Editor’s note: Roberta O’Keith is director, CX consulting, at customer experience and market research provider Confirmit, Kansas City, Kan. 

Over the past few years, focus on using the voice of the customer to improve experiences has emerged as a top priority for many that want to differentiate their company. Unfortunately, the growing need for feedback is facing a strong headwind as customers grow increasingly reluctant to take surveys. Why? Respondents often feel that their efforts will go unnoticed. Many companies fail to follow up with the customer, close the loop internally or leverage the insights to make tangible improvements to their business.

The seemingly endless appetite for more feedback also leads to an even larger problem: feedback silos. These emerge as different departments within a single organization try to fill the feedback gap conducting more, often redundant, surveys that apply only to their areas of interest. Add MR organizations conducting respondent research on top of this and companies face an uphill struggle trying to see the big picture. 

Data silos are a common business challenge especially when multiple feedback management tools are used. They make it impossible to consolidate feedback for an organization to get a clear, holistic view of the customer experience. They impede the ability to take effective action, and successfully closing the loop becomes nearly impossible. This challenge tends to be self-perpetuating and means that improving the customer experience remains a distant reality.

Despite significant investment in voice of the customer programs, decision makers still aren’t getting the insights they need:

  • 54 percent of decision makers don’t have the data they need to guide strategic business decisions;
  • 44 percent of decision makers say that organizational information silos are the biggest challenge preventing them from using data effectively; and
  • only 4 percent of companies say they have the right people, tools and data to draw meaningful insights – and act on them. 

It is important to understand, however, that decision makers are not suffering from an absence of raw data. Quite the contrary! Most businesses are swimming in raw data from across their organization. A study by Forrester found that approximately 98 percent of companies are collecting feedback but only 15 percent are making organizational improvements based on that data. 

Worse still, only 8 percent of those companies ever close the loop. This is not because businesses don’t want to improve. It is because feedback silos make it impossible. They prevent businesses from using data effectively to improve experiences. As for trying to anticipate behavior, drive organizational improvement and maximize innovation and profitability – forget it.

Many businesses have issues, primarily with disparate feedback held in multiple systems. Not to mention different reporting approaches and analysis tools. So, when the executive team wants to see a holistic view, it is either a monumental effort to pull it all together or it is completely impossible.

Eliminating data silos

Struggling with siloed feedback is likely to end up in one or two ways. Either, you waste time trying to manually pull it together, or worse miss out on valuable insights altogether. Ultimately, you need to eliminate silos, avoid the costs of missed opportunities and make better, faster business decisions. 

Follow these three primary steps to help get you there:

  • Set clear expectations: Data silos accumulate over a long period of time – meaning the data that already exists within an organization is likely overwhelming. Therefore, when looking to tackle these silos and rework your data collection process, it’s important to make your strategy and goals clear to the stakeholders and decision makers – i.e., this will not be a set it and forget it tactic. It’s long-term, ongoing and flexible and something that will need to be consistently worked on – even after you start seeing positive results.  
  • Adjust your goals when necessary: Business requirements and objectives change over time. Although it’s important to identify upfront goals in a project like this, it’s also critical to continue to identify new opportunities and remain nimble and flexible throughout the process of feedback collection and data analysis. This might mean conducting an audit of the feedback projects across the company and making some tough decisions about what should continue and what needs to stop – at least for now.
  • Don’t be afraid to conduct an audit: Just like knowing when to adjust your goals, know when to adjust your timeline. Before launching a survey, it’s smart to conduct an audit to make sure the survey is not only asking the right questions but asking them in the right way and getting the data you need. Audits will help you know when to pivot (and how) before launching the survey more broadly. Start small, get it right and only expand when you’re ready. 

In addition to these tips, it’s also critical to know when to ask for help. Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees, so someone on the outside can provide you with the expertise to build and implement your program, as well as targeted help in specific areas. 

With these tips in mind, businesses can begin to eliminate feedback silos so that data can be analyzed properly to help drive insights and action. Feedback – from customers, employees, partners and more is no longer just nice to have. It is a vital element to business success. Make sure you can hear everyone and make smart decisions quickly.