The Importance of a Voice of the Customer Program
PWC research shows that 86 percent of customers are willing to pay more for great customer experience, and furthermore, customers are willing to pay a premium of up to 13 percent (and as high as 18 percent) for luxury and indulgence services, simply by receiving a great customer experience.
By collecting customer feedback, analyzing it, and using it to improve products and services, a company can significantly increase customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue. In this blog, we discuss how customer feedback can be collected, what a Voice of a Customer (VOC) program is, and its benefits.
What is a Voice of the Customer (VOC) Program?
In a Voice of the Customer (VOC) Program, detailed information is collected to get feedback from customers about areas such as products, services, and customer support. This information helps companies to make improvements, innovate and offer better solutions. This, in turn, helps improve customer retention, satisfaction, and loyalty while also increasing company revenue.
A Voice of the Customer Program includes three main steps. The first is to gather information from customers. The second is to analyze the data collected to understand customers’ experiences and identify patterns. The final step is to use the information to create a strategy that optimizes the customer experiences as a whole.
Collecting Customer Feedback
You need a solid VOC strategy with different methodologies to obtain valuable customer feedback. Examples of methodologies include:
- CSAT Surveys
- Customer interviews
- Social media
- Recorded call data
- Online customer reviews
- Net Promoter Score
- Customer focus groups
The Benefits of a Voice of the Customer Program
A Voice of the Customer Program can have several benefits:
Better Products and Services: Feedback from customers can lead the way for improving products and services. Offering feedback gives customers the chance to voice what features or solutions are working for them and what’s not working. They can offer suggestions for improving product features and usability and even provide recommendations for new products. A company that listens to what its customers want has an advantage over the competition.
Improved Customer Experiences: Through a Voice of the Customer Program, customers can express ways in which a company can provide them with a better customer experience when they communicate with a company through various channels such as phone, email, social media, text, chat, and website interactions. By listening to customer feedback about what could create better customer experiences, a company can discover what areas need to be improved, reduce customer dissatisfaction, and increase sales and referrals.
More Effective Marketing: Customer feedback allows a company to achieve better results with marketing efforts. It helps a business understand why customers want to use certain products and what benefits or results they are trying to achieve. Marketers can get the feedback from customers and analyze how they speak about their pain points and about the solutions and products they are looking for. They can use words from the customer feedback to speak in the language of the customers in marketing campaigns and materials and on the company website. Doing so will help marketing messages better resonate with customers, which in turns helps increase sales and loyalty.
Increased Customer Retention and Employee Engagement: In addition to improving the customer experience, customer feedback also helps improve employee engagement and customer retention.
Research has shown that companies who actively engagement in VOC programs spend 25 percent less on customer retention than those who don’t. Furthermore, invest in customer feedback programs results in higher client retention and employee engagement.
Increased Revenue through Up-Selling and Cross-Selling
A Voice of the Customer Program can help generate revenue by increasing up-selling and cross-selling rates between 15 and 20 percent. Research has shown that implementing a voice of customer strategy can generate a 10x greater year-over-year increase in annual company revenue.
If you have a VOC data strategy in place and have been collecting data, it’s important to do an audit of that data prior to customer journey mapping.
No VOC Data Program? No problem. CH Consulting Group can help design and implement an effective VOC Data program. Once that’s in place you can begin customer journey mapping.
Find out how CH Consulting Group can help your contact center discover how VoC may be the missing piece to success. For a FREE consultation, contact us here: https://chconsultinggroup.com/contact-us/
