The one thing that is associated with every entrepreneur is an idea. Their idea is what builds a business, streamlines a concept, invents a new product line or creates an empire.
It is this idea that forms the foundations of the company and allows for the entrepreneur to expand into new markets and find new customers.
It is also the one thing that can completely undermine a company, cost thousands in wasted money, and frustrate customers. How can you tell which idea is the right one? Feedback.
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It is essential that any entrepreneur place a heavy emphasis on feedback both within the business and externally. Feedback is what will determine the longevity and relevance of a product and service.
It will define how customers perceive the solution. And it will allow for constant iteration to ensure that any product remain relevant throughout its lifespan.
To ensure that your solutions remain relevant, you need to implement feedback loops throughout your business in the following ways:
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1. The Four Feedback Loops
The first feedback loop is implemented when an idea is still in its infancy. It’s the feedback garnered from research teams that constantly assess the viability of an idea and feed back on research into market, customer, competition and more. If done correctly, this feedback loop will kill a bad idea before it gets expensive.
The second feedback loop should commence in the build or creation phase. This ensures that there is constant feedback between the sales, build and research teams. This constant cycle of input will ensure that the solution is results-driven and market focused.
It’s a good idea to implement weekly meetings that allow for the teams to work on any adjustments in thinking and design that have arisen through research and market feedback.
The third feedback loop should be implemented between product design and client-facing teams. This kicks in from the moment that the product is launched and uses customer feedback to ensure that wrinkles are ironed out and issues dealt with from the outset.
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The fourth feedback loop is one that should be applied across all products and solutions in the business. This is the feedback loop between customer and support, where the former is provided with efficient help in the event of an issue and the latter feeds issues back to the build team to ensure that the issues are resolved.
2. The Definitive Actions
There is little point in investing into feedback loops that have people talking about problems if none of the feedback is heard or implemented. To ensure that any idea grows to become a viable business success story your first step is to ensure that you take the criticism on board and action it.
Put tools and software solutions in place that allow you to open up your feedback channels and document the information they provide. Then, put someone in charge of actioning the feedback and driving the cycle of feedback across customer, build, research, support and sales.
Their role is to get feedback from as many areas of the business as possible so that you always have the right information at hand when you need to make critical business decisions.
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