I've been posting recently on "Customer Feedback Action Management". My thought is that by better managing feedback based actions, enterprises can do a better job of "Closing-The-Loop" with customers.
What I've found in discussion forums, personal contacts with experts in the VOC field, my survey on the subject and my personal experience is that the "Managed Alert" process that most companies use is really insufficient to ensure that the feedback loop gets effectively closed. And, that the managed alert is more of a beginning of the action management process rather than a process unto itself.
To be sure, certain types of feedback can be effectively managed using a CRM case management based process. Examples are product or service complaints, low satisfaction or loyalty scores, expressions of desire for more products/services, etc. Things that are, by definition, resolvable by front-line (Sales, Support, Administration) or near front-line staff (their management). These staff tend to be daily users of the CRM platform and are able to incorporate "managed alerts" follow-up into their daily activities.
Where the CRM based process seems to break down is when loop-closing requires input from non-front line parts of the business. Some examples might be contract terms the customer doesn't like but which the finance department insists upon. Who closes that loop? And how? Other examples: Product capabilities desired but not yet available, Needs for services that aren't offered, needs for solution integration or partnering with other entities. These are issues that require a management decision or action and that take time to implement and communicate back to the customer. But, in truth this type of feedback occurs regularly yet is hard to pull together and act upon. And, these are just some examples which I can think of or have heard of. I'm sure there are others.
One of things I'm finding in my research is that in addition to the hard-to-manage feedback I've talked about, a percentage of "alerts" that get entered as "closed cases" are improperly "closed". Another is determining if the action taken, and which "closed" the case, actually had an impact on the customer who provided the feedback.
A couple of thoughts occurred to me about how to validate the effectiveness of "loop-closing" activities.
My first thought was, why not simply re-survey everyone who responded to the original survey? As it happens, some advanced organizations already do this. It seems to me that asking a couple (2-3) of follow-up questions within 30 days of a survey being responded to would be a good idea. Especially for certain categories of feedback like: service or billing problems or expressed need for more or updated products/services, but in just in general to get a sense from customers about their perception on the effectiveness of loop-closing actions.
My second thought was why not survey the employees who are assigned loop closing actions to see how they perceive its effectiveness. It seems to me that it would be useful to learn quickly if staff feels they were able to really "close-the-loop" on an instance of feedback, or if they feel they were unable to address the issue effectively.
A third thought: Does it make sense to cross reference the results of both follow up surveys to see if any expressed issues were being highlighted by both customers and employees as being a challenge to get the loop closed on.
I'm sure there are other issues with managing actions to close-the-loop on customer feedback.
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