A Practical Guide to Closing the Feedback Loop

Chapter 1

What is a Customer Feedback Loop?

Collecting Customer Feedback has become a necessary task for the companies to grow their business by satisfying the customers. Without Customer Satisfaction, a business cannot even survive for long, forget about running it successfully. But collecting feedback is not enough! If you have collected feedback, it is crucial to act on it. In the words of Bruce Temkin, "Don’t waste customers’ time asking them questions unless you are prepared to act on what they say.”

Every complaint ignored is 26 customers lost because if you don't take Customer Feedback seriously, they not only stop doing business with you but also spread a bad word of mouth against you. And you really can't afford it. As with the increasing use of social media and growing trend of online reviews, bad word of mouth spreads in no time like a forest fire.  Here are facts about it.

• According to Sprout Social, 47% of customers with a product or service complaint will voice it on social media.
• In 2018 it was estimated that there are at least 1.7 billion people active on social media and that number is still rising with new platforms popping up every year.
• Young people are 99% more likely to rely on online reviews than any of the older generations.

This reinforces the fact of the need to Close the Feedback Loop. A feedback loop is a part of a system in which some portion (or full) of system's output is used as input for future operations. When referring to Customer Feedback, the feedback provided by the customers is output for them. Whereas, the valuable information collected in the form of feedback data is input for you.

 Take Action and Close the Feedback Loop👩‍💻

Analyze feedback, view insights, collaborate with you team and close the feedback loop to prevent churn with Zonka Feedback.

This input is to be utilized to make improvements in your goods and services in order to foster a better Customer Experience. A feedback loop has four stages:

1. Ask: In the first stage, you survey your customers for feedback.
2. Categorize: In the second stage, you collect the feedback and divide the responses into different categories.
3. Act: In the third stage, You analyse the feedback and take required actions.
4. Follow up: In the fourth stage, you follow up with the customers.

Let's study these stages in detail.

1. Ask

In this first stage, you ask the customers regarding their views about your products, services and the brand. For this, you prepare Customer Feedback Surveys and distribute them to your customers through different channels like email survey, SMS survey, kiosk survey, online and offline surveys and the customers provide you Customer Feedback in the form of survey responses.

You can also collect the feedback data through your social media webpages. In this stage, you get a rich feedback data to be used as your input in your Feedback Loop.

2. Categorize

When you have collected the Customer Feedback data, in the next stage, you categorize the data collected. You can categorize the data as positive and negative feedback to know the strengths and weaknesses of your business.

If you do an NPS Survey, you can categorize your customers into promoters, detractors and passives on the basis of their survey responses. If you do a CSAT survey, you can categorize them on the basis of the ratings given by the customers like 'Excellent', 'Average' and 'Poor' and like.

This helps to bring out the information regarding the strong attributes of your products and services that make the customers feel delighted and what make the experience of the customers unpleasant that customers dislike.

3. Act

In this third stage, you act on the feedback so collected which is the basis of the process of Closing the Feedback Loop. Taking action on the feedback involves working on the issues raised by the customers and resolving their complaints(if any) and at the same time, taking appropriate actions to avoid such issues in the future.

Moreover, it includes analyzing the customers' suggestions and ideas and implementing them by make the feasible changes in your business that can enhance Customer Satisfaction.

4. Follow Up

It is also a very important stage of the Feedback Loop. When you have worked on the Customer Feedback by taking appropriate actions and business decisions, it is essential to communicate your customers. In this step, you contact the customers and inform them that their feedback has been taken into consideration and worked upon. At the same time, you followup with the customers to ensure that they are satisfied with the actions taken.

When customers suggest something and you make those changes in your business, and inform them that you have made those changes, it gives them a great feeling of being listened and valued. This enhances their confidence in the brand and increases Customer Loyalty too.

Chapter 3

How to Close the Feedback Loop?

Now, when we have understood the importance of Closing the Feedback loop, the question arises how this process should be carried out. The first thing you need to do to Close the Feedback Loop is to collect the Customer Feedback.

Customer Feedback is an important and valuable information and taking this from the customers is not such an easy tasks. Many customers don't reply to feedback emails and SMS due to various reasons. So you need to follow a proper process of taking feedback and then working on it. For this, you need to follow these steps:

• Set up team: First of all, you should set up a team for collecting Customer Feedback. You should assign activities to your staff to collect and work on various feedback.
• Configure Alerts and Notifications: You should deploy an effective Customer Feedback Software that can help you create beautiful and customizable surveys to seek your customers for feedback. A good Survey Software like Zonka Feedback helps you to configure alerts and notifications for feedback and negative feedback. This will really help you to look into the concerns at the right time and Close the Feedback loop effectively.
• Take Feedback: Then you need to take feedback from the customers through surveys. Zonka Feedback helps you to send surveys through various channels like SMS, emails, kiosks, online and offline surveys in order to collect feedback.
• Categorize the Feedback: As soon as you get survey responses, you can categorize the feedback through Zonka Feedback on the basis of customer responses. To categorize, you can:
• Use Filters - You can use filters to pick a particular type of feedback.
• Use Response Tagging - You can also use Response Tagging feature of Zonka Feedback that allows you to segregate the feedback into categories like negative, positive, neutral etc.
• Use Contact Lists - You can also use contact lists to divide your customers on the basis of their attributes like their location, age groups, and purchase history.

• Take Action to Close the Loop: Here comes the main step of the process for which all hard work you had been doing to collect Customer Feedback i.e. to take action on the feedback to Close the Loop. For this, you should respond to the customers at the earliest. First of all, you must thank the customers for their feedback and acknowledge that their feedback is taken. Then you should look into the feedback for the action required at your end.
• Automated Responses to Customers: At first, an automated response like a formal email or an SMS should reach the customers for acknowledgement and thanking them to spend their valuable time for giving feedback.
• Tasks created: You should create tasks related to actions to be taken on Customer Feedback and assign them to team members.
• Taking Action: Then you should take appropriate actions towards as per the feedback given by the customers.
• Adding Notes: After that you should add notes for internal teams about the customers' concern and actions taken for that or anything required for that to Close the Feedback Loop.

 Take Action and Close the Feedback Loop👩‍💻

Analyze feedback, view insights, collaborate with you team and close the feedback loop to prevent churn with Zonka Feedback.

Chapter 5

Configure Alerts & Notifications based on your Feedback Form

It's really impractical to expect someone to read all feedback in real-time and continuously assign to the right team members. Even if you can afford an extra team member just to do this task — we prefer you utilize the team member to do more actionable things, rather than do something that an easy automation can achieve. 

With Zonka Feedback, you can configure alerts and notifications to keep your team members clued in, in the moment, without having to constantly rely on looking at an app. Let's explore all the amazing things you can do with Alerts and Notifications in Zonka Feedback. 

Set up Real-time Notifications for every Response

Want the team to be updated for every response? Set up real-time notifications for the team to get on email as soon as new Survey Responses comes in. 

Set up Real-time Notifications based on Metrics (NPS, CSAT and CES) 

If you're getting a lot of responses, from various sources, getting notifications for every response may be very redundant and may defeat the purpose of setting these up entirely. Because eventually if there is an influx of a lot of notifications, the important ones will eventually get missed out. So, you can instead set up notifications for Detractors (based on NPS), Unsatisfied Customers (based on CSAT) and High Effort Customers (based on CES). This way your team will be updated as soon as there is a negative feedback and they can trigger action on it immediately to prevent churn. 

Set up Custom Alerts based on any conditions 

One size doesn't fit all when it comes to feedback and surveys. Keeping that in mind, we have designed 'Custom Alerts' in Zonka Feedback. With Custom Alerts, you can set up any condition in your survey to trigger a notification to your team member (or even your respondent). The email notification is completely customizable and are send when the conditions are met. Here's how this helps: 

• Set any conditions: Set multiple conditions and filters based on which you'd like to trigger the Feedback Alerts.  
• Send to different team members: Have an issue that's relevant to the admin team? Send the notification only to the admin team and leave the rest out. This ensures that no one in your team receives irrelevant updates and when they do receive an update they know it's something need to action on. 
• Customize your Email Alert: Customize your Feedback Alert entirely to include response information, contact information or anything else you may find relevant for your team to action on the feedback. 
• Send to Respondents: Besides sending automated notifications to Team Members, you can also trigger messages for the Respondents and send it to Survey Respondents. 

• Send Custom Alerts through Slack: Using Zonka Feedback and Slack Integration, you can set up notifications for your team members to receive on Slack directly or on Slack Channels. The conditions for the Survey Alert on Slack, the message and the questions can be customized. Condition-based alerts can be set for different channels and team members. 
  
  

Chapter 7

Categorizing the Feedback

Now you have got all the survey responses and you have collected a rich data on which you need to act. Can you take the same action on all the feedback? Certainly not! You cannot give the same reaction and solution to a fully satisfied customer and a typically irate customer.

Imagine you are a dissatisfied customer with the services of a restaurant. You provide your feedback complaining about the pathetic services of the restaurant. And in return you get an automated message saying "Thank You for your feedback. We are happy to know that you enjoyed dining at our restaurant. Keep giving us opportunity to serve you!"

How would you feel? This is something that shows that you are not valued and hot even heard! Same is with your customers. Even if you are using automated messages for thanking the customers for feedback, there must a process followed to categorize your respondents.

Zonka Feedback doesn't leave you with a loads of feedback. It also helps you to categorize your customers on the basis of their feedback and ratings given by them so that you can work on the feedback thus received and Close the Feedback Loop on the following basis:

1. Based on Customer Satisfaction Metrics

You can divide the respondents into different categories based on the scores they give you in the Customer Satisfaction metrics survey. Here is how Zonka Feedback helps you to categorize your feedback.

• NPS Survey: When you take Net Promoter Score survey, you ask your customers to rate their experience on the basis of their likeliness to recommend your brand to others a scale of 0-10. Zonka Feedback automatically categorizes the respondents into categories of Promoters, Detractors and Passives and provides you the data of number of these three. Customers rating 9 and 10 are put into the category of Promoters, those rating 7 and 8 are put into Passives and those rating 0-6 are put into the category of Detractors.
• CSAT Survey: In a CSAT(Customer Satisfaction) survey, the customers are asked to rate their satisfaction as Pathetic, Bad, Average, Good and Excellent. Zonka Feedback enables you to ask this question and give options in the form of emoticons of your choice. Moreover, you will get the data categorized by the number of respondents selecting each smiley so that you can categorize your customers on the basis of the extent of their satisfaction.
• CES Survey: In a CES or Customer Effort Score Survey, customers are asked whether they agree with the statement "The company made it easy for me to resolve my issue." or not. The option s given to them are Strongly Disagree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree and Strongly Disagree. Zonka Feedback helps you to categorize your respondents by giving you the exact data as to how many people selected which option.

2. Based on any other question in your survey

You can also categorize your respondents on the basis of any question in your survey. Zonka Feedback provides you filters to use in order to view specific responses . You can use filters and apply Tags to your Responses in the Response Inbox with date, question or anything you want to view and categorize with.

3. Based on Location, Devices, Time and more filters

If you have multiple locations, you can use locations as groups within the company or brands within a location and categorize them with that. Zonka Feedback helps you to apply filters on location groups, time on which the customers provided their feedback and customer attributes like age group, gender etc. to have a detailed report on you customers groups and their feedback.

4. Based on Comments / Text Analytics

You can also categorize your Customer Feedback on the basis of their comments. With Zonka Feedback, you get a feature of Text Analysis that help you to categorize your feedback as negative, positive, or neutral. It gives you a word cloud. You can choose words to pickup like great, excellent, good, pathetic, poor, thank etc. It gives you a report as to how many customers use these words how many times. This enables you to categorize your feedback even through comments from your customers and know how many negative and positive feedback you have got.

 Take Action and Close the Feedback Loop👩‍💻

Analyze feedback, view insights, collaborate with you team and close the feedback loop to prevent churn with Zonka Feedback.

Chapter 8

Taking Action to Close the Loop

Now comes the most important task for which you have build teams, collected Customer Feedback and categorized it. This crucial task is to take appropriate actions in order to Close the Feedback Loop.

Imagine this - you ask your staff to get feedback from customers. The customers tell the staff that they are unhappy. But because you haven't equipped the staff to take action, they are only receiving feedback. No action gets taken. How would the customers feel? They will get even more frustrated with this which will certainly result in customer churn.

When you have collected feedback, you reach a stage where you know what customers think and feel about your products and services, processes and the brand. So why not take action on it? Whether the feedback is negative or positive, it is necessary to Close the Feedback Loop properly to build a great customer relationship.

For this, you should assign tasks to your team and team members to take actions and revert on the feedback from the customers. Here is what you should do for different types of feedback.

1. Positive Feedback

When you receive a positive feedback, you feel good but you can't stop there. You should always acknowledge the feedback and close the loop in an effective way.

• You must revert the customers with a Thank You message or email to show gratitude towards them.
• You can give offer them discounts on their next purchase.
• You can give bonus discount on referrals if they refer other persons and any other schemes to motivate them to stay loyal with your brand.

All these small free bees make the customers feel valued it and motivate the customers to stay with you for a longer time. It also increases Customer Loyalty which is very good to increase your sales and business.

2. Negative Feedback

Negative Feedback is the most crucial feedback you need to deal with. If not done anything on the negative feedback, the customers not only themselves leave your business but also stop other people to opt your brand through their negative word of mouth and negative reviews on social media.

But wait, negative feedback not always means that your customers will leave you. In fact, it means that they trust you and have that confidence in you that yo will do something about their concerns. That is why they share it with you. that gives you an opportunity to change a negative feedback into a positive one. Here is what you should do to Close a Negative Feedback Loop.

• Deal with Negative Feedback on Priority as miffed customers can't wait for long. 50% of the customers wait for a week for a brand to respond to their questions or concerns raised before they stop doing business with that.
• Listen to your customers with patience. Give them opportunity to express their negative emotions as it is necessary to calm them down. If you don't do so, they will express it somewhere else and will affect your goodwill.
• Accept your mistake and apologize when you see there is something wrong at your end and assure them to fix it as soon as possible. Even if it's not your fault, empathize with them and look what you can do to make their negative Customer Experience a positive one.
• Take appropriate action to improve Customer Experience and give your customers a timeline to fix the things up for them. Also, do remember that improving their experience may cause you some more expenditure, but losing them can cause you a great loss for lifetime.
• After you take appropriate action, do inform them what you have done for them and what changes you have taken in your business to avoid such experience in the future. This is really important and final step towards Closing the Customer Feedback Loop effectively. Doing this will not only improve their experience but make their experience positive and can even entirely change their mindset about you and your brand.
• You can also offer them certain discounts and schemes for their next purchase as a token of apology and a compensation in regard of their negative experience. This will motivate them to again opt for your brand and will thus prevent Customer Churn.

3. Neutral Feedback

When you get an average or a neutral feedback, Closing the Loop is still important. In fact, they are your most vulnerable customers who can try your other brands as soon as they get a little better opportunity, and your competitors can take advantage of it. Here is how you should Close the Feedback Loop with neutral feedback.

• Thank them for providing their feedback as this is the most valuable information they can give.
• Ask them what you can do to make their experience better.
• Ask for suggestions if they have any be it bringing a change in your products or processes or anything. Welcome their suggestions and see what you can follow.
• Make business decisions as per their suggestions as far you can and inform them that you are doing this. This will make them feel more connected with the business and shift them towards becoming your loyal customers. This will result in their business continuation with you for a longer period and will even help in bringing more customers to your business.