and reduce churn.

The first step to utilizing NPS for Closing the Feedback Loop is following it up with an open-ended question to ask the reason for ratings given by the customers. This will enable you know your strengths and weaknesses and you will get to know where you need to make improvements in your products and services.

After this, you should work on the feedback of promoters, detractors and passives separately because you cannot respond and take same actions on the feedback of a Promoter and a detractor. Let's explore the actionable steps you should take.

1. Closing the Feedback Loop with Promoters

Promoters are the most satisfied customers as they have given you a rating of 9 and 10. For Closing the Customer Feedback Loop, you should:

Show Gratitude: Show gratitude by thanking them for their feedback.
Give rewards: Give them small rewards like discount on next purchase, free coupons etc.
Ask them to refer: Ask them to refer their friends and also give something as referral bonus like a 5% more discount or a free voucher etc.

In this way, you can keep the promoters happy and motivate them to be literally brand ambassadors of your brand.

2. Closing the Feedback Loop with Passives

Passives are the customers who are neither too happy nor dissatisfied about the Customer Experience they had with you. In there case, there is a strong tendency of their switching to another brand as soon as they get a better offer.

Passives are actually an opportunity for you to show them that you and your brand are the best and thus change them into promoters. Here is what you should do to Close the Feedback loop of the passives.

Offer better products and plans: Search for better products or service plans for them and offer them those plans which benefits them
Give them exciting offers: Give them exciting offers like discount on next purchase, combo offers etc.
Delight them: Do something to enhance Customer Delight. Delight them with exceptional service, small surprise gifts and free vouchers etc.

3. Closing the Feedback Loop with Detractors

Detractors are the most crucial findings of your Net Promoter Score Survey on which you need to work on. They are the ones who can affect your sales adversely by their negative reviews, comments and bad word-of-mouth in the market. If their feedback loop is not closed properly, they can harm you like anything! Here is what you should do to change their views about your brand.

Prioritize them: First of all, prioritize them and treat resolving their issues as the most immediate work of your business. 50% of consumers wait for only seven days for a brand to respond to their concerns, after which they stop doing business with them. (Click to Tweet this)
Listen to them: Listen to them calmly and patiently or ask them open-ended questions giving them free space to vent out their feelings and see what went wrong with them and how you can fix the things up.
Accept, apologize and empathize: Try to understand their concerns, accept and apologize them where you find that you are at fault. Even if you see that its not your fault, empathize with them for their bad experience, explain calmly where things were not in your control and see genuinely what you can do for them.
Take required action: Immediately take the actions required to improve their experience. If you go out of the way to help your customers improve their experience, customers notice this and tend to shift towards the line of passives and promoters.
Inform them: It is very important to inform them what you have done for them or what you are doing for them, or if you have taken their suggestion and changed things in your business to avoid any bad Customer Experience in future. This can really help!
Offer tokens of apology: Offer small tokens of apology like a small compensatory discount, or anything that can reduce their frustration and make them happy.

In this way, if you work effectively towards Closing the Customer Feedback Loop, you can not only motivate a shift in your customer from the line of detractors towards passives, but can also convert your detractors into promoters.