Feedback Management
It’s a foundational component to any machine. Whether it’s a business or an electrical or a mechanical device, principles are equally applicable. Feedback’s main objective is to facilitate course correction. The process of feedback management revolves around data. Gathering, analyzing, and acting on this data are the three main parts.
Gather feedback data.
It’s crucial to get this part right, because other parts depend on it. To get this part right, you must ask the right questions. Enough questions to gain good understanding from the responses but not too many to overwhelm the audience. Generally 5–7 questions per questionnaire should suffice. The questions must also be specific and allow aggregation in responses. Numbers are easier to aggregate than words. So, phrase questions that your audience can respond to with a 1–5 value. Hand your questionnaire to as many people as you can to gather as much data as possible. You obviously have to target your audience appropriately, for example, employees responding to customer survey is likely to result in biased responses. You also need a large enough data set in responses to reduce significance of individual biases.
Analyze feedback data.
Once you have sufficient data, it’s time to categorize and aggregate them. Categorizing leads to clearer identification of issues pertaining to a specific subject, instead of having to deal with all the subjects simultaneously. Aggregation just summarize the responses, so you get birds eye view at a glance. Be sure to break down your aggregates by timeframes and related events, to understand correlations.
Take action.
This is the part where you get to adjust course to meet your strategic objectives and if you do this regularly, your necessary corrective measures should be small and more manageable. Analyzing the feedback data should give you a clear understanding of necessary corrective actions. If they don’t, then adjust the questions in your survey and try again.
Leverage free tools.
There are free sites and tools available to help you with your feedback management. One such tool is https://shaebaratings.com/, the free version allows you to setup category based questionnaire and QR to easily gather responses and shows you aggregated responses.
