HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER … · Build a holistic view of the customer feedback, which allows you to choose the insights that fit into your organizations mission

HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER PROGRAM

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1SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

From the Author

“Voice of the Customer” (VoC) is one of those terms that vendors and professionals in the field love to toss around—but what is it and how do you build a VoC program?

Our goal with this guide is to remove the hype from VoC and walk through the essential building blocks of a successful program. We not only will provide a brief overview of what it all is, but how to implement a program in your organization efficiently and effectively.

Once you understand the components of VoC, it’s not as complicated or intimidating as most experts and vendors would like you to think.

Author Spotlight

Christian Vanek is the

CEO and co-founder of

SurveyGizmo. He has a

passion for facilitating

company-wide

communication and

increasing productivity to

elevate company culture.

His determination sets

high standards and

fosters innovation within

the data industry.

2SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

How to Build a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program

VoC programs require a sound structure and consistent follow-through to be effective,

according to experts at Forrester. When done well, they drive customer experience

improvements. Building your program is going to require a little bit of detective work as a lot of

what you’re seeking from your customers is going far beyond the words they share with you,

but how they feel about your products and brand. Here are the first steps to take to start

building your program, according to the researchers at Forrester:

Step 1. Listen to and sort through customer feedback Start by listing out each and every channel from social media and email to the website and

phone recordings. Start tracking customer behavior throughout each channel and find the

preferences they are seeking. The most important part of this step is the keep all of your

findings in a centralized place. This is the only way you will then be able to sift through the data

to make the aforementioned correlations.

Step 2: Analyze the data

Every story has a number, and this is the stage for you to begin to understand the narrative in

each piece of data. Some of these narratives will expose trends, patterns, and behind-the-scene

views of your customer and the experience they have. Once you understand the backstory, the

numbers will begin to work in your favor and help you make informed decisions personalized to

each customer.

Voice of the customer is: A system/process for collecting customer feedback across multiple touchpoints then putting that feedback in the hands of decision makers to drive continuous improvements to your product or service.

3SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

Step 3: Create a data-based customer experience strategy This is where you determine what you’re going to do with all the information and insights you

have gathered. The customer experience strategy will be based on this step. With these

findings, you and your team will be able to be closer than you have been to be in the past with

your customers.

Step 4: Monitor your results Your data is flowing into one central location, you have taken the time to analyze all of it,

identified patterns and trends, and know what decisions you are going to make from your

findings. Now what? You need to monitor your results on a regular basis and allow room to

tweak and make adjustments in your program based on incoming feedback.

4SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

VoC Program Benefits

Here are some of the top benefits and general goals for a VoC program framework:

Service Improvement

Use real customer opinions to augment existing services and communication strategies. Basing any changes off actual expectations improves overall customer satisfaction.

Deeply understand how customers interact with, perceive, and understand your brand. With a constant pulse on your brand status, you can keep its reputation in good standing while growing market share and customer loyalty.

By keeping your ear to the ground and listening to your customers, products can be adjusted accordingly. This kind of feedback can then be used to grasp new trends and future development.

Your customers are your best form of marketing. If they’re happy, they will shout from the mountains. Nurture these relationships so they are at the center of marketing efforts.

Listening to customers will help you understand how effective your go-to-market strategies are. VoC will also provide you with deep insights into the demographics of your target markets.

Brand Management

Product Development & Innovation

Marketing Efficiency

Market Fit

5SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

How a VoC program fits in based on company size

Without a VoC program, the business risks losing focus on providing customer-centric value and its likelihood of failure increases.

Small BusinessesSmall businesses, consultants, and entrepreneurs naturally gather customer

insights due to their regular interaction with customers. They don’t need a

formalized program until key stakeholders become removed from regular customer

interactions and feedback.

Large & Enterprise BusinessesAs teams, departments, offices, and divisions form within an organization, natural

silos of customer information and needs will also appear. Usually, each team

will collect the information they need, and the data is rarely shared across the

organization in a structured or continuous way. An integrated VoC program can

change that.

Medium BusinessesOrganizations that think big picture will lay the foundation for a VoC program

when it reaches 75–150 employees, with several layers of management, and a clear

separation of duties and expectations.

Implementing a VoC program at this size is ideal—before the lack of continuous

customer input and research becomes both an internal problem for the

organization and a potential competitive disadvantage.

Start-up BusinessesAt start-up companies seen in Silicon Valley and the like, financial backers want to

know their investments are positively impacting the market. A VoC program can

help bring that data to the board table to show and hopefully, wow your investors.

a b c

a b c

a b c

a b c

6SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

Essential Building Blocks

To implement a structured VoC program, consider these recommendations when kicking things off:

Block 1

Get Buy-In From Your CEO

Block 2

Set Goals For Your VoC Program

Block 3

Audit Your Existing Customer Feedback

Sources

Block 1: Get Buy-In From Your CEO

A successful VoC program needs to be supported from the top down. This is important because

• Communication organization-wide and to customers will have a robust backbone

• The adoption process is easier and ensures employee participation is high

• Program budget will have executive support from end-to-end

• Helps the program stay on track and be held accountable

• The program will support key business goals and impact bottom-line revenue ‘

a b c

a b c

a b c

Block 2: Set Goals For Your VoC Program

From day one, sit down with key stakeholders to define expectations, pros, cons, timeline,

milestones, and key deliverables. Pick one or two benefits that fit your organization to initially

focus on. Add more over time and the program proves its worth. Keep the lines of

communication open throughout the organization as the program matures in order to keep it

aligned to core objectives.

Over time, you can enhance the program with additional goals and objectives which will increase the return on your initial investment without overloading your teams and leaders.

Block 3: Audit Your Existing Customer Feedback Sources

You could have several ad hoc programs running that resemble a VoC program in place right

now. They are more than likely to be siloed and/or undermanaged without a formalized process

behind it. Before kicking-off the program, make sure you:

• Check in with every single department to see what may exist such as feedback processes

and collections

• Remove any bias that may be baked into the data you find; an effective program is 100%

objective

Areas where information may live in your organization may include: product information

requests, phone calls coming into the main line managed by front desk staff, crowdsourced

review sites like Yelp, social media channels, live events, and onsite trainings.

7SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

Block 4: Identify Gaps in Customer Experience

Once you have your existing customer data mapped out, compare it to a customer’s

experience and all the touch points they have with your product, people, and organization.

Do you have an opportunity and/or need to collect customer feedback beyond what you’re

already receiving? A well-balanced VoC program contains data from two schools:

Quantitative data: Surveys, support frequency, sentiment analysis, analytics

Qualitative data: Focus groups, online community research, social media

data, interviews

Does the data you currently have the recommended balance of quantitative and qualitative data?

End results should yield information that provides well-rounded and timely customer feedback.

To gather more information tap into alternative channels such as consistently administering

surveys or creating online communities. The more information to end up with, the more robust

the VoC program will be.

Block 5: Agree On Action Expectations For Your VoC Program

Build a holistic view of the customer feedback, which allows you to choose the insights that fit into your organizations mission and vision.

Discuss and develop an understanding of what types of decisions functional managers can

make from data, and how the data will be acted on before you start implementing a VoC program.

The VoC program should reflect the company’s mission, core business values, and competitive

advantages. This will help determine which customer feedback is actionable and which

information is merely interesting to know.

Block 6: Connect Your VoC Data Sources

Establish a central repository for all customer feedback data to be stored and viewed. This is often

an IT project that is overseen by the VoC program lead, but making this a priority in the program’s

development should be highly prioritized. The central repository is your source to pull regular

reports and eliminates duplicating effort or decentralizing data.

When you’re shopping around for a platform, ensure your frontrunners all have an open API,

which allows for custom integrations into your business. Commonly known vendors with open

APIs include Salesforce, Google Analytics, Pardot, and Zendesk.

Choosing the right platform and supporting integrated services will save you time and money—both important factors for the overall return on investment for your VoC program.

Block 4

Identify Missing Points In Your

Customer Experience

a b c

Block 5

Agree On Action Expectations For

Your VoC Program

a b c

Block 6

Connect Your VoC

Data Sources

a b c

8SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

Top 4 Common Problems to Avoid

Every great plan has problems when you start to implement it. Here are some of the most common pitfalls that many VoC programs face:

1. Bias in Customer Groups

In some cases, businesses don’t have a great definition of who their customers are or how groups

of customers are segmented. In some cases, the customers you have now may not be

representative of the market you are planning on entering or want to enter.

Our recommendation is to work with your marketing leaders, an outside consultant, or

agency to help separate and identify the company’s target customers and markets to go after.

Correct identification of these targets will make the data coming in more valuable and your

efforts go further.

2. Not Communicating or Defining Goals

For any VoC program to succeed, you must have a thorough understanding of what it actually

is. Start by sitting down and defining what the program looks and feels like for your

organization, what you are looking to achieve with the program, and how you are going to

measure its success. Clearly define goals as the program matures and establish a consistent

communication strategy so the program’s purpose is well-known organization-wide.

3. Failure to Consistently Manage the VoC Project After Launch

Like most worthwhile systems, a VoC program is going to require more than just the

implementation team. The VoC program needs to be consistently managed and maintained

after launch to meet the changes of the business and be flexible to the information you are seeking

at any point in time. Make sure your budget and timeline include post-launch management.

4. Contradictory Information

Finally, and most frustratingly, we can almost guarantee you are going to get contradictory

information from customers and customer groups.

Often this is due to poorly understood customer segments being grouped together. If you start

seeing patterns of feedback that contradict each other, this can be an indicator of a customer

subgroup or category that was not previously identified.

Take the time to research it. If the customer group is valuable and fits with your product/market

vision, then adapt your tracking and reporting.

9SurveyGizmo | What Makes a Successful Voice of the Customer Program

Be Patient and Stick to the Program

Successful and effective VoC programs take time and patience. It’s not going to happen overnight, but rest assured: it will happen!

The best advice we can offer is: stick to it. Implement your program in phases and celebrate

early success, but don’t be discouraged if you don’t see the results (either in data or in your

organization’s adoption) right away.

It takes a real champion to drive a successful VoC program, but the benefits will be well worth

the wait, hard work, and diligence.

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