We recently surveyed a group of mainly customer facing business people regarding their practices and processes for "closing-the-loop" with their customers who provide them with feedback. We asked respondents to categorize their experience on three dimensions of customer feedback - Transactional, Relationship and Product/Service. Some interesting data came back from the survey.
- 75% report customer relationship quality (loyalty/satisfaction) as their main feedback objective.
- 74% view “closing-the-loop” with customers as “Important” or “Critical for Success” to their businesses.
- Three main challenges surfaced to “closing-the-loop” with customers providing feedback:
- Prioritizing customer feedback for follow-up action
- Determining the appropriate type of follow-up to provide
- Following up with customers in a timely fashion - ~25% indicated they had well automated processes for “closing-the-loop” with customers providing feedback.
- 19% of respondents “Always” close-the loop” on Transactional customer feedback
- 16% and 13% respectively report they “Always” close-the-loop on Relationship and Product / Service customer feedback - In all cases, survey respondents reported more effective practices and processes for "loop closing" with customers when transactional feedback was referenced.
A couple of thoughts:
In interpreting the data, there appears to be a gap in customer feedback processes that inhibits effective “Loop Closing” activity. While most respondents realize the importance of, and measure for, customer relationship quality, they don’t regularly take the loyalty/satisfaction building step of “closing-the-loop”.
Three main challenges were identified to closing-the-loop activity. All three suggest process issues in dealing with customer feedback after it is received, especially when the feedback isn't transactional in nature. Significantly, over 20% of respondents report their main challenge as just identifying whom to follow up with. We think that these challenges speak to an inability to truly identify who feedback providers really are, as that information would make determining follow activity much simpler.
The survey shows that over 50% of all customer feedback is collected via internet based technologies (web forms, web survey, e-mail surveys) across all three dimensions measured. So, identity shouldn't (and the survey shows it isn't) be a primary challenge. However, it appears as though two issues exist:
1) Connecting customer respondent identity to other information about that customer that helps to determine how to best "close-the-loop".
2) And, once connected, getting the feedback information to the right person so prompt closing the loop action can take place.
Since a majority of respondents report they either "struggle with analyzing customer feedback for action" or use manual feedback analysis methods (spreadsheets), it would appear that for most organizations, better "loop closing" processes will need to start with combining feedback and feedback analysis into a more automated process.
The summary read out from our survey can be viewed at the link below.
