Lately we’ve noticed more and more companies with a unique job description: A marketing staff member responsible for monitoring online communities like Yelp for angry customer comments about their brand.This is like mopping up the water instead of fixing the leak.

For years we’ve counseled our clients to be mindful of making assumptions about how customer feedback affects them. “Your customers are already grading you”, we’d say. “You just don’t know what the grades are.”

Not providing a vigorous, visible means for your customers to give you feedback doesn’t eliminate feedback. It just removes you from the loop.

The advent of social networking sites and consumer reviews online has added an even more dangerous pitfall to companies who fail to engage their customers. Before, customers without a readily available means to share unpleasant experiences directly with you simply grumbled to each other. Now they have the ability to grumble to everyone.

Old fashioned feedback systems like comment cards or the “contact us” email link on a website were never really intended to be healthy, two-way feedback loops. More often than not they were essentially complaint boxes. To most consumers it’s easier and more gratifying to go to the web with their grievance.

Asking for customer feedback in a visible, vigorous way pays many dividends. One of them is that a significant portion of customers who have a bad experience with your company will come to you with it before they go to the rest of the world.