This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

Some years ago, a survey popped up on my Verizon Wireless mobile phone. It was just a few questions, including the “ultimate” one: How likely would you be to recommend us to a friend or colleague?

So I keyed in the score I felt the company deserved at the time—a 3 out of a possible 10.

A few days later, a Verizon area manager called me and asked if I’d take a few minutes to discuss how she might help improve my experience. I tried to be constructive, but eventually a deep reservoir of accumulated resentment came spilling out: complex pricing schemes, contracts designed to trap me into wasting minutes—you get the idea.

And so did she. She apologized for what had become common industry tactics and said Verizon was committed to changing many of them. In the meantime, she had analyzed my recent bills and said the company could provide me with a more suitable plan. Another manager called back soon to do just that.

Let’s look closely at what happened here. My response to Verizon Wireless’s survey didn’t disappear into a black hole, the fate of many responses to company surveys. Instead, a manager closed the loop with me, acknowledged my feedback and probed to learn exactly what my concerns were. Another manager then fixed my immediate problem. The new plan made me a far happier customer. Better yet, I felt like the feedback I gave had been worth my time: Someone listened.

But the benefits of closing the loop don’t stop there. The two managers involved got the satisfaction of knowing they had helped me. And Verizon also shares this kind of feedback internally, so my complaints provided marketers and operations people with new data that that could revamp or eliminate customer-unfriendly policies. In an industry where the cost of acquiring customers is high, Verizon executives know that the economics of loyalty are particularly powerful. Today, the company ranks highest in loyalty (as measured by NPS^®) among America’s major mobile-phone carriers.

Closing the loop is a central element of the Net Promoter System^® that my colleague Rob Markey and I describe in our book. It brings that customer’s voice right inside the organization and allows employees to see and hear how they are creating or destroying loyalty—and what they can do to improve matters. That conversation transforms a statistical metric into something much more personal and motivational. It offers the satisfaction of a job well done when the comments are positive, and it provides specific and actionable course corrections and incentives for improvement when they are negative.

And when customers know that you have heard and are acting on their feedback, you are far more likely to get thoughtful, constructive feedback in the future.

Net Promoter^®, Net Promoter System^®, Net Promoter Score^® and NPS^® are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.