Whether a happy-or-not button in an airport, a product review, a phone call (which, for the past few months for me were all political surveys), or a survey sent to you asking how a service was, think about when and why you might choose to respond to a survey? While working at Kuja Kuja, I’ve begun to say yes and respond to more of these. I often am curious about the questions they ask, and if those questions are leading, or if I’m able to express my feedback in what I feel is an accurate way. However, I am doubtful that I will ever know if, or how, my feedback was used. In product reviews, I am always most impressed when I see the seller of the product responding to reviews, positive or negative. In a recent interaction with a large company with which I have a gift registry, I was so surprised to receive a direct customer support email from someone, Amanda, who asked for more information regarding my survey responses. This will make me more inclined to respond to the company’s survey requests in the future.
The communities we speak with are genuinely happy to have a discussion about the services they are receiving, and to provide feedback on those services. However, if they don’t see how the feedback is used, or the changes made based on their previous feedback, they become reluctant to speak again. Some will ask, why should we give more feedback when we still need the things we spoke about before?
In every conversation we equip ourselves with the knowledge and information about how feedback is being used, and now we are working to build further awareness through community campaigns, where we hope community members are inspired to provide feedback, learn how to provide that feedback, and understand how that feedback is used. If you’re a part of the humanitarian community and jargon, you may recognize this as “closing the loop”. Depending on the location and what tools are the best fit, we use sign posts, editable chalk boards with daily data snapshots, little books of stories of actions that our Insight Associates carry with them, and recently we’ve begun to discuss community campaigns over radio and social media.