Voice of the Customer: 4 Powerful Steps for Listening to Win their Hearts

In today’s business era, customers typically get what they want, when they want it. If you’re not paying close attention to the voice of the customer, meeting their needs will be nearly impossible. Fortunately, customers are voicing their opinions about your brand on various channels. Knowing which channels will best suit your strategy will help you find out how to go about collecting their feedback.

This article highlights the voice of the customer (VoC) and walks through a four-step implementation process. Your business will gain credibility and trust by acknowledging and getting to know your customers personally.

What is the Voice of the Customer?

Listening to the voice of the customer (VoC) is a process of directly asking external customers about their needs, wants, expectations, and experiences with your product or service. 

Businesses must consistently check the pulse of their customers since their needs are constantly changing. Implementing a VoC program may be the solution to this dilemma. A VoC program gives valuable data about customers wants, problems they’re currently experiencing, and complaints about your offerings. This insight can help you adjust your strategy better to solve your customers’ problems and effectively meet their needs.

For instance, Johannesburg Bank wanted to remain competitive and improve customer retention rates, so they implemented a VoC program. The bank created a hashtag-based campaign so they could capture customer feedback and run analyses across their social media channels. The team collected two million pieces of feedback surrounding what customers liked and disliked about their services. Then, they separated the feedback into categories surrounding different bank services and assigned scores to the various comments. These scores helped the bank determine which bank services needed the most attention.

As you can see, the VoC programs uses customers’ opinions, beliefs, and experiences to develop a targeted approach for improvement. VoC can also help figure out which area of the business needs the most work; that way, you’re better able to focus all your time and energy on those areas. Businesses that listen to customers have reported higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales. For instance, 94 percent of consumers claim they are more likely to purchase more from a company with “very good” remarks or customer feedback.

Given how effective VoC programs are, where do you start? Creating an effective VoC program is an essential first step, but running the program is a greater task.

4 Best Practices for Implementing a VoC program

Creating a Multichannel Platform

VoC programs collect customer data from several channels; whether it be through service calls, customer feedback surveys, emails, the business website, or social media. The more data, the better! But it’s also important to remember that each communication channel has different data collection methods. That’s because each channel will give distinct types of data, which calls for a tailored approach to collecting that data.

For example, let’s focus our attention on social media. Businesses use a social listening strategy, which monitors online discussions for mentions of their brand. You’re looking for the kinds of words that customers often use to describe your brand; whether they have a positive or negative tone. If you can identify a negative tone around areas like customer service or product quality, you can take measures to improve those areas. Social media listening gives you access to real-time feedback that can help you continuously improve your offerings. 

While direct feedback is valuable, capturing indirect feedback is also essential. Indirect feedback can include data from community forum comments, support tickets, and social media messaging. For instance, Reddit is a massive virtual forum community where people can discuss their hobbies, interests, and opinions. There is ample opportunity to sift for valuable insight in forums associated with your brand.

Lastly, it’s crucial to value data from different types of customers. For instance, front-line employees directly communicate with customers daily. They can offer valuable insight on customer touch points which can help you find themes about customers likes and dislikes. 

Responding to VoC

While collecting VoC data is important, you must also respond to your customers. In fact, customers are more likely to be loyal to companies that listen and respond to their feedback. It’s important to note that customers want personalized responses to their concerns. That means that a typical automated response won’t do. They want to know that you’ve heard their feedback and how you plan to use that information. 

You must find opportunities to engage with your customers regularly – especially concerning poor reviews. Responding positively to poor reviews is an excellent way to change how customers feel about your brand. Interestingly, 89.7 percent of customers are willing to give you a second chance if you respond positively to their poor reviews. It pays, quite literally, to actively engage and respond to your customers on various channels.

Spotify does a great job of dealing with customer complaints on Twitter. @Spotifycares is a way to let the company know about your problems, so they can quickly help you solve them. Their customer service goes a step further by doing Random Acts of Kindness, like sharing a song with a customer based on what kind of music they most enjoy. It’s no wonder why Spotify is one of the industries leading giants!

Seeking Feedback From Customers          

Putting these best practices in place opens the communication line between your business and your customers. This communication can be a viable source of understanding your customers’ needs. Another way to meet these needs is by asking for feedback on your products, customer service, how they feel about your brand, and how you can best support them in the future. It’s important to also seek feedback from your employees as well! The goal is to improve your strategy based on customer and employee feedback continuously.

VoC surveys are the best tools to help you find out what customers think. The most common survey currently used is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) survey, which measures how happy customers are with specific points of contact with your brand. It asks customers to rate their experiences on a scale from 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied) and gives them a chance to talk about their personal experiences. Businesses can use this to their advantage by looking for common themes in the feedback and changing their strategy to accommodate them.

Hubspot is a company that keeps track of CSAT survey metrics to get feedback from its customers. They use open-ended questions and ratings to allow their customers to be as expressive as possible. Hubspot considers this information valuable in shaping its services to meet customer needs.

Closing the Loop

Leaders must minimize silos before implementing a VoC program. Your VoC program aims to create a feedback loop that guides specific actions across the business. This means every employee should have access to all of the customer data through a cross-functional platform. Cross-functional communication and collaboration are essential since VoC touches all business areas.

For instance, sales may learn new insights about customers’ unique values and drive to tailor their approach to closing deals better. At the same time, product development can leverage this information to push for new features. Meanwhile, marketing can use this information to create effective retention strategies for certain groups of customers.

Each department can use the same feedback to help them make decisions while ensuring their goals align with the VoC goal to make the customer feel valued and listened to. Ultimately, this strategy will help build loyalty and trust in your brand.

Conclusion

To gain customers’ hearts, you must acknowledge and work to fulfill their needs. Customers consistently leave clues that will help fulfill their needs, but you must care enough to listen to them. The voice of the customer (VoC) is collecting and listening to these clues while working to address them. Industry leaders are companies that find out what their customers want and give it to them. You will become an industry leader when your approach is entirely based on the voice of your customers.

Dr. B

Fellow in Executive Assessment & Consulting | I-O Psychologist at Leadership Worth Following | Website

Bianca Cardenas, M.S., Ph.D., is a Fellow in Executive Assessment and Consulting with Leadership Worth Following. Dr. Bianca Cardenas empowers leaders to transcend competition by helping them unlock their people's potential.