Voice of Customer as a springboard to better Customer Experience

It sounds cliché when we hear everyone say, ‘knowledge is power’. However, like most clichés, it is true. Companies spend a lot of time, money and effort in getting feedback and insights from their customers. They are dedicating significant resources to analyzing and improving customer experience as well. And its with good reason, they do that – customers who are exposed to better experiences stick around lot longer. Positive word-of-mouth and their loyalty can become competitive advantage driving growth and profitability for those businesses. As per Salesforce, 66% of customers are willing to pay more for a great experience.

Customer feedback is a key point of reference for consumers and has proven to be influential on their purchasing decisions. Businesses are clearly aware that the collection and publishing of customer feedback enhances their reputation, attractiveness and visibility. However, if customer feedback becomes generalized or trivialized, there might be a risk that the impact created by such feedback will weaken. Will there be a case, where it is tiring for the customer to respond to seemingly never-ending surveys? We strongly believe the answer is no to this question, provided the businesses understand what a customer listening strategy entails as well as the effective implementation of the processes, so that it becomes a sustainable driver of growth and differentiation for them.

Ratings are good, but generating conversations is better

Implementation of a customer listening strategy should not be just about collecting a rating metric that is becoming increasingly less pertinent. There should be a system to examine what lies behind such metric and what they disclose: the drives, preferences, likes, dislikes, thoughts and issues of your customers. If they are committed to respond to customer surveys and make valuable time to write comments, that is because, they want you to listen to these things. Whether positive or negative, a testimony written by a customer shows more value than any ratings. They create an avenue to engage in conversation, to engage with customers individually to re-create closeness as well as to personalize the relationship that forms the crux of customer loyalty and attachment.

You’re listening to their voice – show them that

Encouraging your customers to enunciate themselves is good, while providing them with an avenue to do so in an easy manner is even better. Nonetheless, if you truly want to motivate your customers to respond continually to surveys and share their feedback and opinions, the businesses must demonstrate to them in clear terms that you are taking into consideration, what they are telling you. The least you can do is to respond to your dissatisfied customers. However, if you are responding only to conciliate the customer problems without seriously working on customized solutions or examining the root causes of the recurring issues, you will be breaking the virtuous cycle of customer listening. When a customer who gives voluntary feedback doesn’t see any improvements or changes, they will become less engaged and will stop voicing their opinions. And this is indeed a risk that businesses attract when they solicit VoC too often and fail in taking advantage of the copious amount of customer testimony to develop plan of action that create visible changes for the customers. Ultimately, you need to take this effort to earn the loyalty of your customers by exhibiting clear signs that you are not just content to simply declare that you’re listening – the actions should clearly show them that you are truly hearing them.

Be bold and listen in real time

Nowadays, customers are almost always asked to provide feedback and express their level of satisfaction at a particular interaction – after shopping online or in-store, after delivery, after a service interaction, etc. In industries that revolve around the emotional aspects of customer experience, such as hospitality, tourism, leisure, transportation etc., the key problem that businesses want to tackle is on ways to improve customer expression during the experience so that they can address issues that impact the satisfaction levels in real-time. However, this doesn’t mean barraging customers with constant emails or text messages to understand how things are going every step of the way, but instead extracting value from key moments to repeatedly remind them that you are paying keen attention to their voices in a way that is unobtrusive. 

Involve employee satisfaction – don’t forget them

VoC is increasingly recognized and adopted by companies as an advertising technique. If you want your customer listening strategy to be a persistent driving force that enhances customer satisfaction and experience in the long run, it is critical to involve employees that engage directly with customers at all touch-points including sales and customer services. Such employees are the architects of customer relationships and the quality of customer experience delivered is heavily dependent on the satisfaction of these employees. Thus, it makes sense to give equal importance to everyone, so don’t limit the listening process to only your customers – utilize your feedback management system to collect employee opinions as well. 

The implementation of these different pieces of the VoC puzzle and adapting these key recommendations to the specific needs of your business, you can circumvent the ruse of simply ‘grabbing stars’ and move beyond the system of superficial ratings. Most significant in this activity is that you protect the most precious source of information that the business can acquire: customer feedback. Whether this feedback is spontaneous or solicited, positive or negative, it should be treated primarily as an opportunity to get into a conversation, create a dialogue and build trust with your customers. Customers won’t hesitate to fortify that trust, if you can clearly establish through your actions that you truly care about what they have to say.