Voice of Customer has transformed massively since its proliferation in the 90s. Now able to ingest, analyse and act on a myriad of customer interactions and insights, the explosion of potential for VOC is almost unrecognisable from its distant 90s relative. But in today’s experience-driven economy, realising the full potential of a leading-edge VOC programme is more critical to businesses than ever—all thanks to its ability to provide a competitive advantage that drives commercial results.
But what does it take to develop a leading-edge VOC programme?
Step 1: Taking your Voice of Customer programme beyond a tick-box exercise.
Disconnected VOC programmes don’t generate value
A Ferrari without wheels is the perfect analogy for many VOC programmes. Businesses are failing to get full value from their programmes when they’re only used to report up to the board or for siloed training in one area of the business. In these instances, businesses aren’t getting full value from their programmes, which in turn limits the amount business leaders want to invest in evolving their programmes.
Harnessing the gold mine of VOC starts with connecting existing insights across all areas of the business to fuel action and measurable business results. Meanwhile, proving the ROI of your existing programme is the first step to building a business case for transforming your VOC and making VOC an intelligence engine at the heart of driving your business forward.
Connecting VOC intelligence to power every part of your business
Businesses with mature and value-driving VOC programmes use their customer insights in a multitude of ways, from responding in the moment to incorporating them into AI, informing product enhancements, and building workplace culture.
To maximise business impact, VOC maturity must be ever evolving
When VOC is truly embedded across a business, it’s not just the boardroom or customer service teams who benefit; the whole business lifts as a result.
“At Perceptive, we’re really passionate about helping the businesses we partner with amplify the value of their VOC programmes. It all starts with understanding core business challenges and how the intelligence from VOC can support fact-based business decisions,” says Kate De Marco, Strategy Director at Perceptive.
Driving VOC maturity forward
A mature Voice of Customer programme is one that uses customer feedback, insights, and signals of intent in multiple ways across a business. The more you use the data, the more value and greater ROI you drive from the programme. The best place to start is with an intelligence audit: identify what you are capturing, ingesting and connecting, understand how the intelligence is being analysed and actioned, and assess how widely it is embedded in your ways of working and critical decisions. Once you have a clear picture of your current state, you can begin mapping the best way to evolve your VOC programme specifically for your business. At this point, aligning your roadmap with business-critical measures is key; specifically, identify use cases where you can harness VOC intelligence for key business priorities.
“If you think VOC is ‘just an NPS survey’ you’ll get left behind,” says Kate. “The tools to capture insights, analyse them at speed and scale, and drive automated actions are already being adopted by your competitors.”
Read more: Voice of Customer (VOC) is not just NPS anymore
Maximising value from your VOC programme now—and into the future
As a rule, we like to say, “Don’t start with the questions you’re going to ask, start with the answers you need”. Do you have an invisible point of friction across your journeys? Do you know why customers on your website aren’t converting? Do you know why your customers are choosing to leave? Connecting customer intelligence with commercial objectives is the first way to maximise value from your programme.
As part of this, consider how you’re measuring the success of your VOC programme. A mature programme is more likely to define success in a variety of ways beyond simply acting in the moment to customer feedback. Success might include integrating customer feedback across the entire organisation and seeing it contribute to each team and department’s way of working. It could also involve incorporating customer feedback with new technology to enable better service interactions and individualised responses from your business.
If your VOC programme is a set-and-forget measure or only checked when a boardroom report is due, you’re not getting the most out of it.
For your business to succeed in today’s experience-driven economy, you can’t afford to overlook the gold mine of information your VOC can provide.
Want to assess the maturity of your VOC programme? Download our Blueprints to Evolve Your VOC Programme.
