The Feedback Flywheel
Written by: Sandra Ditski- Digital Efficiency Consulting Group – DECG
Read Time: 3 min
If your feedback program requires customers to write a dissertation, you’ll mostly hear from extremes: the very happy and the very furious. Everyone else is busy living their lives.
Design rules that raise response quality
- Keep it short: one score question, one ‘why’ question.
- Keep it close: ask right after the experience, not two weeks later.
- Keep it contextual: reference what just happened (support case, onboarding step, renewal).
Listen beyond surveys
Surveys are one channel. Customers leave feedback everywhere else too: tickets, calls, reviews, renewals, cancellations, even silence (inactivity).
- Pull weekly themes from support tickets (tag them, don’t just count them).
- Add a ‘reason for contact’ field to support intake (dropdown + optional note).
- Review churn and cancellation notes monthly with the same rigor as pipeline.
Timing: ask at ‘moments of truth’
Certain moments produce unusually honest feedback: after onboarding milestones, after a support interaction closes, after renewal, or after a long period of inactivity.
- Pick 3 moments of truth (max).
- Define what ‘good’ looks like at each moment (speed, clarity, confidence).
- Set a weekly cadence to review results and assign one action.
The one trap to avoid
Don’t collect feedback you can’t respond to. Nothing torches trust faster than asking for input and then ghosting.
CTA: For the next 14 days, run a two-question pulse only at one moment of truth. If you can’t act on what you learn, reduce the scope until you can.
Two-question templates you can steal
- After support: “How satisfied are you with the outcome?” + “What’s one thing we could improve?”
- After onboarding: “How easy was it to get started?” + “What got in your way?”
- After delivery: “Did this meet your expectations?” + “What would ‘better’ look like?”
Survey hygiene checklist
- No more than 60 seconds to complete.
- One score question, one ‘why’ question, optional comment.
- Mobile-friendly and sent within 1 hour of the experience.
- A named owner who reviews results weekly.
- A documented ‘close the loop’ path for low scores.
If you can’t meet the last two bullets, reduce scope. Fewer listening posts, better follow-through.
Sampling: avoid the ‘only angry people reply’ trap
If you only send surveys to customers who opened a ticket, you’re sampling pain. Useful, but incomplete. Try sampling across the journey: new customers, steady-state users, and renewals.
- Send to a random slice of customers each week (not everyone, not never).
- Rotate segments: new, high-value, at-risk, long-tenure.
- Keep the same questions so you can compare over time.
One more trap: leading questions
Avoid questions that beg for compliments. Ask about outcomes: speed, clarity, confidence, ease.
How to close the loop on low scores
Collection without response is basically a trust tax. Here’s a lightweight path that doesn’t melt your team.
- If a score is low, trigger a follow-up task automatically (ticket, CRM task, or shared inbox).
- Respond with one sentence of acknowledgment and one question to clarify.
- Log the theme and route it to the weekly review.
- If it’s systemic, assign a fix with a ship date. If it’s individual, resolve and confirm the customer is good.
Yes, this is a process. Congratulations, you now have a competitive advantage.
Copy-paste follow-up email
“Thanks for the feedback. I saw your score and I want to understand what happened. What was the biggest friction point for you? We’re reviewing this weekly and I’ll follow up with what we change.”
CTA: Run a two-question pulse at one moment of truth for 14 days, then act on one fix and tell customers.
Footnotes
- Staffino CX Academy, “Closed-Loop Feedback: Meaning and Best Practices” (Mar 14, 2024; accessed Jan 9, 2026). URL: https://blog.staffino.com/what-is-closed-loop-feedback/
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