Bridging the Feedback Generation Gap to Elevate Customer Experience

Customer expectations aren’t just evolving; they’re fragmenting across channels, devices, and communities. 

Guests and consumers continue to voice their opinions, but the venues where those conversations take place have multiplied. For organizations committed to delivering exceptional experiences, the challenge is no longer whether feedback exists, but whether it’s present in the places where it now lives.

Robert Levine, CEO of ComOps, recently shared his perspective, underscoring how today’s customer voice has migrated across channels. His central insight is straightforward yet consequential: feedback hasn’t diminished; it has simply relocated. In fact, nearly 60% of customers now share opinions in public forums and peer-to-peer communities, well beyond traditional brand-owned channels. 

Understanding where feedback now lives is only the beginning. 

The real opportunity lies in how organizations adapt their operations, technology, and decision-making to meet customers in those new spaces and take action, because when organizations close the loop, 75% of customers say their opinion of the brand improves.

Why Hospitality Teams Must Listen Beyond Traditional Channels

When Feedback Moves, Businesses Must Move With It

“Customers are still talking; they’ve just switched rooms.”

The simplicity of that statement belies the magnitude of the shift. It points to three fundamental changes in how today’s audiences express opinions and expectations:

• Traditional channels are no longer the default. Surveys, comment cards, email prompts, and post-interaction questionnaires still matter, but they no longer dominate the customer feedback ecosystem.
  
  
• Public and peer-to-peer platforms have become the new frontline. Social media posts, online reviews, community forums, and messaging apps now capture customer sentiment in real time, with Gen Z twice as likely as Boomers to post on third-party review sites, accelerating this shift.
  
  
• Listening only in legacy channels creates operational blind spots. When organizations focus solely on inbound, closed-loop feedback, they miss critical insights that often drive perception and behavior.

These shifts are particularly relevant to hospitality and service organizations, where guests share experiences the moment they unfold.

Why This Matters for Hospitality Operations

At ComOps, we help clients strengthen contact center operations, optimize revenue performance, modernize digital engagement, and capture the customer’s authentic voice. The feedback generation gap sits squarely at the intersection of all four.

Contact Centers Must Hear More Than Inbound Calls

If your service teams are tuned only to calls and emails, you miss the parallel conversations unfolding on social platforms, third-party review sites, messaging apps, and community threads. These “other rooms” often reveal issues—and opportunities—far earlier than formal channels.

Guest Experience Now Unfolds in Real Time

Guests no longer wait for a post-stay survey to describe their experience. They share it live, often within minutes of a delight or a misstep. Without monitoring and responding in those moments, hotels risk losing the chance to recover service or elevate the stay.

Digital Innovation Is Now a Prerequisite for Listening

Modern customer engagement requires modern tools. Chatbots, social listening platforms, integrated messaging systems, and journey-based touchpoints help brands meet customers where they actually are, not where they used to be.

Sentiment Measurement Must Span Both Closed and Open Channels

A strong survey score can mask weak public sentiment. When organizations rely heavily on private surveys, they often miss trends developing in the broader ecosystem. Understanding both sides of the feedback equation is essential to managing reputation and experience holistically.

Four Strategic Actions to Close the Feedback Generation Gap

1. Expand Your Listening Horizons

Implement tools and processes that track social media, review sites, forums, and chat. These insights should connect seamlessly to your contact center, guest experience platforms, and operational dashboards.

2. Capture Feedback in Real Time

Prompt feedback throughout the journey via mobile messages, in-stay chat, or brief post-interaction micro-surveys. This mirrors the way customers naturally share today and surfaces issues earlier.

3. Turn Public Feedback Into Operational Action

Build workflows that allow public feedback to trigger real operational responses. If a guest shares a complaint on Instagram, your contact center should be able to route it quickly so operations, guest experience, and even revenue teams can respond and recover.

4. Align Metrics Across Every Channel

Integrate survey data, open-platform sentiment, and operational performance into a single view. When survey results trend positive but social sentiment trends negative, the divergence signals a meaningful blind spot.

The message behind the Feedback Generation Gap is clear: feedback hasn’t vanished—it has migrated. For hospitality brands and contact centers, listening in these new spaces and closing the loop, where 75% of customers report a more positive perception, now carries the same weight as service delivered through traditional channels.

At ComOps, leadership in customer experience starts with broadening how you listen and strengthening how you act. 

The rooms have changed. The question is: are you in them?