Feedback is not a one-way street

Why feedback is an exchange and why people deserve to know what happened next.

We hand over data all day. Mostly without noticing.

We accept cookies. We let an app know where we are so it can tell us where the nearest pharmacy is. We scroll, pause and tap, and somewhere a system learns a little more about what we are likely to want next - sometimes before we even know it ourselves. In return, we get a free feed, a map that knows the way, an app we never paid for.

It's a trade, even if few of us remember agreeing to it.

A request for feedback is something else entirely.

Nobody collects it quietly from the background. It asks us to stop, think, find words for an opinion and type them in. It wants our attitudes, our needs, our considered judgement. It costs us time, thought, and energy.

So what do we get in return?

Most of the time, nothing. Maybe a hope. I give the shipping company a 2, and I hope that, just maybe, my next package arrives a little faster.

But I rarely know.

What we do in research

I have spent ten years doing qualitative research with customers, consumers, patients and employees. One thing has been remarkably consistent. We almost always offer people something for taking part, usually compensation for their time. That feels only fair.

And yet, even the people we pay want to know one more thing.

What happens with what I told you? Will it change anything?

They aren't asking for a bigger reward. They are asking for an answer.

But what makes it strange is that in customer feedback, the answer almost never comes. We ask people for their input. We rarely tell them what has changed.

Why is that? Is it because nothing has changed? I hope not, and in my experience our clients listens; adapt their services; design new solutions; make different decisions; work in different ways; are more aligned etc. All valuable and reasonable outputs of gathering customer feedback.  

But from the outside, there is no way to tell a company that listened to their customers from one that didn't. The person who gave the answer certainly can't.

What if feedback came with a thank-you?

Think of an NGO that writes back: “Thank you for your contribution. Because of you, this happened.” It takes a few sentences and it closes the loop.

I would argue that people would give better, more thought-through answers if they knew in advance what their feedback would be used for and/or if they heard afterwards what it had made possible. Not because they are being flattered, but because they can finally see that their time went somewhere.

Not every suggestion can become an action. Sometimes feedback confirms what already works. Sometimes it reveals a problem that takes time to solve. Closing the loop means explaining what we learned, what we decided and why – not promising everyone their preferred outcome.

Today, it often feels like the opposite. More requests, and less information on why, how and for what.

Human data is a powerful resource. The people who provide it are not a resource. They are people, and they deserve to be treated that way.

So, before the next survey goes out, three questions deserve some reflection time:

• Will or can we tell people what we do with their answers, before they give them?  

• How will we tell them what changed, once it has?

• And if nothing changed, are we bold enough to say so?

If we want people to keep giving us their attention, we need to show them that we gave their answers ours.

Want to make feedback feel like an exchange rather than an extraction? Let’s talk.