How to Build a Voice of Customer Process

There’s no doubt, to improve your business bottom line and get more repeat business, then you have to listen to your customer. Besides, you need to go along with their concerns and hear the voice of customers.

After all, a well-thought-of Voice of Customer help you find out:

• What your customers are looking for

• What you can do to help your customers

• What their interest and behavioral patterns are

But, first thing, what is Voice of Customer, and why is it important?

What is the Voice of the Customer?

Voice of the customer is a method of carefully listening to your customers at every turn of their customer experience journey. And, when you do this, you understand how your customers feel about your product, business, or service. You can then exceed their expectations and get the edge on your competitors.

A well-crafted process is everything when it’s all about VoC, and more important is to put the time into the following steps before you launch your program. A big part of this is making sure you have the right VoC tools.

A successful voice of customer program depends on regular customer feedback that is related to the customer journey’s touchpoints and milestones. This feedback is used to understand customers and make better decisions regarding products and services.

Eventually, these decisions will lead to better outcomes because they are making them based on their feedback.

Why is VoC Important?

Voice of Customer is unskippable because it is a path to change and enhancements that benefit your customer and offer them an unparalleled experience.

Feedback allows you to make improvements and changes. Also, it shows you what is working well, where there is a need for a new product or service, and where you can provide proactive solutions to potential customer concerns.

All in all, VoC feedback lets you improve the customer's entire experience with your brand.

And when you achieve this, customer satisfaction levels rise. Satisfied customers are more loyal and, therefore, stick around. Precisely, loyal customers are more likely to turn into brand advocates and recommend your products or services to others.

This all leads to a surge in profits and growth for your business.

How to Create a Voice of Customer Process?

To create a booming voice of customer program, you’ll need to follow a simple and straightforward VoC process. Below are five steps that will help you make an effective Voice of Customer process:

1. Outline Your Goals
2. Collect Voice of Customer Data
3. Select Your VoC Goals
4. Analyze Your Data
5. The Final Thought

Let’s start!

#Step 1: Outline Your Goals

Before you contact customers to hear their opinions, you need to have a clear vision of what kind of feedback you need to collect and where you will have this feedback. To be precise, this should be related to your business goals.

Your goal should be clear and well-defined. And an excellent approach to achieving this is to identify and ask relatable questions. This can be something like:

How can we increase customer satisfaction levels?

Or

How can you improve on your last NPS?

So, when you are clear on the questions, it’s a lot easier to define your goals. Only then can you step an inch ahead - asking for feedback.

#Step 2: Collect Voice of Customer Data

The next step is to collect data.

You will need to consider taking an omnichannel approach because customer behaviors have changed during the epidemic.

A report from Zendesk stated that 64% of customers opted for a new support channel in 2020, with 73% saying they plan to keep using it. This clearly outlines the importance of seamlessly collecting feedback from various channels.

These can vary from direct feedback methods, when you actively request feedback, or indirect when the customer provides feedback without asking for it. Here, I have pocketed five direct and indirect methodologies you can use to collect VoC data:

• Reviews

Online reviews are when customers share their thoughts about a product or service on a company's website or an online forum. It's a beneficial form of indirect feedback as they are exclusive and include relevant data that you can use to make changes.

Not to forget, reviews also impact other customers' buying habits. Indeed, one study found that online reviews influence 95% of consumers. Of course, this means you have to know what is being said about you over the internet.

Online reviews also tell you how your competition is going and what customers like about your competitors.

• Calls

Recording customer service calls is another approach to gaining helpful indirect feedback.

So, when your customers speak to agents, they are likely to offer detail about the concerns they encountered. Besides, it can mean extra resources are needed to record and organize this information.

• Chat

The option of chat is to help customers that are looking to solve their problems. As such, this kind of indirect feedback shows you exactly where in the customer experience your customers are facing frustrations and issues.

All the chat conversations are recorded as they carry a wealth of insights that help you improve.

• Surveys

Surveys are a form of direct feedback that lets you get quick access to how your customers are feeling. Another added advantage of surveys is that you can manage them, as you decide when they are sent and what you ask.

Remember, timing is crucial.

• Social Media

Social media is a hotbed for customers to talk about their experiences with a brand. You can listen to the feedback through social media listening.

So, listening to social media conversations allows you to be proactive and go above and beyond how you serve your customers.

#Step 3: Select Your VoC Goals

You need CRM tools to streamline and organize your omnichannel customer experience to make your programs efficient and successful.

And once you have collected and organized that feedback, the process and analysis part comes into the picture. Besides, you’ll also need to visualize all your insights in one place.

#Step 4: Analyze Your Data

Analyzing your data is an integral part of the VoC program.

It’s only possible when you analyze customer feedback in a systematic, structured manner that will reveal the insights within.

#Step 5: The Final Thought

Once you analyze the data, you can then use the workflow’s in-built dashboard to visualize and slice and dice your data the way you need it.

So, having all of your data in the same place makes it easier to see patterns and draw conclusions. Also, it’s more accessible to share across teams, which makes it easier to keep everyone in the loop.

Finally

When everything funnels to the voice of the customer, following the right process initially is critical, and so is having the right tools to analyze your data.

An automated and AI-powered solution will help you outline more insights into your data in less time. This eventually allows you to form a more efficient VoC process where you can extract insights that you can use to improve your customer experience and, finally, your profits.

Sales driven Digital Marketing at Repustate with a primary focus on the Brand promotion, Business Development, and Product placement.