Feedback Isn’t a Suggestion Box. It’s Risk Insurance.

Written by: Sandra Ditski – Digital Efficiency Consulting Group – DECG

Read Time: 3 min

Most bad launches don’t fail because the team is lazy. They fail because the team is confident. Confidence is adorable until it’s expensive.

Customer feedback is how you buy down risk before you ship a policy change, roll out a new workflow, or ‘simplify’ pricing in a way that mysteriously increases invoices.

What makes feedback “strategic”

Strategic feedback has three traits: it’s tied to decisions, it’s gathered consistently, and it’s translated into action. If feedback lives in a slide deck that gets dusted off once a quarter, that’s not strategy. That’s museum curation.

• Decision-linked: you know what choices it will inform (onboarding, billing, support, renewals).
• Repeatable: you collect it the same way over time so trends mean something.
• Actionable: someone owns the loop and has a deadline for a response or fix.

The silent majority problem (and why escalations lie)

The loudest customers are not ‘most customers.’ They’re simply the ones with enough frustration, time, or caffeine to tell you about it. Most people churn quietly. That’s why relying on escalations is like judging the weather by one dramatic thunderclap.

• Pair complaints with passive signals: renewal drop, feature abandonment, repeat contacts.
• Add a one-question exit prompt to cancellations: “What pushed you over the edge?”
• Track friction themes, not just volume (billing confusion vs. product bugs vs. response time).

A 15-minute leadership habit

If you want ‘feedback’ to become an asset, give it a calendar slot. Weekly. Non-negotiable. Fifteen minutes is enough to spot themes before they become fires.

1. Review one trend: NPS/CSAT/CES or ticket drivers.
2. Read five verbatims out loud (yes, out loud).
3. Pick one fix: clarify, automate, train, or redesign a handoff.
4. Assign an owner and a ship date.

Do this and you’ll notice something sneaky: decisions get calmer. Fewer surprises show up wearing a clown wig.

CTA: Choose one ‘moment of truth’ this week (onboarding, support close, renewal). Add a two-question pulse, and schedule your first 15-minute review.

Three questions before you change anything

Before you change a workflow, feature, or policy, run this quick pre-mortem. You’re not asking customers to design the solution. You’re asking them to expose the landmines.

1. What problem are customers actually trying to solve (outcome)?
2. Where do they lose time, confidence, or patience today (friction)?
3. What’s the fastest small improvement we can ship that reduces that friction?

A tiny ‘risk score’ you can use today

Score each upcoming change from 1–5 on these four dimensions. Anything that totals 14+ gets mandatory customer validation before launch.

• Switching cost: how easy is it for a customer to leave you?
• Frequency: how often does the customer touch this process?
• Surprise factor: does it change what they expect to happen?
• Support impact: will it create new tickets/calls?

This is not scientific. It’s practical. You’re building a habit of thinking like your customer, not like your org chart.

Micro-example: pricing ‘simplification’

If you’ve ever watched a team ‘simplify’ pricing and accidentally create a support backlog, you already know the pattern. Customers don’t hate change. They hate surprise. A pre-launch pulse to 10 customers can surface the one confusing line item that becomes 200 angry emails later.

CTA: Choose one moment of truth this week and start a two-question pulse plus a 15-minute weekly review.

Footnotes

1. Zendesk, “92 customer service statistics you need to know in 2025,” Zendesk Blog (updated Aug 12, 2025). URL: https://www.zendesk.com/blog/customer-service-statistics/ Quote used: “more than 50 percent will switch after only one bad experience.”
2. PwC, “Customer experience is everything” (PwC Consumer Intelligence Series; accessed Jan 5, 2026). URL: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/library/consumer-intelligence-series/future-of-customer-experience.html Quote used: “Among all customers, 73% point to experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions.”