- Plan an effective VoC) program
- Align your vision with your goals
- Set effective mediums to collect feedback
- Assign ownership to the teams
Plan an effective Voice of the Customer (VoC) program
An efficient VoC program can be built by collecting, analyzing, and distributing the feedback to all relevant decision-makers. Involving the customers by collecting feedback at each customer touchpoint, will make them feel heard and it reassures your customers that your product/ service(s) are based on their needs and requirements. However, to establish a VoC program from scratch, major changes might have to be made to the internal work process and flow. This will benefit the employees, the customers, and ultimately your business.
Align your vision with your goals
- Elevating your customer experience?
- Leveling-up your retention rate?
- Improving your conversion rates?
- Positively impacting productivity with employee satisfaction?
- Improving the features of your product?
- Or something else?
Set your goals, then let your teams know what you expect from your strategy and how it will benefit them, as well as your customers.
Set effective mediums to collect feedback
Improve the channel(s) through which customers can submit feedback. If there isn’t one already set up, establish a few standard feedback collection methods. One common method is online surveys, such as customer feedback surveys, product or service experience surveys, and brand feedback surveys, which make it easy to collect customer feedback. That feedback, in turn, will give you useful insights on the performance of your product or service. It’s even possible to automate this entire process, so you can streamline both collecting the feedback and taking action on it to be more productive and efficient.
Important mediums to explore:
| Conventional methodologies | Contemporary methodologies |
|---|---|
| Personal interviews | Online customer surveys |
| Call record data analysis | Live-chat features |
| In-person surveys | Social media platforms |
| Focus groups | Net Promoter Score |
| Emails | Customer website behavior |
Assign ownership to the teams
Make sure the relevant teams have access to the feedback to ensure transparency and make decisions based on the data. To make more consistent decisions based on customer feedback, employees must be given ownership in their respective teams to create a sense of responsibility towards resolving customer issues.
For example, you could assign specific types of data collection and review to each team, like Net Promoter Score, customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, social media feedback, or deployment and collection of surveys. This makes it easier to prioritize and work on important areas first.
Metrics that matter while collecting feedback
| Metric score | Customer Effort Score (CES) |
|---|---|
| What is it? | The CES score tells you the effort a customer has to put in to conduct a successful business transaction with the company. The lower the score, the greater the customer experience. |
| How can it help your VoC strategy? | Including this metric in your Voice of the Customer strategy will help create a smooth and uninterrupted process, making customers want to do more business with you. |
| Question | How easy was it for you to purchase our product? |
| Metric score | Net Promoter Score (NPS) |
|---|---|
| What is it? | A score which tells you how likely a customer is to actively recommend your products or services to friends, family, or colleagues. |
| How can it help your VoC strategy? | Understanding the reason behind why a customer chooses to promote your product or services can help you strategize better interactions with your customers. |
| Question | On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this brand to your colleague or friend? |
| Metric score | Customer satisfaction (CSAT) |
|---|---|
| What is it? | The CSAT score helps a business identify how satisfied a customer has been throughout the customer lifecycle/ customer journey. |
| How can it help your VoC strategy? | Learning more about customer satisfaction and acting on the feedback is vital to upgrade your VoC strategy. This lets your business keep up the standards of your product or services offered and ensures your customers will feel acknowledged. |
| Question | On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your experience with us? |
| Metric score | Customer Loyalty Index (CLI) |
|---|---|
| What is it? | This score indicates the loyalty of a customer towards your brand and is a good indicator to identify a long term customer. |
| How can it help your VoC strategy? | Including the loyalty index in your strategy will give you a general idea of customer behavior and perception towards your brand. It can also help you differentiate happy customers and focus on them by converting them into brand promoters of your business. |
| Question | How likely are you to purchase from us again? How likely are you to purchase other products from our brand? |
Apart from these, some of the other metrics that you can include in your Voice of the Customer (VoC) strategy include the customer lifetime value (also known as “CLV”), customer churn rate, and the repurchase ratio. These metrics will help you understand your customers’ behavior and provide insights on the emotions, needs, and sentiments that bring them to your brand.
How does having a Voice of the Customer program benefit your business?
Sound VoC management gives your business a proper direction, helps you provide quality products and services, and improve brand loyalty. It can be a powerful tool to elevate customer experience at every level of interaction with your business, by empowering you to take action with great insights and enhanced tools.