Voice of Customer (VoC) is a part of Customer Experience (CX) that collects feedback to understand what customers expect and assist brands in meeting those expectations. The VoC approach is a fundamental customer-centric approach that employs customer experience management (CXM) using technology, surveys, metrics, and analytics. VoC research employs technology - AI and ML - to eliminate the possibility of repetition, bias, and errors that a human might make in such a process. The ultimate goal of this dynamic and excellent approach to customer experience management is to retain and maintain customers while expanding the business's possibilities.
CXM is the one strategy that can essentially address any issue your business is now experiencing. Finding the ideal solutions to whatever problems a company may be having requires both a micro and macro perspective. The success of a business is wholly dependent on the experience its customers have, from the moment they learn about the brand (whether through word-of-mouth or social media) until customer care or customer support is offered after the product or service is purchased or used. Customers want brands to be convenient for them, to listen to them, to make them feel connected, to ensure their feedback is heard, and to provide them with the thrill and satisfaction of being able to purchase from them. The Voice of Customer research ensures that all of these customer needs are perfectly met.
So, how does VoC help your company?
- Brand Improvisation and Innovation: A business can learn more about what its customers value and don't value through voice of the customer (VoC). By giving customers what they want, you can outperform your competitors and operate more effectively. improving your brand and goods as a result. Since we are using data from existing customers, it also helps you put forward campaigns that directly strike the sentiment of your customers, making you more likely to be chosen by future customers with the least amount of work. Additionally, brands have the ability to improve their goods or services to satisfy customers.
- Customer Retention: Customers are smarter than ever before and want to be able to make decisions on their own, but they are also wary of what they are getting into from the moment they hear about a product or service. Customer retention is also becoming increasingly difficult due to the abundance of competitors in every industry. VoC research firms focus on customer retention by giving them exactly what they want, how they want it, and establishing a connection.
- Online Reputation: Today, a company's brand is extremely important. You do not want customers to rush to the other end of the tunnel because of a small error or misunderstanding that would have been irrelevant ten years ago. VoC uses sentiment analysis and emotion mining to identify any inconsistencies or false impressions that your organization may be creating in order to prevent anything that might result in a dead end or a poor reputation.
- Publicity: VoC considers not only the leads generated by your company's advertising and marketing, but also what people are saying about you - through word of mouth, digitally, on social media, and elsewhere. It critically examines almost every aspect of what is said about your company in order to assist you in achieving your objectives and adhering to your brand values.
- Cost Reduction: In addition to identifying what works for you, voice of customer approaches also identify what doesn't so you can focus on the elements that are genuinely crucial and will increase sales rather than those that are draining you.
- Increased Revenue: You are more likely to design a better structure rather than sticking with the same one for years when you have a strong understanding of client behaviour. For instance, if the results of your voice of the customer study show that your customers have been buying during the off-season, you can advertise or introduce new products at that time to boost sales, which will directly affect your revenue!
- Personalized Promotions and Market Research: Because VoC uses demographics and collects massive amounts of detailed data and analysis, it is simple to personalise promotions based on age, location, family size, and other factors.
Now that we've established how Voice of Customer research can benefit your business, let's look at how it's gathered. Because the digital survey is entirely based on open-ended questions and the person taking it will write as much as they want, the VoC research method is an excellent way to learn about your demographic. Video formats are also widely used in VoC data collection. Every industry uses digital communication methods, and accurate video analytics collects all of the data that a company may require while implementing their customer experience transformation. The data discovered through VoC research provides you with all of the information you need to help build appropriate customer experience strategies for business development. VoC data can be collected in a variety of ways. They fall into two categories: indirect, such as social media comments/reviews, purchase history, or websites, and direct, such as emails and surveys. Here are ways in which they can be adhered to:
- Emails: texts or emails shared from customer support executives or chatbots are a great way to critically analyze customer behavior or customer journey through text analysis API.
- Surveys: they are the perfect way to understand exactly how a customer feels. Surveys are open ended and allow the customer to write how much ever they want while fully mentioning their grievances without any hesitation.
- Call logs: calls are often recorded and used as a major factor to catch up on what’s been missing out at the micro level.
- Social Media: not only finding out what people are saying about you but also seeing what is working for your competitors is also a big part of social media understanding. Social media listening is very important for any company today and one must ensure they are doing the right things at the right time.
- Reviews: your voice of customer analysis template must contain any form of content that has ever been put out about your company and reviews are a gold mine for decoding where you could possibly dedicate a couple more working hours.
- Website: the traffic you have on your website is definitely telling you about your success. But looking at the way customers reach out to your website, how they interact with you and what is working for them when it comes to offers, locations and products is all information that you can use to create user personas which in turn will give you healthy solutions.
- Data Base: what you already have is purchase history and through that VoC framework finds out the customer journey. This will help your company always know how to guide a customer without them having to mention it to you every time they want to be connected. Eventually, your customer feels valued and heard while also having a seamless transaction with you.
Voice of customer methodology and voice of customer framework is an essential part of customer experience management and for your company. It defines your goals, identifies discrepancies, bridges gaps and caters to the whole company as a whole. Customer experience management companies like Sonata GBW help you recover from the discrepancies that may still be invisible and nip the problems in the bud. VoC and customer experience management along with customer experience strategies help your company work on goals, retain customers, reduce churn and increase revenue with the best practices in customer experience.
Our CX solutions are focused on transforming the total customer experience through surveys, metrics, analytics and auditing by using the CXM framework to combine physical measurements with digital Platformation™ capabilities. We are committed to finding the right customer experience strategy that can lead to a competitive advantage.
Sonata GBW is a global technology company specializing in customer experience CX measurement, platform-based digital transformation, supporting businesses to become connected, open, intelligent and scalable. Global coverage of more than 105 markets with over 27 years of market leadership through extensive measurement capabilities, powerful and intuitive reporting and analytics platforms give us the leverage to improve customer experience. It has presence across USA, Canada, EMEA and APAC regions. If you would like to know more about how we can assist you, please fill out the business enquiry form below.