A good VoC program allows every department to collect and understand customer responses consistently. This way, they can directly improve the product and customer experience.
This will also help them avoid churn and encourage growth for the business. However, many programs must provide a structured process for collecting and using feedback.
It’s a competitive advantage
Unlike business metrics like revenue and customer churn, the voice of the customer measures what customers perceive as value. Using the data from VoC programs, brands can prioritize goals to match their customers’ objectives better.
Customers’ perceptions of your products and services depend on various factors, including how they interact with your brand and its employees. You can improve your product offerings and customer service by analyzing your survey results and implementing changes to increase satisfaction and loyalty.
Taking the feedback from your customers seriously and closing the loop shows that you’re invested in their experiences and want to improve them. For example, if a customer surveys your company and you learn that they’re unhappy with the speed of your service, you can take steps to improve the response time or create an online help center for customers to get the support they need. Ultimately, the more satisfied your customers are, the more likely they will recommend you and purchase your products again. This, in turn, leads to increased sales and profitability.
It’s a marketing tool
A successful voice of the customer program benefits the company as it provides insights that can be used to improve customer experience and deliver desired business results. For example, if you’re a SaaS company and your customers prefer efficiency over price discounts, you may introduce new features that make your product more valuable.
Similarly, you might use the feedback from your customers to determine what changes to your marketing strategy will best suit their needs. For instance, if your customer survey data indicates that users want to easily access support articles on your website, you could create a help center or add a search bar.
Other ways to collect VoC include in-person interviews and focus groups. Eight to twelve people share their thoughts and opinions about your product in a focus group. This method is often used with other data collection methods like surveys and chats.
It’s a customer service tool
Often, customers will give feedback directly to the company by filling out surveys, using complaints forms, or simply talking with employees on social media. A system to collect this feedback and make it accessible to everyone within the organization is an essential part of your customer service strategy. For example, if you receive recurring feedback about support agents being short with customers, it may be time to set up a training session to teach them how to improve their empathy skills.
You can also leverage the voice of the customer for crisis prevention by monitoring public sentiment about your brand products and services. For example, if you start to see a pattern of negative reviews about one of your products, consider a redesign or a new product launch.
In short, it’s critical to factor your customers’ expectations into everything from product development to marketing and sales strategies. This is why building a successful voice of the customer program is such an essential step for your business. By implementing a strategy that includes feedback and insights into your day-to-day operations, you’ll be able to create and deliver exceptional customer experiences at every point of the journey.
It’s a learning tool
Voice of the customer programs enables businesses to systematically capture and analyze feedback to improve products and deliver a better customer experience. They also help businesses foster a customer-centric culture across all functions, driving top and bottom-line revenue.
A VoC program can use various techniques to collect customer feedback, including online customer surveys, interviews, and live chat. By asking the right questions and following a best practice framework, you can gain valuable insights into your customers’ wants, needs, and experiences.
For example, a software company that uses in-app customer surveys to gather feedback learned from its users that its pricing model needed to be more flexible. As a result, they created different subscription options and saw increased user engagement. In addition, they gained a loyal following of customers.
It’s a customer retention tool
Using customer survey results to understand what customers want from a company’s product is a great way to increase retention and grow business. A company can focus on building a product tailored to its customer’s needs, creating a more effective marketing campaign, or improving customer service.
Introducing a voice of the customer program requires a culture change that focuses on listening to and acting on feedback. If your organization isn’t willing to make changes to improve the customer experience, your customer will move on to a competitor that can offer them what they want. This could be as simple as improving your survey response rate or changing how you handle complaints and other customer issues. Either way, focusing on VoC will bring in more revenue for your business in the long run.
