Consumers nowadays have a ridiculous number of options on where and how to make their purchases, which has led to them becoming pickier than ever, according to a number of studies. The factors that influence their decisions regarding who to give their business to vary significantly from one consumer to the next, but there is one common denominator among them all and that is that they want to be made to feel special. In fact, a study from Wunderman shows that most consumers want brands to prove they understand and care about them before they even consider making a purchase.
“The big takeaway was how much people want brands to make them feel special. The majority [79%] of consumers said that brands have to actually demonstrate that they understand and care about me before they are going to consider purchasing.” — Jamie Gutfreund, Wunderman’s Global CMO.
In other words, the customer experience has become more important than ever. In fact, it has become the main element companies should be competing on, a fact that 89% of firms are aware of, according to a study conducted by the Gartner Group.
To make consumers feel special and show them you care, you need to understand them, which is also essential if you truly wish to compete with your peers on customer experience. You also have to understand and be aware of the experiences you’re delivering to your consumers today. And this is where an effective Voice of the Customer program comes in because it gives you the ability to listen to your customers but also to understand what drives them.
Understanding What Voice of the Customer Means
Voice of the Customer or VOC is used to describe a process businesses use to capture the preferences, aversions, and expectations of their customers. It’s a market research methodology that has the ability to create an in-depth profile of a company’s customers, covering their wants, needs, and problems, within a structured hierarchy. Each aspect can then be assigned a priority based on its importance in the satisfaction of the customers with the options that are now available.
A Voice of the Customer program is vital to any business because it allows you to gather data that can be used to improve the experience of your customers across every touchpoint. It is one of the most effective ways to gain in-depth insights into your customers’ preferences, complaints, and problems. The goal of such a program is not only to identify what customers want and desire from an experience with the business, but also to establish a framework that can be used to respond and act upon this information in order to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
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Unfortunately, a common problem is that many businesses gather the data but then end up not using it at all, thereby negating any benefits of having a Voice of the Customer program in the first place. The aforementioned study from the Gartner Group shows that while 84% of companies regularly ask their customers for feedback, only 29% of the companies that have implemented a VOC program actually include insights they gain into their customers’ desires and needs into their decision-making processes.
Furthermore, only 25% believe that the VOC program they have helped to drive the company’s actions. In fact, an article from Harvard Business Review showed that senior management in Fortune 100 companies only uses the information generated by a VOC program 11% of the time when making decisions that directly impact customers.
Clearly, this is a sad state of affairs, especially since numerous studies have proven that there is a direct correlation between increased customer retention rates and revenues and having an effective VOC program in place.
Thus, simply knowing what the voice of the customer program does doesn’t guarantee its effectiveness, which is why in the next section we’ll be looking at how to build an effective VOC strategy.
How to Build an Effective Voice of the Customer Program
If you’re just starting out in the world of Voice of the Customer, you might be tempted to go crazy and collect tons of data from as many customers as possible. The problem is that if you don’t have a clear plan on what you will be doing with that data, you are wasting your time. Essentially, instead of listening to improve the customer experience, you’ll simply be listening for the sake of it, which is quite common.
To optimize the data gathering process, to ensure that important insights are delivered, and to then use these insights to affect change, you must create an effective VOC strategy based on which you can design your program. When designing a Voice of the Customer program, take into account the following:
Create a Strategy:
If you were driving to a destination you had never been to before, you wouldn’t leave without a GPS or a map. Well, not unless you wanted to get lost and take much longer to get to your final destination. That is precisely why you need to create a strategy, because without one your VOC program will be akin to you driving around, dilly dallying, trying to find the right route.
Thus, the first thing you need to establish is what key business areas you will be addressing, such as growing sales, reducing costs, decreasing customer churn rates and so on. Once you have a purpose, you will know how to design the program to achieve maximum effectiveness.
Avoid Silos:
A common problem, especially with large companies, is that they tend to silo their VOC teams, which means that many key insights and patterns are missed. This is why it’s important to…