Understanding your customers starts with gathering their feedback. But a Forrester study1 found that at the end of 2020, decision making with customer insights was organizations’ biggest challenge with marketing programs. That’s why having a voice of customer (VoC) program—a program designed to capture the needs and wants of the customer—in your organization is critical to improving customer experiences, driving a customer-centric culture, and delivering better business outcomes.
VoC programs need to be built on a strong foundation of principles, but it takes more than that to succeed. Our newest webinar featuring Forrester analyst Faith Adams explores what voice of customer programs are, how it can impact your business, and what steps you can take today. Watch “Build Better Customer Experiences with VoC Programs” today.
The four principles of successful VoC programs
1. Listen to your customers where they are
In today’s interconnected world, your customers exist in a variety of channels from email to social to web. If your organization can meet your customers in those channels, both in collecting feedback, closing the loop, and delivering a great experience—you can build lifelong loyalty.
Organizations with a strong VoC program utilize its tools to deploy surveys in every channel in real time, creating a seamless and easy process for the customer. Prioritizing understanding how customers see your products and services will help every department, from marketing to sales to customer service, have a greater impact on the customer experience.
2. Maximize insights for deeper connections
A deeper connection with your customer can only form from a complete understanding of their perceptions, needs, and wants. Strong VoC programs maximize customer insights with powerful tools such as AI-analysis and customer satisfaction metrics such as NPS satisfaction over time allow organizations to continuously have a pulse on their customers’ perception.
With direct feedback analyzed and visualized in a manner that is easy to interpret, tailoring future interactions becomes easier than ever. Sales, marketing, and customer service can adjust their daily interactions and decisions to align with what matters most to customers and are empowered to develop lifelong relationships.
3. Integrate data across your organization
Data silos prevent rich customer insights and authentic experiences. Successful VoC programs truly transform data management and create a culture of customer centricity where every department has access to the right data at the right time.
Further, sharing the insights you gather from direct feedback can be utilized to create holistic customer profiles. Together with behavioral data, these unified customer profiles can be accessed directly from the VoC, elevating how organizations think about their customer and how to respond.
4. Respond quickly to build customer relationships
Finally, a VoC program needs to enable an organization to respond in the moments that matter. The combination of data from applications and the use of real-time notifications creates accelerate response times.
The most important part of the customer journey for your organization is closing the feedback loop. When customer feedback is received, 88 percent of customers expect a response from businesses within 60 minutes. That’s why VoCs let you set triggers for when customer satisfaction dips, creating an instant pathway to delivering a great customer experience.
Starting your Voice of Customer journey can be daunting, but it’s the first step to orchestrating authentic connections and responses to customer feedback. With these four principles in mind, and with all departments bought into a singular vision, organizations can improve business outcomes.
To learn how Microsoft can empower your organization to use a robust VoC to quickly collect and understand omnichannel feedback at scale, visit the Dynamics 365 Customer Voice website.
Start your free trial of Dynamics 365 Customer Voice today and check out our on-demand webinar “Build Better Customer Experiences with VoC Programs” today.
1Forrester Analytics, Business Technographics® Marketing Survey, 2020.
