Closing the Feedback Loop: Using and Acknowledging Customer Input
If I asked you, you’d tell me that your company/brand definitely takes in customer feedback. In fact, in this uber-consumer-participatory era, you’ve got an amazing email database and a full-time staff on it, right? But, does your brand make it across that final inch of the feedback loop to keep the ever-important flow going?
Let’s call the final inch "acknowledgment." There’s nothing like going silent once you’ve done all the work to get customer input, sort through it and then figure out how/if you can actually put it to use in future product developments. Rather, if your brand has gone to all that trouble to listen, and deliver: make it known!
Chrysler seems to be making a point of that, by touting its willingness to listen and then sharing how customer feedback has been used (on over two hundred line-items, apparently) in its latest campaign. As covered by Dale Buss on Edmunds.com:
"Chrysler’s ads will emphasize the company’s responsiveness to customer
and dealer feedback by promoting the fact that it approved 260
"line-item" improvements to its products within two months after
Cerberus Capital Management took the company private,…"
Closing the feedback loop with acknowledgment lets existing customers know you’ve heard them and, it inspires them to keep it coming.
Many brands may say "tell us what you think," and either not do a thing with the input - or use it and then forget to let consumers know that they did. When consumers see the feedback loop in its full-circle action, they recognize the follow-through and soak up all the positive implications for that brand.
Are you missing this opportunity?
