I entered the business world at the ripe old age of 13, and it’s safe to say it took a while for people to take me seriously. It was a constant battle to prove myself, but amid all the mistakes, amused looks, and underestimation, it taught me some pretty invaluable lessons.
The most important, in my view, was to put feedback and data at the heart of everything I did and use feedback loops to turn that intelligence into action. Now, I want to share just what a difference they can make - if done right.
Feedback is gold dust
Put simply, a feedback loop is a process - a cycle - which allows a business to develop and improve one small step at a time. They require patience, an open mind, and long-term commitment, but are well worth all of this and more.
So, what do they look like on a practical level? Well, the basic skeleton contains just a few key steps - but in any loop, the non-negotiable first step is gathering your input. This is perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle. The feedback itself is the absolute gold dust - everything falls apart without it.
It’s vital not to have blinkers on when it comes to gathering this feedback, because the broader the set of inputs, the better. You shouldn’t just be searching for firsthand customer insights, picked up on doorsteps from your frontline staff. You also need third-party data that gives you a broader, more birds-eye view of your clientele.
Here I’m talking about publicly available data, whether it’s from a market research firm, an industry body, social media, or government sources. These data points add important context, ensuring feedback loops are holistic and rounded.
You always need a diverse set of data, so relevant inputs could also include internal sales figures or operational metrics. As long as the information is pertinent to your business, it's suitable.
Putting the data to work
Once you’ve got your inputs, the next vital step is analysis - combing through to identify patterns and extract lessons. Does the feedback reveal a fundamental, underlying problem? Is the data showing that customers’ priorities are shifting? When you’ve uncovered the core learnings, you should implement them across every part of your processes where they are relevant, leaving no stone unturned.
Of course, you then have to measure the results, because the changes you make are not always going to have the desired outcome first time around. You have to ask yourself: to what extent have these shifts made a difference? Has that difference been positive or negative? Has it streamlined your processes, or has it had unintended consequences that need to be addressed?
The beauty of a feedback loop is that these results can serve as entirely new inputs. If necessary, you can now marry your original input with your fresh results and go through continuous cycles until you see improvements.
This is where feedback loops really come into their own - when they keep on spinning continuously, taking fresh inputs into account on every rotation. That’s when they have the biggest impact.
In practice
Let me give you an example of what this looks like in practice. When I started my property care business, all of my previous experience told me that each service - from pool care and landscaping to pest control and janitorial - should remain a distinct, expert brand that stands on its own two feet to keep things simple and clear for customers. So that’s what we did. We spent big on building individual brands, websites, truck wraps, and more.
But when our sales team went out to talk to customers and cross-sell these different, individual services, they gathered direct customer feedback that our offering was “confused” and “clunky” - the opposite of what we intended. At this point, we knew we needed to build a bigger feedback loop with a broader, more complete set of inputs to get the whole story.
We went back out to market with in-person customer interviews, beta-tested a single brand concept through digital channels and received thousands of data points that completely broke down our original thesis. A single brand that offered different services, but a unified customer-facing experience generated far more positive feedback. So, we took this newfound data, analysed every aspect, and unified our entire portfolio under a single brand: Cerv Property Solutions.
This intelligence has and continues to inform almost every part of our processes. We used it to build a proprietary technology platform, create a single brand that uses colour to define service lines, and reorganize our team to unify every customer touchpoint.
It took us over four years, and many different iterations, but we have seen a remarkable 48% revenue spike in a four-month period and our customer retention rate has reached new highs. It’s delivered real, measurable results.
Don’t get me wrong, going through this cycle was easier said than done. It required me, and my entire team, to strip back our egos and truly listen to what the data and feedback were telling us.
If you want to extract maximum value from feedback loops, then you have to accept that you might never get everything perfect. Those who can embrace the not knowing and step outside of any preconceptions or accepted truths they might hold are always the ones who reap the rewards.
A relentless pursuit
This is something that I am extremely grateful to have learned early on in my career. From service delivery to customer experience, internal hiring processes to growth engines, I’ve learned that these loops can help any area of a business to improve.
Ultimately, the real secret is to be relentless with these loops. It’s having the patience to go through the process countless times and being excited by the fact that you don’t yet know where your product or service might end up.
Diving headfirst into the iterative process, while daunting, is the single most valuable thing you can do as a business leader. And if you haven’t tried it before, I’d strongly recommend that you do. You won’t regret it.
