A Voice Of the Customer program helps you consistently deliver a better customer experience. As we enter a new era of customer experience, listening to the voice of customers is essential to competing on customer experience. Organizations with a voice of the customer program enjoy 55% greater customer retention rates and sport 292% greater employee engagement rates, according to this report.
In this article, we discuss what a VOC program is, why your company needs one, how to start a voice of the customer program, and the best practices for conducting effective voice of the customer programs.
Here’s everything we’ll cover in this article, feel free to jump to check out a section that’s relevant to you:
- Voice of the customer (VOC) program definition
- Why your company needs a voice of the customer (VOC) program
- How to launch a voice of the customer program (VOC) program
- Best practices for an effective voice of the customer (VOC) program
What is a Voice Of the Customer (VOC) program?
A voice of customer (VOC) program is a set of tools and processes that allow your business to get a deep understanding of your customers so you can improve your products and services to better suit their needs.
It’s a process in which you gather, analyze, and act on insights into your customer’s needs, preferences, and limitations. It focuses on improving the customer and product experience.
A voice of the customer program helps you answer two crucial questions such as:
- why your customers need you and choose you over other competitors.
- what are the needs of your customers and what you can do to help meet those needs.
Why your company needs a voice of the customer program
Profitable, forward-thinking companies use voice of customer programs to build a brand identity and better serve their customers.
Here are some reasons why your business needs to hear the voice of your customers:
Improved customer experience
Research shows that 74% of VOC programs are successful in helping businesses increase their levels of customer satisfaction.
Having a voice of customer program helps you connect and engage with customers at every touch point in the customer journey and improve their experience.
Improved products and services
Since VOC programs are a source of rich customer context, they help your product team build products that are a closer fit to your customers’ needs and preferences.
Grow top-line revenue
Collecting feedback can increase upselling and cross-selling success rates by 15% to 20%, according to research by Gartner. VOC programs help you better retain your customers, resulting in higher loyalty scores, lesser churn, and an increased customer lifetime value.
Easier decision making
The feedback you collect as part of your VOC programs helps you set priorities and make meaningful decisions. You’ll have an easier time making decisions now that you have all the data you need.
Improved operations
When you truly understand what your customers want, teams will be able to plan and execute more efficiently.
Better resource management
VOC programs allow for better money management in that it helps you allocate the right amount of resources for improving your customer experience.
Other benefits
Having a voice of customer program allows you to:
- spot potential brand crisis early
- deliver personalized content
- validate new ideas and concepts
- customize your product or features to best serve your customers
- get your customers to stay with you longer
- serve your best customers with the solutions they really need
How to start a voice of the customer program
Define roles
Help members of each department understand their role in creating a better customer experience as a whole.
Set targets
Your employees now know how they contribute to the customer experience, the next step is to set specific targets and key performance indicators to work towards.
Collect feedback
Now that they’re aware of the specific ways in which progress will be measured, you need to start collecting feedback from your customers.
Analyze feedback
Analyze the feedback now that you’re done gathering it from your customers. Identify patterns and figure out what the majority of them feel or want.
Act on the feedback
Respond to critical comments. collaborate with your customers to solve their issues. Show them that you care about their needs and feelings.
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Best practices for an effective voice of the customer program
A multichannel approach to gathering data
An effective voice of the customer program collects feedback from multiple sources such as email, website, social media, and more. here are the methodologies used to collect data:
- online customer surveys
- customer interviews
- chatbots
- net promoter score
- product reviews
- focus groups
- social channels
Plan responses
Prepare meaningful responses for all kinds of feedback, from tentative ones to angry ones. Make sure your customers feel heard.
Spread the word
Everyone in your organization needs to have access to the VOC feedback. Put together a profile of your customer and present it to the entire company or team.
Personalize
The more personalized your interactions and content, the better. 70% of consumers now consider personalization a basic expectation.
Gather both qualitative and quantitative data
Qualitative and quantitative data give you different insights, even when collected from the same audience. While qualitative data gives you detailed, emotionally driven insights, quantitative surveys give you a broader view, based on hard statistical data.
Collect employee insights
Don’t forget to gather insights from your own employees! There’s a good chance some of your employees know your customer’s needs better than your customers themselves.
Final thoughts
Voice of the customer program helps you understand your customer’s needs, opinions, and feelings and thereby improve their satisfaction. When done right, a voice of the customer (VOC) program can help optimize and improve your customer and product experience. We hope this article will help you create an effective VOC program.
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Our surveys typically tend to boost survey responses and create pleasant experiences. Most of your customers will complete your survey as they would be pleased to take surveys that are conversational in nature.
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If you’re looking to boost your survey responses and create pleasant experiences, take SurveySparrow for a spin today!
Have you got any questions on setting up a VOC program? Got any interesting best practices or tips for creating an effective VOC program? Let us know in the comment section below.
If you’re wondering whether SurveySparrow is the right fit for you and would rather have someone walk you through our platform, reach out to us for a free, personalized demo!
