To get the most out of customer surveys, your company can implement Close the loop to be able to save relationships with customers who have had a bad experience. Companies do not always follow up on the feedback about why customers have given a bad review, but it often ends up in the sand.
If your company does not follow up on a bad customer experience, you risk losing customers to competitors. Customers who are not satisfied want a remedy for a bad experience and by following up the feedback with Close the loop, dissatisfied customers can instead become loyal customers.
What does Close the loop mean?
Close the loop is a term used within customer experience and is about understanding why a customer has become dissatisfied with an experience with a company. Close the loop has an individual focus and is carried out to be able to save bad experiences from customers on an individual level, which differs from a classic survey.
If a customer gives a low rating on a customer survey, it is important that your company contacts the customer to find out what the low rating is due to, as well as to reduce the risk that a customer speaks badly of the company or chooses a competitor over yours business.
Close the loop can be a good attempt to get the customer to change their opinion, from being a dissatisfied customer (Critic) to becoming a neutral customer (Passive) or a very satisfied and loyal customer (Ambassador). It will be easier for your organization to be able to act on the results if you know what customers think is good and bad about an experience. It is important to show the customer that your company hears and reads their opinions, that you are grateful for the feedback and that you are working to fix what has made the customer dissatisfied.
How is Close the loop carried out?
Close the loop is carried out by the employees of your company contacting customers after they have left feedback, especially those customers who have left a low rating. A common method of contacting the customer for a follow-up is to call the customer shortly after they have been in contact with your company. Why the feedback should be carried out relatively quickly after the customer's experience is simply because they remember the dissatisfaction more clearly immediately afterwards. The employees can then help the customer with the views they have and be able to compensate for the dissatisfaction with the hope that the customer will consider staying with you.
Your employees must be given room to act on the customer's feedback in order to make them satisfied. It is therefore important that your employees gain trust from top management to be able to fix and implement what is required to win the customer back.
Act effectively with Close the loop
Close the loop should be easy to implement, but if you don't implement it, how will you know what should be done? To carry out Close the loop effectively, it is important to consider the following:
Act at the right time
Act on customer feedback quickly after it's received and don't wait too long to respond. If the feedback comes too late from the customer's perspective, it may seem irrelevant or confusing, as they likely won't remember how they perceived the experience after the touchpoint. Therefore, choose a good time for feedback that suits your company and the type of contact point that occurred.
If a customer has been in contact with customer service, send out a survey immediately after and contact the customer directly to quickly address the low rating. If a customer has purchased a product via e-commerce, send out a survey that the customer can answer about the overall experience or the specific product and feedback through Close the loop immediately in an attempt to salvage the bad customer experience.
Understand the feedback
It is important for the employees who will make contact with the customer to understand the customer's relationship to your company, what led to the customer experiencing what they did and why the customer left that feedback. If your employees, or your organization, misunderstand the customer's feedback, it will be more difficult to save the relationship with the customer. Get an idea of the customer's experience and work to achieve the right compensation for what has gone wrong. Remember that the customer is always right and if the employee who carries out Close the loop understands why the customer was dissatisfied with a purchase or with the customer service, it will also be easier for you to find a solution and then fix the problem permanently.
Compensate correctly
Customers who have been left unsatisfied are looking for some kind of compensation to feel that your company is good to them, even though something went wrong. Think about what is the best offer for the specific customer, because all customers are different and have different needs. Therefore, keep an eye on what the customer has bought or what has been written in the feedback, in order to adapt solutions, as well as find which compensations are best suited to which customer. By giving a new product, discount codes or other offer, it increases the desire for the customer to stay with you, because the feedback with Close the loop helped the customer find a solution.
Close the loop benefits everyone
Your customers and your organization benefit from implementing Close the loop. Existing and new customers will have a better experience if they are treated properly when leaving negative feedback. Your organization benefits because you get an overall picture of what you can do to make the company grow, as well as deliver better service and individual customer experiences through employees being able to understand and help customers in the right way. Your existing and future customers benefit by feeling that they are important to your company by sharing their thoughts and opinions that the company can act on, as well as being able to form an opinion on how your company can live up to their expectations .
Preserve the customer relationship with Close the loop
Close the loop is about understanding why customers have become dissatisfied when they leave feedback. It is up to organizations to try to turn dissatisfied customers into satisfied ones by contacting customers and finding a solution to problems, for example compensating with a new product or an offer that can attract.
In summary: Follow the tips below to get more satisfied customers:
- Take on board and act on the feedback as quickly as possible after the customer's point of contact.
- Gain an understanding of why the customer felt the way they did.
- Give the right compensation to the customer after the dissatisfaction to make the customer stay with you.
