The document discusses the importance of closing the feedback loop with customers by taking action on their feedback and communicating those actions. It differentiates between inner loop feedback, which frontline employees can resolve themselves, and outer loop feedback requiring cross-functional coordination and resources to implement structural changes. For inner loop feedback, the process involves thanking customers, assigning issues to relevant teams, taking action, and informing customers of resolutions. Outer loop feedback requires gathering diverse inputs, analyzing root causes, proposing and prioritizing solutions, and communicating transparently with employees and customers throughout the process. Closing both loops helps build trust and improve the customer experience.

1. Are your customers
talking to you?
Are your customers
talking to you?

2. Anything your customers say
about your
BRAND
PRODUCT
SERVICE
is
CUSTOMER
FEEDBACK.

3. Why should you listen
to it?
Makes
customer
feel involved
and
important.
Builds
healthy
relationship
with the
customer
Helps you
understand
customer
expectations
Identify the
issues
causing the
most friction
Prioritize
and resolve
those issues

4. Take customer feedback
- And never acknowledge the respondent.
- Or they don’t deep dive into the root cause.
- Or do not take any actions on the feedback.
- Or if they take the action, they don’t communicate it to them.
But, some companies
1
2
3
4

5. And when they do that, there customers are feeling
- Annoyance - ‘What is the point of sharing my feedback when there is no
action on it?’ leading to low CLV
- Frustration - ‘Waste of time! Wouldn’t do it again!’ leading to low response
rates
- Disassociation - ‘I don’t trust them anymore!’ leading to bad word of mouth
on public platforms.

6. Is this happening with you too?
- Are your customers truly happy to be with you?
- If not, did you reach out?
- When was the last time you saw a negative review on social media?
- Are you struggling with the low response rate?
- Have you ever appreciated the customers for sharing their feedback?
- How many times have you actually called them if they shared negative
feedback?
- How many times have you informed them that their request has been
resolved?

7. Here’s what might be wrong!
- We are mostly dependent on CATI/Face to Face for our CSAT surveys
and take weeks to process all the customer feedback. And by the time you
actually get to make sense of it - IT’S TOO LATE.
- Because it’s late even if you try to call a dissatisfied customer they won’t
remember about that survey or transaction
- Due to limited resources, CX may not be a top priority for your organization.
- There might not be an efficient system in place to listen, learn, and act on
customer feedback.

8. We can bridge this gap with an efficient VOC Program.
- Don’t take feedback for just the sake of it, act on your customers problems.
- Take feedback at every touchpoint throughout their journey.
- Acknowledge or thank them for sharing their feedback.
- Follow up with people who give negative feedback immediately and deep dive
into their problems.
- If you can, take action on it or else report it to the concerned department.
- Once you resolve these issues, don’t forget to inform your customers.
This entire process is called CLOSING THE LOOP.

9. But is it always possible to resolve customers’ queries then
and there?
NO
It’s not!
That leads us to the two approaches of Closing the Loop.

10. In the Inner Loop, after receiving the
feedback, the agents/concerned
department are able to resolve the
customer issues by themselves.
When the customer issues requires
structural improvements, they are
escalated to the concerned
departments and need approvals
from Department heads or even C-
suite. That’s Outer Loop.
Two ways of Closing the Loop.
Close the Loop
Inner Loop Outer Loop

11. Inner Loop Outer Loop
LEARN
ACT LISTEN
LISTEN
LEARN
ACT
HUDDLE
INDIVIDUAL ORGANISATION

12. INNERLOOP

13. Let’s take an example
This is the story of many!
Here are 2 issues flagged by customer.
For Employee/Agent, behavior is an Internal
Issue that needs to be solved. Behavior
issues could be due to additional workload or
no training on handling such situations
appropriately. This is your Inner Close loop.
The second issue is about stock availability,
the delivery SLA with the vendor which is of
72 hours. But on the merchant site, it
promised to be delivered in 24 hours. This is
your Outer Close loop, that needs SLA
revisions and agreement with Vendor.
A customer just shared a low score on the CSAT survey post
his call with the contact center.
Why?
Because the agent neither listened to their problem properly
nor provided an alternative solution. Instead, asked for
another follow-up with a promise of resolution of his product
delivery in the next 24 hours, while it has already been 48
hours since the given time.

14. After receiving a negative feedback agent or their lead can provide immediate
resolution of the particular customer issue.
If the feedback is about the service, it should reach the service team, if it is about
the product, then Product Manager or the Head of Engineering should be
involved, and the same goes for the other departments.
So, what is Inner Loop?

15. Why Inner Loop?
- Promotes individual rep’s and team learning.
- Provides autonomy to every rep to make their decisions.
- It makes the employee feel they are more closer to the customer and the
company trusts them to take the right decision for the customers
- Boosts customer engagement and morale.
- Results in a happier customer

16. How does it work/ The process?
Take the customer feedback
after every transaction at
each touchpoint across their
journey.
Thank the customer for
sharing their experience with
an automated email/sms.
Immediately send alerts to
the touchpoint teams so that
they can follow up with
customers
For example in case of Support touchpoint Agent, or mostly
the team lead follows up with the detractor and gain more
information. You can actually follow up with anyone who,
● has an unresolved issues,
● takes out time to share meaningful constructive criticism
● is really angry with the service or the product.
Take required actions on the
problem and communicate to
customers
1 2 3 4 5

17. How have our customers made Close loop successful?
- Start with just calling people who give a negative feedback
- Assign owner of touchpoint to be responsible for their team making follow up calls
- Coach Employees regularly on why it is important? Meeting can start from once in 2 weeks.
- Setup SLA like 48-72 hours for calling a detractor.
- Appreciate and Incentivize them on the basis of how many calls the employees make.
- Ask them to call promoters from time to time so they hear good things about themselves :) This acts
as a motivation form them
- Train them on how to analyze customer feedback, how to deep dive, segment data by operational
data. ( This way touchpoint owners would run on their own)
- Record the detailed feedback from customers at one place so its easier of your team to prioritize
strategic improvements.

18. So, how to coach your employees to close loop?
Many times the employees do not know what actions to take on the feedback or even improve. That’s
where you need to guide them through with Coaching.
Help your employees grow, improve their skill-set, and serve their customers better.
- Show them the bigger picture, on overall level what is the feedback given by customers
- How important it is for us to deliver on the promises we keep and it depends on them to make this
possible
- Guide them on how to take any negative feedback positively.
- Lead a call and guide them on how to take these calls with your ears open.
- Guide them on how to ask the right questions
- Guide them to not be defensive when customers speak out, instead empathise with them.

19. 1. Service Team: If the feedback is about the service. Agent itself or their manager
2. Product Team: If feedback is about the product, product managers/ux designers
3. CX Team: They are looped in on all kinds of customer issues. If the product team
doesn’t have the bandwidth
4. Senior Management: So, they know all kinds of the customer issues and how are
we responding to them.
Basically, it should be owned by the owner of that touchpoint and their teams
Who should own it?

20. Key Points about Inner Loop
- Timeliness is critical. Share the feedback with the touchpoint owners, team
members immediately after they receive a feedback, so that everything is
fresh in their mind
- Don’t just involve customer rep, involve anyone who is directly involved or can
learn from it.
- Feedback on any survey is sometimes not enough, people give random
comments on surveys following up with the customers provide a great deal of
information on their experience.

21. - It involves the whole company. Feedbacks shouldn't just be shared by the
frontline workers, but with everyone involved in the process so they can learn
more about the customer and improve.
- The positive feedback encourages the teams to do well
- The negative feedback communicates the customer expectations.
- All the teams get emotionally engaged with the customer.
- When employees are given authorization to act on customer feedback It
makes them they are a crucial part of the organization
How does it help your whole company?

22. OUTERLOOP

23. What is Outer Loop?
While in the Inner Loop all the involved individuals receives the customer feedback and
act on it instantly, the Outer Loop is different.
● It entertains complex issues that your agents/frontliners can’t resolve on their own.
● Issues that require system changes, policy updates, process improvements,
pricing, product features, etc. in line with customer expectations.
For example, if the price is too high or multiple complaints on not being able to
use a product’s feature.
● These kind of issues are often escalated across departments, involving senior
management and huge investments.

24. Purpose of Outer Loop
● Prioritize changes that employees and teams can’t make on their own.
● Gives voice to the employees. They communicate customer issues with the
management. This drives a cultural change in the organization.
● Employees feel valued and more involved with their work, it feels they have a
purpose.
● And the customers start believing that organization is truly customer centric.

25. How does it work?
Figure 2: The outer loop is a rigorous, transparent process that instills confidence and engagement
Implement
by testing
learning and
modifying
Identify and
propose
potential
actions
Other actions
surfaced by
business
(e.g. non customer
experience
actions)
Prioritize
action;
decide which
to implement
(PMO)
Approve
necessary
Resources
(PMO)
Comp
Bench-
marks
Other
employee
input
Operations
data
Synthesize
Front line
NPS
Communicate
Understand
root causes
Analyze feedback and data
Prioritize
opportunities
Develop solutions;
implement
Item triage shared with
employees to encourage full
transparency
Triage
and
assign
item to an
owner
Just do
A
Study
further
B
Defer/don’t do
C
If analysis
requires
significant
resourcing
Determine
root cause
If PMO decides
against
implementing
Encourage
adoption and
close loop
with
employees &
customers
Explain why
to employees
and close
loop with
customers

26. How does it work?
Gather feedback from the
following sources.
a. All the customer data
from the Inner Loop.
b. After analysis of the
operational + feedback
data
c. Employees ideas on
improving customer
service.
d. Insights from the
market.
Share the common
themes with the
respective teams.
Follow-up with the
customer and determine
the root cause behind
those issues
Identify and propose
potential actions of
improvement
Communicate with
both the employees
and customers
Develop solutions
implement by testing
learning and
modifying
Prioritize actions of
improvement with the
respective teams
1 2 3 4
7 6 5

27. How to prioritize the opportunities?
The list of initiatives should answer the following questions.
- What will be the initiative’s impact? Both for customers and Business
- How many customers will be impacted?
- How much it will move our business goals?
- How much effort will be required to implement the initiative?

28. Key points to remember!
- It requires significant investment.
- It typically demand both detailed analysis and a decision to invest resources.
- It almost always cut across functions.
- It identifies, prioritizes, allocates resources to and manages the customer-
friendly changes.
- It requires Project Managers to share reports about the progress of
improvements with all the teams involved. If you don’t have one, it is
advisable to appoint one from the CX team.
Talk about the challenge - convince other teams.

29. Challenges with the Outer Loop
- Incomplete source of input.
- Bringing all the teams together.
- Focus on one aspect of the business and ignoring the other.
- No track on the progress of the tasks.
- Lack of transparency.
- Improper communication with the customers and the employees.

30. How does it help your whole company?
- An effective outer loop makes employees feel supported and involves them
the company’s priorities.
- Encourage customer-centricity.
- Helps in prioritization and implementation of structural improvements.
- It’s feedback is used by process improvement teams to make better business
decisions.
- It is robust - takes input from customers, employees, and benchmarking
data.
- It is rigorous - always measures how it impacts retention, revenue, and
growth of the company.
- It is transparent - Boost employee morale and motivation.

31. If you want to close the loop on your customer feedback, or if have any more
information to add
please write to us at tanuj@neurosensum.com
Or
reach out on LinkedIn