Voice of Customer – Understanding Customer Experience Better

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. In rapidly evolving and highly competitive industries where products often have similar features, distinguishing yourself through exceptional customer experiences is crucial for staying competitive.

To enhance customer experiences, gaining insights into customer needs and perspectives is essential, 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. This is why companies employing effective VoC best practices consistently witness year-on-year revenue growth.

Are CX and VOC the same?

The short answer is no. 

Voice of Customer is a part of Customer Experience and excelling at it can enhance your customer experience journey and help you resonate with your customers on a better level.

Here’s how they are different:

Voice of Customer Vs. Customer Experience

Voice of the Customer enables companies to bridge the gap between customer expectations and the actual customer experience provided by the company.

CX encompasses the entirety of a company’s interactions with customers throughout the purchasing process. This includes marketing, sales, customer service, and every point of contact, essentially representing the cumulative impact of all customer interactions with your brand.

VoC and the Secret to the Customer Journey

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Implementing a VoC program

Collecting Customer Feedback 

Research says that it costs five times more for organizations to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Hence, ensuring that the feedback is collected aptly is crucial.

Developing a strong understanding of your customers and cultivating robust customer relationships is a systematic and insightful undertaking. Employing various techniques is common practice for companies, as it ensures the acquisition of dependable answers.

Here are the top 5 ways you can use to understand the voice of the customer:

1. Online Customer Surveys: Conducting online surveys allows businesses to directly gather feedback from customers, gaining insights into their preferences, satisfaction levels, and areas for improvement.
2. Social Media: Monitoring social media platforms enables businesses to tap into real-time conversations, identify customer sentiments, and address concerns or praises swiftly, fostering a more engaged and responsive relationship with their audience.
3. Website Behavior: Analyzing user interactions on a website provides valuable data on customer preferences, browsing patterns, and areas of interest, aiding businesses in optimizing their online platforms for a more seamless and personalized user experience.
4. Online Customer Reviews: Examining customer reviews on various online platforms offers businesses an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, helping them refine products or services and respond to customer concerns, ultimately influencing brand reputation.
5. Net Promoter Score (NPS): Utilizing the Net Promoter Score allows businesses to measure customer loyalty by gauging the likelihood of customers recommending their products or services, providing a quantitative metric that reflects overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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

• Short description: Clarabridge is a text and speech analytics platform that helps businesses analyze customer interactions and feedback, and ensure compliance with privacy mandates.
• Best for: Businesses of all sizes that need to analyze customer interactions and feedback, and ensure compliance with privacy mandates.

Medallia

• Short description: 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.
• Best for Businesses of all sizes that want to understand the customer journey and improve customer experience.

Verint

• Short description: 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.
• Best for Businesses of all sizes that want to use speech analytics and predictive experience methodology to improve customer experience.

Feedier

• Short description: Feedier is a customer feedback management platform that allows users to collect, organize, and analyze customer feedback. It also helps to create workflows, assign ownership to feedback-triggered tasks, and generate “close the loop” reports.
• Best for: Medium to large enterprises that want to collect, organize, and analyze customer feedback, and take action on it.

HubSpot

• Short description: 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.
• Best for: 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 ensures tailored offerings that meet their expectations. This customer-centric approach not only fosters loyalty but also positions the business for sustained success in a competitive market.

Businesses prioritizing customer feedback can establish themselves as leaders amidst this customer-centric landscape, paving the way for long-term growth and resilience.