When an organization realizes they need to integrate the voice of the customer into their work there is a tendency to move quickly. The conversation shifts from customer experience to Voice of the Customer (VOC) and it rapidly becomes about technology implementation versus strategic change. There are five ways a customer experience (CX) strategy will ensure the success of your closed-loop Voice of the Customer program:
1. Asking the Right Questions
If all you want to do is collect customer data and set benchmarks, then traditional satisfaction questions should be fine. But if you want to take action on improving the customer experience, then you need to make sure you are asking the right questions. According to The Temkin Group VOC Maturity Model, 38% of VOC programs are still focused on data collection. To grow in VOC maturity means designing a survey that asks the most important questions.
2. Measuring the Critical Touchpoints
A customer journey map will highlight the touchpoints that are essential to the customer experience. While it may be tempting to focus CX improvements on what seems fun and interesting to you internally, having a strategy in place will ensure that you are focusing measurement and improvement efforts on the things that matter most to your customers.
3. Taking Action on Customer Feedback
The launch of a closed-loop customer feedback program means that you will need to have people in place ready to take immediate action on customer comments. If you don’t have a plan in place for how to handle a complaint coming in through your Voice of the Customer software, then you haven’t earned the right to ask your customers for insight.
4. Rewarding the Right Behaviors
It’s important to know not only the outcomes you are after (higher NPS, increased customer loyalty) but also the behaviors that support those outcomes (going above and beyond for customers, taking quick follow-up when customers report a negative experience). Your customer experience strategy should inform the behaviors that your VOC program will help you reward.
5. Tracking Progress Toward the Customer Experience Vision
Finally, VOC software should be a tool that is able to help you measure the success of your customer experience initiatives and your progress toward achieving the CX goal. But in order for your VOC program to do this, you need to do the hard work of first building your strategy.
~Janessa Lantz
