Voice of the Customer: The Experience Amplifier
The foundation of any customer experience (CX) initiative is a Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback loop. VoC produces detailed wants and needs information that can be organized into a hierarchical reporting structure and then prioritized in terms of importance and satisfaction. Directly addressing the VoC in your CX strategies and tactics can provide a measurable boost in engagement with your brand and content.
Voice of the Customer Defined
Mindstream is often asked what VoC is or means. Historically, VoC, in marketing, has referred to a customer voice or a customer feedback program. No matter the nomenclature, they are all Voice of the Customer programs: a formalized system that captures customers' expectations, frustrations, and preferences. These insights ladder up to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy levels.
A properly positioned VoC program captures, analyzes, and reports on all customer feedback, such as expectations, likes and dislikes, etc., that are associated with a company.
Why VoC Matters
Delivering high-quality CX is no longer optional. It is essential for brand differentiation and survival. Marketers must learn how customers are redefining their customer journey—and the new and intensified challenges, pain points, and requirements that result—in order to continuously create consumer trust and value.
Whether via an automated platform or collected open speech channels, customer voice can give real-time insights into your target B2B or B2C consumers as well as their experiences.
From feedback, brands can identify trends and opportunities and identify what trends can improve the overall and micro experiences. Companies, that invest in customer feedback programs grow two- to three- times faster than those that don't.
Impacts to Business Objectives
VoC programs provide insights into what customers want and need from the companies and people they do business with, and these can be leveraged to create category-leading strategies.
VoC provides positive impacts to a company as well as for its customers. The main purpose of a Voice of the Customer program is to listen to customers to improve CX, and improved CX means improved bottom lines.
How Marketers Can Implement VoC
Implementation is an effort that requires the partnership of several stakeholders, from the executive side to development teams. By evaluating customer journey maps and touchpoints with a brand, VoC intersection points can be deciphered. Marketers should keep in mind their overall objectives and what they hope to achieve by including a VoC strategy in planning everything from enterprise brand planning all the way down to in-market tactics.
Once implemented, rich and important data will come in. Once all of it is in, like any data, it needs to be processed intelligently. As VoC has evolved over time, the tools, techniques, and modeling that captures and analyzes the Voice of the Customer have evolved as well: from surveys to CSAT, to Customer Effort Score, to speech analytics, and beyond.
To hit the ground running, Mindstream has a quick checklist to get you started. Follow these steps and you will be well on your way to improving your customer experiences and increasing consumer loyalty and trust:
- Establish your VoC vision
- Ensure “listening posts” are in the proper positions
- Empower customers to provide feedback
- Manage and ladder VoC metrics to strategies
- Produce compelling stories from findings
The main takeaway is that a Voice of the Customer program must listen, interpret, act, and monitor. Integrating these steps into a marketing of business approach will ensure Voice of the Customer success.
Mindstream Is Here to Help
We can help your company conduct Voice of the Customer research to better understand the human dimensions of your B2B and B2C audiences–their needs, expectations, and emotions. We have solutions and tools that can be customer-honed to your specific needs and outcomes. We can also partner with you to deliver the most compelling and engaging user experience, personalized to specific audience drives and needs. Our team has been successfully implementing VoC measurement and monitory methodologies with clients and can work with you to bring all the information to life. Want to learn more about CX and VoC? Contact us.
