If you’re lucky, you have customers who will take the time to write to or otherwise contact your company with feedback. (Unlucky companies have customers that just cancel / stop choosing your company and tell their friends how little they like your company.)
What does your company do after it receives feedback, though? You can share the information with engineers, pass on praise accordingly, and so on. However, those options and the procedures that most companies seem to follow leave out the most important aspect of the feedback process – the customer.
It’s really great to see companies taking time and investing effort into taking action based on customer feedback, but all too often, these same companies completely miss the ball when it comes to responding to customers and letting them know that their feedback is being taken seriously.
When a customer takes the time to provide feedback to your company, take the time to reach out to them and let them know what you’re doing as a result of their feedback. As you make progress on changing whatever based on whatever their feedback was, keep the customer in the loop. If you don’t plan to make any of the changes that a particular customer suggests, at least say that you read their letter or email over, explain why or why not you’re going to do what they suggest, and that you encourage them to write in with further feedback.
Reaching out to customers who write to your company with ideas and suggestions is critical. Even if you’re making changes based on the feedback you receive, you need to tell customers that so they’re aware of what’s happening. Otherwise, customers think their feedback is being ignored or dismissed.