With well-informed and tech-savvy buyers in control, can you capitalize on VoC for a competitive edge?
According to Deloitte, companies that prioritize customer-centricity experience a 60% higher profitability compared to those that do not focus on the customer. The times have changed today and products often have similar features, distinguishing yourself through exceptional customer experiences is the only way to stay competitive.
To enhance customer experiences, gaining insights into customer needs and perspectives is important, and this is where the Voice of Customer (VoC) research comes in. Actively listening to customers enables improvements in customer retention, referral rates, reputation, employee satisfaction, and more. Companies employing effective VoC best practices consistently witness year-on-year revenue growth.
Are CX and VOC the same?
The straightforward answer is no.
Voice of Customer is part of CX and excelling at it can enhance your customer experience journey and help you align with your customers’ thought processes on a better level.
Voice of Customer Vs. Customer Experience
Voice of the Customer helps companies align customer expectations and the actual customer experience provided by the company
CX includes all the interactions of a company with its customers throughout the purchasing process. This includes marketing, sales, customer service, and every point of contact, representing the cumulative impact of all customer interactions with your brand.
VoC and the Secret to the Customer Journey
Implementing a VoC program
Interview customers
Customer interviews are one technique you can use to gather VoC data. While interviews are time-intensive, they often give you some of the most valuable feedback.
Conducting an in-depth interview opens the window to really personalized, in-depth research. Whether in person, over the phone, or through video chat, interviewers have the opportunity to dig into the customer’s responses and pull out additional insights that other VoC research techniques may miss.
For example, if a customer indicates they struggled with a particular aspect of your product, the interviewer can dig in there and gather more specific details about what the problem was, why it happened, and how your company might fix it.
Plus, customers often view this type of engagement as the most personalized, meaning it can be an opportunity to nurture individual customer relationships, too.
Survey customers
Customer surveys are one of the most flexible methods for gathering Voice of the Customer data -surveys can include three questions posed immediately after signup, they can be in-depth, 100-point questionnaires sent to your most engaged customers via email, or they can be everything and anything in between.
Surveys are also an eminently scalable option for VoC research. Once the questionnaire is built, you can use it to survey as many customers as you can get to fill it out.
To that end, they can serve as a useful filter for identifying which customers you want to get more details and feedback from, via another, more in-depth VoC technique (like interviews or focus groups).
Plus, surveys are one of the best techniques for gathering both quantitative and qualitative feedback — you can easily include quantitative ratings along with open-ended qualitative questions.
Conduct focus groups
Focus groups, similar to customer interviews, are often done in person. The primary difference is that focus groups involve a small group of customers, instead of being conducted one-on-one.
The group of customers is gathered together along with a moderator. From there, the moderator presides over a (often free-flowing) discussion about the brand, product, or industry.
As a source of Voice of the Customer data, focus groups are one of the best ways to conduct more exploratory research — in their discussions, groups may often touch on things your company may never have thought to ask about.
Plus, the back and forth between customers can help to draw out consensus and deeper details that other research techniques may gloss over.
Focus groups can also be useful when the feedback required is more specific: seeing how customers perceive a particular new product, for example, or gauging their reactions to a rebrand or advertisement.
Offer a feedback form
Regardless of whether you’re actively seeking Voice of the Customer feedback or not, it’s a good idea to have a form available where customers can share their feedback at any given time. This is separate from your Customer Support operation, and it can be an invaluable way to keep a pulse on how customers feel about your brand and product.
Often hosted right on your website, a feedback form allows customers to share their thoughts whenever they arise. That’s useful because it provides unsolicited feedback — meaning each customer who submits a form was inspired to do it, whether by a positive or negative experience.
Feedback forms can also help you catch emerging trends on the Voice of the Customer, even when you aren’t actively looking for them.
Talk to customer-facing employees
With all the emphasis on going out and soliciting customer feedback, it’s easy to forget that you have employees within your team who are already well-versed in the Voice of the Customer. Team members who talk with customers regularly are often your best window into the customer’s mind.
That includes, most notably, your Support team, who spend the majority of their time with customers. When problems arise (like a software glitch or a product deficiency), your Support team will often be the first to know and the first to identify widespread problems from isolated issues.
Other teams, like Sales, are also on the front lines of listening to customers’ needs and trying to match them up with what you offer. They can offer invaluable details on customer pain points, objections, and why deals may be lost to competitors.
Building a Voice of the Customer Program
Implementing a voice-of-customer program is crucial for enhancing customer loyalty and refining product offerings. Engaging various stakeholders ensures diverse perspectives in seeking customer feedback.
After forming a dedicated team and collecting customer input, the next step involves crafting a strategy for utilizing the gathered data effectively.
Here’s how you can do it:
Define Your Target Audience: When you carefully select customer segments, buyer personas, or specific demographics, you ensure the right customers are targeted. Understand the key characteristics of your audience to influence the choice of feedback mechanisms and methodologies that best suit your customers.
Identify Your Core Values: Recognize the relationship you have with your brand’s customers, including shared values. It is crucial for meeting your customers’ needs and building meaningful connections with them.
Conduct Data Analysis for Patterns and Trends: Use qualitative input to identify product issues or areas for improvement in your customer service processes. Analyze quantitative data to reveal usage patterns, indicating the success or effectiveness of features.
Share Information Across Your Organization: Disseminating information benefits different business areas and informs your employees about customer expectations, contributing to a customer-centric culture within your organization.
Act on Customer Insights: Take concrete actions based on VOC data, such as improving your customer support or launching new products and services. This demonstrates your responsiveness to customer needs.
Measure Your Success: Prioritize customer satisfaction as a core metric to ensure ongoing improvement. Follow up on implemented changes to gauge customer response and verify if the intended outcomes were achieved.
Make Revisions: Your VOC programs should evolve, requiring periodic changes to methodologies. This may involve updating survey questions to gather new information or exploring innovative ways to engage with your customers.
Choosing the Right Tools
VoC tools can help you collect and analyze customer feedback in a more organized manner. Choosing the right tools could be the differentiating factor between understanding your customers aptly and assuming things.
The following are some of the best-performing VOC tools:
Clarabridge
Clarabridge is a text and speech analytics platform that helps businesses analyze customer interactions and feedback. It is also great if you’re looking for a tool to help you with compliance with privacy mandates.
Medallia
Medallia is a customer experience management platform that captures and analyzes customer engagement data from multiple applications to provide a holistic view of the customer journey.
Businesses of all sizes looking for a way to understand the customer journey and improve customer experience can use Medallia.
Verint
Verint is a data analytics platform that incorporates a platform for data collection, integration, and analysis across digital, physical, and contact center databases. It focuses on speech analytics and predictive experience methodology.
It is for businesses that want to use speech analytics and predictive experience methodology to improve customer experience.
Feedier
Feedier is a customer feedback management platform that allows users to collect, organize, and analyze customer feedback.
Medium to large enterprises that want to collect, organize, and analyze customer feedback, and take action on it.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a CRM platform that also includes a customer feedback management system. HubSpot’s customer feedback software empowers companies to take the customers’ pulse and ensure they’re capturing critical KPIs.
Mid-sized to large enterprises that want to collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback, and connect it to their CRM and service software.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that a proactive approach to implementing a robust VoC program is imperative for business success. Integrating customer feedback with data analysis allows for the customization of products and strategic improvements in the customer journey. Despite the initial time investment and effort required for effective communication and research, the long-term benefits in terms of enhanced customer satisfaction and business growth are invaluable.
Understanding the needs and preferences of customers before purchase decisions is how you know you are meeting their expectations. The customer-centric approach builds loyalty and positions the business for success in a competitive market.
Businesses prioritizing customer feedback can establish themselves as leaders, paving the way for long-term growth and resilience.
