By volitakim@gmail.com (Maira Volitaki)

Negative and positive feedback loops are used to draw attention to significant product or company issues. These types of feedback loops use customer or employee complaints to create long-term product or workplace solutions.

Here, we’ll dive into the definitions of negative and positive feedback loops, explain their benefits for your business, and provide examples and best practices, so you can ensure your company is using constructive customer and employee feedback to cultivate higher customer retention and a happier workplace.

The Definition of a Negative Feedback Loop

A negative feedback loop is a process where a company listens to customers’ complaints or grievances, and then uses that feedback to improve their products or customer service. It’s considered a loop because customers’ feedback (output) is used as constructive input on a redesign of their product, creating a circle.

The negative feedback loop benefits both businesses and customers. Namely, customers feel valued and respected by the business and are more likely to become long-term advocates for the brand, and the business’s design is improved to increase customer satisfaction.

Below, we analyze the three key benefits of a negative feedback mechanism for a business.

Benefits of Negative Feedback Loops

1. Product/Service Improvement

Negative feedback loops are essential for product and service improvement. Companies, especially in the software development niche, often struggle with product roadmaps and prioritizing features. This process can drain a lot of the company’s time and resources.

In these situations, negative feedback loops can act as a shortcut. By directly using customer feedback, brands can quickly identify areas where their products and services underperform and address these issues with their R&D teams.

Continuously improving product features and offerings also helps companies stay up-to-date and competitive. Brands can receive feedback directly using surveys and questionnaires, or indirectly using various methods such as tracking social mentions, which provides insights from public discussions and online conversations about their products or services.

A great example of a brand that uses indirect customer feedback is Slack. Even as the company grew, they prioritized the end-user experience and engaged with customers to understand their needs and preferences. Using a negative feedback loop, the Slack team pays close attention to feedback, even if customers do not explicitly request changes.

This has helped the platform to continue to expand. As Stewart Butterfield, CEO and co-founder of Slack expresses: “So it’s usually not direct … Instead, we look at how people are using it [Slack]. What problems they’re encountering. What they’re asking us about. Often, people, when they have questions, are either asking for clarification for how something works, or they’re asking for something new.

They might not be doing it directly. And so you have to learn how to interpret that. People aren’t necessarily perfect at telling you exactly what they want or what they need. But they are perfect at being satisfied or dissatisfied with something. And if you learn how to interpret and how to listen and how to respond, you can use …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron