Successful brands hear what their customers are saying; they are paying close attention to the Voice of the Customer (VoC). Recent trends highlight an increased focus on initiatives to improve social listening, customer engagement and multichannel support.
For example, Gartner expects the market for VoC programs to expand by 30% annually, and predicts these programs will be a top strategic investment for brands over the next five years. However, although many brands recognize the need for comprehensive customer service initiatives, most lack an actionable implementation and measurement strategy. As a result, they are unable to forecast their expected return on investment (ROI) for VoC programs, and the valuable idea runs the risk of being passed over in favor of a new fleeting trend.
Don’t let this mistake happen in your organization. Before you embark on a VoC program, ask the below questions to ensure your ability to measure and communicate its impact.
How will you collect cross-channel feedback?
Between social media, conversations with support staff, online forums and reviews, you are likely gathering customer input from a variety of mediums and have been cultivating it for some time. Invest in tools that can aggregate this content and track its sentiments, required actions and any other metrics that can help uncover specific opportunities for your organization. Customer feedback is one of your company’s most valuable assets, and when analyzed efficiently, it helps inform service policies, marketing strategy, product development and reputation management.
Do your benchmarks align with your goals?
Just as every customer journey is unique, the customer experience differs between organizations and industries. Consider the ideal end results of your VoC program. You may want to enhance customer loyalty, increase revenues, grow your social presence or expand into a new market. By establishing benchmarks that link customer feedback with these goals, calculated ROI will become less of a business proof point and more of a boost on your journey toward providing a consistent, engaged customer experience.
Some metrics that can help highlight your program’s success include your net promoter score (NPS), which assesses customers’ willingness to recommend your business to others; customer review score, which is best collected through direct requests for the customer to leave reviews; and A/B or usability testing, which can be a valuable way to gather customer insights on website redesigns, online ordering processes, and more.
How do your customers perceive your brand?
The true success of a VoC program is its ability to help a brand develop a human identity that customers can trust. Nielsen finds that 84% of consumers are more likely to trust recommendations from friends and family over branded advertising campaigns. Not surprisingly, smart marketers are driving efforts toward establishing social proof and maintaining corporate transparency in order to develop a favorable, trustworthy reputation with their customers. For example, some brands show customers they care through individualized, human responses to social media inquiries, or commitments to timely responses to customer support requests from any channel, during which support staff will always close the loop with the customer regardless of the inquiry’s depth or urgency.
Are you fully tapping into available resources?
A recent Econsultancy report found that aggregated web analytics were the most widely used data source for brands, but a mere 16 percent of organizations leverage analytics tied to individual users. Acting on this data can speak volumes to customers about how much your brand cares about and will attempt to accommodate their unique preferences.
Perhaps you notice that your website receives peak inbound traffic at 11:30 a.m. each day, or that visitors are most likely to convert into customers if they visit your website after engaging with the brand on Twitter. By increasing support staff during those peak traffic hours to ensure that all inbound inquiries will be addressed immediately, or rewarding social referrals with exclusive deals or discounts for the brand’s offerings, it sends a message to customers that the brand recognizes and appreciates their preferences.
Will this program be sustainable?
Even as you prove the value of your VoC program by benchmarking its progress and acting on the insights it delivers, you’ll need to communicate its value within your organization and create standards that help it grow and evolve long after its initial implementation. Telling customer stories through case studies and videos will achieve this goal while keeping your audience engaged, and securing executive buy-in for the program early on will help establish internal team members as advocates who help drive its success.
Insights gathered from customer feedback can help drive product marketing, sales, ecommerce, branding, support teams and executive strategies. Avoiding a tactical approach to a VoC program, and preventing it from being siloed within your organization will help your entire team recognize the impact of the program on the business’ key priorities. And if you can prove your program’s ROI for the company as a whole, your brand will maintain trust-based, lasting relationships that respond directly to customer needs for years to come.
Nico Lutkins is global director of enterprise marketing and customer advocacy at Trustpilot.