Do you want to know what your customers think about you?
I am sure you do.
Because knowing what your customers are saying about you is important to building a brand that is customer-centric. Like a polygraph, it helps you see into the minds of your customers and gain insights to what they need.
But the question is do you know how to effectively listen?
To effectively listen, you need a well-thought-out VOC program. A VOC program will help you not only to listen to your customers’ voice, but to act accordingly.
Before I go any further…
What is VOC?
VOC is an acronym that stands for Voice of the/your Customer. It is a term used to explain the process of knowing what your customers need and expect from you. It also refers to the process of getting customer feedback, both positive and otherwise.
Through VOC programs or techniques, you can see how well you serve your customers. You can gain thorough understanding of your customers.
Here are a few more benefits of a VoC program:
- Improve customer satisfaction and brand loyalty/trust.
- Design your products and services to suit the needs and desires of your customers.
- Measure your customers’ experience and improve on it.
- Give priority to customer trends, developments, and issues.
- Help you collect customer feedback in order to gain insight into their needs.
- Gain insights for marketing strategies and opportunities.
As you can see, the benefits of having a VOC program are profound. They cannot be ignored.
With that in mind, let me show you…
Ways to capture the voice of your customers
There are several channels through which you can capture the voice of your customers. Here are four major ways used by large companies:
- Individual interviews and discussions from focus groups.
- Research and field reports.
- Feedback surveys
- Text and sentiments analysis methods.
The methods listed above are really effective and give great details on the voice of your customers. However, you do not have to stick with them, especially if you cannot afford them.
The internet has made certain tools available that make this process easy and smooth.
Some of those tools include:
- Online customer reviews.
- Online surveys.
- Customer emails.
- Usability test results.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) results.
- Social media comments.
Internet platforms have one advantage over offline methods. They can provide VOC data in real-time and allow access this data on the go. Thus, helping you spot trends and make decision quickly.
Additionally, they let you interact with the data, like responding to customer reviews or social media comments.
You are probably thinking, “I’ve got to get me some VOC program right away”
That’s great. But hold on just a minute.
There’s one more thing you need. To build an effective VOC program, there are certain areas you need to focus on.
Here are 3 major areas:
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Gather Feedback From As Many Channels As You Can
This title is self-explanatory.
Customer feedback has time and again proven to be effective for knowing what your customers think. They are also the most common channels.
To start with, what comes to your mind when you hear feedback?
Online reviews? That’s only one channel. Many brand managers pay too much attention to online reviews and ignore other channels. As a result, they miss out on a huge chunk of valuable data.
In addition to online reviews, you can collect feedback from emails, social media comments, survey responses, call-centre notes, and phone calls. These channels – when used together – can produce data that will give you a robust understanding of your customers.
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Analyse The VOC Data You Collect
When you have collected adequate VOC data, analyse it.
You need to be able to hear what the data is saying. You organization should come up with a way to make sense of the data. Because any data you cannot interpret is useless.
Depending on the kind of data you have collected, there are more than a few ways to interpret it. Examples include: sentiment analysis, Natural Language processing, star-rating analysis, and more.
With these, you can fully grasp the feelings, emotions, and experiences of your customers. Thus, you can accurately use this data to improve your customers’ experience.
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Build. Execute. Monitor
You have analysed the VOC data, now what?
Now you build.
You build VOC strategies that will help you meet the need of your customers. You and your team should ensure that your strategies encompass everything you learned from the VOC data.
Next, after you have created your strategy, execute it immediately. This because plans not executed right away may start to grow stale. And in these days, stale is in great supply.
One last thing you need to do is monitor the results of your plans/strategies. Monitoring it will help you see what’s working and what’s not working.
To know if you strategy is working, check to see how your customers are responding to the new experience. Are they happier now? Have they changed what they are saying about your brand? Are they giving you better star ratings? Are there organic referrals?
When you focus on these 3 key areas, your VOC plans will be effective. You can remember these 3 areas using the acronym GABEM – Gather. Analyse. Build-Execute-Monitor.
Sounds easy to remember, doesn’t it?
Now go on and listen to what your customers are saying.
By the way…
Did you know that a Wi-Fi analytics and marketing software can help you collect customer feedback? Using a captive portal, you can ask customer to follow you on social media and leave you a review.
Or you could pre-program a review request message that will be sent to customers as soon as they make a purchase.
Interested much?
Get in touch with us and we will tell you about how you can collect customer data in real-time.
POSTED ON January 21, 2020Share:
