With more and more customers choosing a better customer experience while choosing a fuel convenience store or gas station, over the pricing of the products it becomes inevitable to avoid listening to the customers. Customers today are demanding to be heard, and rightfully so! This has led the leading fuel companies and your fuel industry competitors to partake in the dynamic and robust voice of customer (VoC) research. The VoC survey allows you, as a fuel brand and fuel c-store take the lead from customer feedback to understand exactly what they want. Further, analysing the insights and taking actions from the existing data to better the services and products. The voice of customer feedback can accumulate every critical information you need from the perfect insider, your customer.
Since customer satisfaction is your goal in a fuel c-store the need for a customer experience strategy that can work on it is indispensable. Customers providing insightful data through the VoC feedback and you working on it to set things straight gives all the right signals to the customer. They feel more valued and understood and become a part of the decision-making process. In return, they are also more likely to provide referrals, and reviews and speak greatly about your company becoming a promoter and increasing customer advocacy.
Although fuel companies do take regular feedback, they often end up leading to no actionable cause. This is not because the employees ignore it but because there is no strong fuel brand process or fuel brand operation in place that can do the kind of meticulous analysis that is required.
In this article, we help you understand how to gather and analyse your Voice of customer feedback while organizing and categorizing it in a systematic manner. We will also discuss how you can action this feedback and value these critical pieces of information that your customer is openly providing you with.
RECEIVING A VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
The one making the decision is not necessarily the person using the products or services you sell. This means they are not the target audience, have not understood the product to the T, used it in a long time and therefore are more susceptible to making incorrect decisions although their position in your fuel company is totally justified. This may seem like a difficult statement but it is the truth and we must understand how to work around it. The meetings, conferences and seminars or product reviews happening on a quarterly or daily basis will be of no real credibility or use. Finding customer-driven feedback in fuel store and insights is what you need to make decisions which is impossible to gather without the voice of customer feedback in fuel industry. The VoC feedback in fuel industry looks at every piece of information and complaint. This includes surveys to sighs, complaints, tickets to questions during a sales pitch in the organization. It brings every silo to par and aligns them with recognising discrepancies that exist in the organization.
WHAT TO CAPTURE IN A VOICE OF CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
That being said, the VoC feedback in fuel industry looks at different departments like the sales team, support team, on-ground team, success team, implementation team, and marketing team; and uses the data gathered in each of the departments throughout the fuel store customer journey. These departments are chosen based on each of the teams that your customer is accessing through the customer journey. The voice of customer survey in fuel industry creates customizable voice of customer data with all these different silos and looks at both positive and negative feedback in all these departments. Here are some of the things that the VoC feedback deduces data from:
- Unhinged customer comments and sentiments
- Training concerns or queries
- Ticket feedbacks
- Social media posts
- Social media reviews
- Churned out accounts analysis
- Repeated customer stories
- Reasons for the lost sales
- Net Promoter Scores
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey or ratings
As we have discussed in one of our old blogs there are two kinds of feedbacks and voice of customer feedback surveys. The solicited feedback also known as the structured feedback and unsolicited feedback also known as the unstructured feedback. The solicited feedback is focused on the specifics where your company wants to conduct research. This could be looking at the patterns of usage or customer sentiments which are caused during direct interaction and service or product specifications. This kind of data is collected through NPS or CSAT, company questionnaires or customer meetings which is a process to understand and approach the customer with the company needs out in the open for discussion. On the other hand, the unsolicited feedback in fuel retail stores or unstructured feedback in fuel retail stores are the unhinged requests and tickets that your customer is making. This type of feedback comes in many forms, they could be online through social media channels or complaints that are raised on the floor or to the manager. It is very important for you as a fuel retail store to constantly tap into these forums to collect such data which you would otherwise ignore. This type of feedback is not always requested but is most definitely given to you. It is also the kind of feedback which may not affect your company process or fuel retail store operations but it is one of the most important forms of feedback which when worked upon can bring you closer to your goals and targets; while increasing working on a good customer experience and improving your products or services. Although unsolicited feedback is very difficult to collect if we can train our fuel industry employees then it can lead to positive results and a good impact on your fuel business.
Ignoring negative feedback and focusing on positive feedback is tempting but do not fall for that since we have learned from leading fuel retail stores earlier that it could lead to many mistakes as a brand. Listening to your customer needs and customer feedback is bound to help you improve your products/services and also build a name that cannot be beaten in the fuel industry.
VOC FEEDBACK TRAINING
Pin-pointing undefined parts of your customer experience in fuel industry is tough. So, your employees must be trained to read between the lines. They should be able to identify an “I did not know it works like that” or a “this is not what I asked for” as feedback and report it for improvement. Although these small tickets are very important they barely ever come up in large meetings and conferences. They must be discussed and worked upon as a priority.
WHAT TO DO WITH A VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
Your fuel brand and c-store must have a customer experience team, or customer journey mapping employee in place to make sure all the feedback and insights are being analysed and actioned to create a smooth buyer journey and good customer experience management. Not taking quick action on your voice of customer fuel store feedback means the voice of your customer will eventually be lost altogether, they will not be a part of the process anymore. This can be dangerous for your fuel store growth. 81% of customers are more likely to give feedback when they know that the feedback will reap them the benefits. We also recognise that actioning a change can take time considering there are a lot of stakeholders involved. In such cases saying “we are accessing your feedback” can cause impatience in the customer. All you can do as a diligent fuel brand is say “thank you” report, analyse and work on said feedback. Give the customers context and set an expectation when you receive VoC feedback response. You should be able to make the customer feel heard and assure them that action will be taken.
Every fuel company needs to have a Voice of the Customer feedback program. Good customer experience is what sets you apart from your fuel competitors or c-store competitors. Collecting insights or customer feedback and using it to action meaningful change in your fuel brand has gotten so much easier. Leading customer experience companies are working diligently to help fuel brands in the fuel industry work wonders in their customer experience strategies.
Companies like SonataGBW are a part of such change in the fuel industry. Ee can report issues on our real-time reporting platform, help you make better decisions and create customizable voice of customer surveys in the fuel industry. We can help your fuel retail store and fuel convenience store reach new heights, and attain customer success, customer retention and customer needs to beat your fuel industry competitors; all while perfectly going through challenges in the fuel industry.
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.