Technology has revolutionized Voice of the Customer (VOC) programs, transforming them from a qualitative small-sample-group survey and into a powerful means of mining data, at scale to really understand who your customers are, what they want and how they want it.
Today, a truly effective program is grounded in a holistic approach where both qualitative and quantitative data and solicited and unsolicited feedback are collected from across the customer journey; whether that data is in the form of contact center metrics, transcribed conversations between customers and company representatives, information within CRM systems or posts, buzz and chatter across social networks.
As a result, a VOC program is now instrumental in highlighting why customers are loyal and just as importantly the elements of CX that could be underperforming and in doing so mitigate the risk of pushing customers towards your competitors.
1. Clearer communication
A VOC program allows you to properly segment your customer base and build representative customer personas. This means a greater understanding of needs and expectations and a greater insight as to how relationships evolve over time. This level of granularity can and should feed into targeted marketing campaigns and approaches towards ongoing customer communication. Something as comparatively simple as knowing how and via which channels your customers prefer to contact you will help strengthen that bond and build loyalty.
2. Fewer pain points
By combining direct customer feedback, accurate customer personas and quantitative data from internal sources such as the CRM or within the contact center (such as CSAT and NPS scores), a VOC program can stress test existing customer journeys and highlight any step on the path to purchase or path to resolution that is underperforming and why. Addressing this friction will increase customer satisfaction and increase overall CX delivery performance.
3. Lower contact volumes
As well as highlighting pain points, a VOC program is an effective means of identifying most common contact drivers – the reasons why customer are reaching out to your organization in live channels. This in turn means it’s possible to develop effective forms of contact deflection — such as self-service content — for resolving common issues. When more issues can be resolved without recourse to the telephone or online chat, it significantly reduces queues and wait times for customers who have a more pressing issue. Again, shorter waiting times increase satisfaction and improve brand perception and in doing so reduces the likelihood that a customer will switch to a different brand based on CX.
4. Behavior prediction
Because a modern VOC program combines structured and unstructured data and can integrate customer experience analytics — real-time transcription and analysis of voice and text conversations between contact center agents and customers — with other data sources, it’s possible to develop predictive behavioral analytics. This gives your organization the capability to recognize the cues that signal a customer is at risk of cutting ties with your organization and to develop targeted retention strategies to help retain them.
5. Product and service improvements
This same level of detail means, if VOC programs are running constantly rather than sporadically, a constant source of feedback and insights regarding current products and services that can be used to guide future development. Keeping your company’s offering aligned with changing customer needs and expectations will continue to keep the brand relevant and keep consumers from looking elsewhere.
Tracking metrics and KPIs can highlight when an organization is struggling to meet customer needs, but without the extra insights and context provided by a VOC program, it’s impossible to understand why, or identify which corrective action to take.
Due to their potential to deliver long-term actionable insights relating to everything from decoding potential customers’ decision-making processes and customer journey mapping to product improvement, customer expectations plus changing consumer trends and emerging behaviors, a VOC programs should be a core element of every leading brand’s CX strategy.
To find out how Foundever can help you with voice of the customer programs and leverage their data, don’t hesitate to contact us!