Creating a closed-loop process is essential to getting the most out of any customer feedback initiative.
Closed-loop means doing three things:
- Collect customer feedback
- Use the feedback to make changes
- Collect more customer feedback to make sure the changes worked.
Step 3 is the hardest, since sometimes it means backtracking: if the data shows that the change didn’t work, then you have to try something else. Nobody likes making mistakes, and it’s much easier to consider the issue “closed” and move on.
But if you don’t validate the changes you make, then there’s no way to know that you’re really making progress. Business decisions are rarely clean, and sometimes our assumptions are mistaken. That’s why it’s just as important to close the feedback loop as it is to take action.
