---
title: Relationships are all about respect
---

One of our biggest takeaways working in this space continues to be this.

| View in browser Hi there,   One of our biggest takeaways working in this space continues to be this:   ✨ If you show people respect, they will show you it back ✨   It’s a lesson we probably all apply in our personal lives, but one that seems to be forgotten in the business world.   In particular, when it comes to customer relationships, it seems that businesses continue to do things like:   Underfunding customer service  Disempowering frontline teams (account managers to customer success) Collecting customer feedback and not acting on it   All these things allow customer relationships to fall by the wayside.    They don’t show that you care and they, therefore, enable the situation where an important chunk of revenue will churn each year—likely without much of a discussion in advance.   We had the CustomerGauge Awards last week (round-up of what we learned here).   During one of the acceptance speeches, we heard something spoken back to us that we’ve been teaching our customers for years:   “\[When closing the loop\] the most common response we get is ‘oh, I didn’t think anyone actually read my responses’. We’ve even had messages from non-responders we followed up with who said ‘you know what, next time I’m going to respond because I didn’t realize anyone did anything with the surveys’.”—Gemma Beddow, Briggs Equipment   Case in point.    Most people are so used to filling out surveys—giving feedback—and hearing nothing in return, that they don’t bother doing it anymore.    And voice of customer teams wonder why their survey response rates are so low?   In our Best Practice Guide for Closing the Loop, we share some original data from our own customers:    “Businesses who closed the loop after running an NPS survey had three times the number of promoters the next time they ran the survey (compared to those who didn’t have a closed-loop process).” We’ve seen again and again that closing the loop is in your interest—higher NPS scores; better customer retention; and increasingly better survey response rates.   But, we believe that respect and reciprocity should be the most powerful motivator behind closing the loop with 100% of survey respondents.   You asked for help, your customer offered their help, and you owe it to your relationship with them to let them know (1) it’s appreciated and (2) how their feedback is going to help.   For those of you who have been closing the loop actively, please let us know by responding to this email—what impact have you seen?   What advice would you give to others in this community? How can they convince their company to build a process? (With permission, we’ll share your responses)   For those of you wanting to improve in this area—here’s our NPS Handbook on closing the loop to get you started.   With love,   CustomerGauge (aka the Gaugies) CustomerGauge, 3 Burlington Woods Drive, Burlington, MA 01803, United States, +1-844-211-3932 Unsubscribe Manage preferences |
| --- |