1. Implementing a closed-loop customer experience (CX)
program in your organization can have a profound effect
on Net Promoter Score®
(NPS) and customer satisfaction
(CSAT) scores. The key to this is creating alerts based on
constructive and negative feedback from your customers.
These alerts then go to employees who can close the loop
by providing assistance to these customers.
One benefit is that your customers have their challenges
quickly addressed by authorized employees. But, this
type of customer feedback can have additional benefits
for your organization.
By thoroughly analyzing interactions with customers, your
employees can identify trends and process improvements
that can increase customer loyalty, reduce customer churn
and create differentiated customer experiences while
improving operational efficiency. Following a set of best
practices can help your organization achieve these results
from your closed-loop feedback program.
Determine Objectives and Metrics
Start by identifying the areas that are most critical to
your organization’s goals and then determine the metrics
against which the program will be measured. It is critical
to select metrics that will provide a comprehensive view
of the business, similar to a balanced scorecard. Your
business metrics, such as reducing customer churn,
should align with operational metrics, such as the time
from feedback escalation to response to the customer.
The goals and metrics you choose will guide the
implementation of your closed-loop program. As you
determine the goals and metrics, establish benchmarks
before you implement your program so that you will
know the current baseline for each metric. Baseline
metrics are critical to measure improvement and validate
return-on-investment (ROI) goals.
Key Closed-Loop Processes
A core set of processes is integral to implementing a
successful closed-loop feedback program. The core
closed-loop process is at the top of your process hierarchy.
The key steps in this process are:
• Capture feedback
• Trigger alerts
• Assign, prioritize and track feedback alerts
• Analyze problem
• Resolve problem
• Communicate with the customer
• Identify trends and process improvements
Analysis, resolution and customer communication is a
sub-process within itself. Sometimes additional information
is needed from the customer to correctly understand
and resolve the issue. Depending on the number and
complexity of underlying problems, customer interaction
may be an iterative process until resolution.
Best Practices for Implementing
a Closed-Loop CX Program
Executive Perspectives

2. Executive Perspectives
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Not all triggered feedback alerts will run smoothly through
the core closed-loop process. Supporting processes
with assigned roles and responsibilities are critical to
the health of the program. These processes include:
• Trigger alert management
• Feedback alert tracking and internal service-level
agreement (SLA) management
• Feedback alert coverage and reassignment
• Continuous program improvement
Building Employee Buy-In
Implementing a closed-loop CX program involves
changes within the organizational culture. Be sure to
include employees of all levels as part of the planning,
pilot and implementation teams. When it is time to
implement your closed-loop program, it is imperative
to educate, reinforce and continuously demonstrate to
employees that this will not be a “big brother” monitoring
system. To encourage employee buy-in to the program,
you should:
• Explain what the feedback and reporting means to
the employees and management.
• Share the “triggers” that will raise alerts.
• Teach employees how to use feedback to improve
their performance and the customer experience.
• Implement an employee feedback process using
surveys or discussion forums so all employees feel
empowered to recommend improvements to the
customer journey.
• Acknowledge those employees who contribute
recommendations that are implemented.
• Share the economic impact of the closed-loop process
with employees.
Feedback and Case Management Systems
In many organizations, the employees who are responsible
for resolving feedback alerts are spread across multiple
departments. The simplest approach for keeping them all
in the loop is to use a single, integrated enterprise feedback
and case management solution. A “case” is created by a
feedback alert and is “opened” and “closed” during the time
required to resolve a problem. Core capabilities of this
system should include:
• Triggering of alerts based on selected criteria, such as detected
customer emotion and low promoter or satisfaction scores.
• Tracking and aligning issues through user-defined criteria,
such as business unit, product/service, or stage in the
customer journey.
• Assigning and prioritizing cases automatically to help
ensure timely responses and balanced workloads.
• Monitoring case status, resolution times, and audit
trails centrally, across all cases, to help ensure follow-up
and closure.
• Integrating with enterprise systems, such as sales and
marketing automation and customer service.
By using an integrated feedback and case management
solution, you can proactively and quickly resolve issues,
drive company-wide action and accountability, and prevent
future issues.
Conclusion
The best practices discussed in this paper have been used with
repeated success by Verint®
customers. In combination with the
Verint’s proven solutions for speech, engagement and community
analytics, these practices have helped organizations achieve a
level of service that drives higher rates of customer satisfaction
and loyalty, agent productivity and operational efficiency.