Getting feedback from your customers and acting upon it to address their concerns is a crucial step to better customer success.
One of the essential components of that process is Voice of the Customer (VoC),
It can help your business retain the existing customers. Moreover, it helps you improve the products and services you’re offering so as to attract new customers.
But before we dive deeper into how you can collect the Voice of the Customer data, let’s first briefly define it.
What is Voice of the Customer?
The phrase “voice of the customer” was first introduced in the 1993 MIT Marketing Science paper written by Griffin and Hauser, where they defined VoC as follows:
“[VoC] provides a detailed understanding of the customer’s requirements, a common language for the team going forward in the product development process, key input for the setting of appropriate design specifications for the new product or service, and a highly useful springboard for product innovation.”
In simple terms, Voice of the Customer is a methodology used by companies and brands to determine, describe and define the exact needs of their customers.
It’s the process of collecting everything that your customers are saying about your products and services with the aim of getting to know the overall perspective of your brand.
Most businesses use Voice of the Customer data to bridge the gap between what customers expect to get from their products or services and the actual customer experience they’re getting.
Why your business needs a Voice of the Customer program
An Aberdeen Group research has shown that businesses that take advantage of VoC see up to 10x greater annual company revenue increase.
Furthermore, according to a Gartner research, gathering customer feedback could increase your upselling success rate by 15%-20%.
At the same time, it could increase your retention rate and decrease the cost of keeping your current customers – namely, the same report claims that businesses that “listen” to the Voice of the Customer save 25% on customer retention compared to those that don’t have any VoC programs in place.
But why is VoC so important?
Well, by collecting Voice of the Customer data, you’re able to familiarize yourself with every step of the customer journey and make sure your customers have the best possible experience doing business with you. VoC data leads you to better customer success, as it enables you to:
- Get a grasp of customer needs and pain points
- Learn what your customers think about your current products and services
- Find out where you’re falling short of delivering on your promises
- Evaluate new business concepts and ideas before implementing them
- Prioritize what to work on next
- Increase upselling and customer retention rates
- Find out the reasoning behind certain feedback scores and reviews
Let’s see how exactly you can collect the VoC data.
6 Proven Techniques for Obtaining Reliable VoC Data
1. Online surveys
The best way to retain your current customers is simpler than you might think – you just need to learn what they really think about your products or services. And start applying the obtained knowledge to make your products and services better, of course.
But what’s the most effective way to get feedback from your customers? The best, most effective and easiest-to-analyze way to do so is by having your customers take an online survey.
LeadQuizzes offers a ready-made customer feedback survey to all of our active users! To preview the free template, just click on the image below.
Looking to get feedback about a specific product? Look no more! Click on the image below to preview the LeadQuizzes’ product feedback survey.
To access and use both templates (for free), just log in to your LeadQuizzes account and select the templates from within the builder. Let’s start collecting your Voice of the Customer data!
2. Net Promoter Score
Wondering how happy your customers actually are?
Looking to find out if they’d recommend your business, products, and services to others?
If so, you need to find out what your NPS is right now. NPS stands short for Net Promoter Score and it is a metric that shows how likely your customers are to refer you to their friends and colleagues.
Calculating your NPS is a great way of collecting Voice of the Customer data without overwhelming your customers with too many questions. Usually, NPS surveys contain one question only!
Net Promoter Score is great when you don’t need a ton of feedback – businesses usually calculate it to quickly get the overall satisfaction of their customers. After that, they might follow up with one of the more detailed surveys (like the ones we shared above) to find out the specifics.
To find out what your NPS is now, start using our free survey template. Just click on the image below to preview it. Then log in to your account to start using it to obtain valuable VoC data now!
To learn more about why NPS is important and how to calculate it, read this NPS guide.
3. Dedicated feedback forms
When collecting Voice of the Customer data, sometimes dedicated forms can be the best option. While surveys might be a better choice if you’re looking to obtain data via email, forms look great when embedded on your website or landing page.
To quickly check the pulse of your customers on the spot, feel free to use our customer feedback form template. To preview the template, just click on the image below!
If you’re simply looking to collect data about your users (and not looking for feedback on anything specific), you can use a simple customer information form. Click on the image to preview it!
You can easily edit and adjust it so as to fit your specific needs. Add or remove certain fields, change label texts, change the design and layout – the possibilities are limitless!
4. Live Chat
A Forrester study has shown that 44% of online buyers think that live chat is the best feature an ecommerce store can have.
It allows you to address your customers’ questions and concerns in real-time, minimize the possibility of having unsatisfied customers and collect valuable customer feedback.
We at LeadQuizzes also have chat support on our website and it has helped significantly improve our customer retention rates!
If you don’t have an in-house team to manage 24×7 chat support, you can try Live Chat Agents service providers, such as DeskMoz.
5. Website Behavior
Once potential customers land on your ecommerce website, they take a series of actions before they make a decision to buy or not buy what you’re selling. They might browse different products, read your delivery policy, look for discounts, and so on.
Now let’s compare this to the traditional brick-and-mortar stores. There you have shopping assistants overlooking the customers and jumping in whenever they have a question or a concern. Or if they notice they need any kind of assistance.
Well, you can do the same on your website! Simply use a tool like Hotjar to understand the way your customers behave on your website. This might be the most valuable piece of VoC data you can get!
6. Online Customer Reviews
From Google, over Facebook, to different rating-based platforms, there’s a bunch of places where customers can leave their feedback online. You need to make sure you keep track of that data and use it to shape your Voice of the Customer data.
Source: Capterra
For example, LeadQuizzes has a dedicated page on Capterra, where users can leave both positive feedback and constructive criticism after having used the tool for a while. The best thing is that those are not just simple star-based ratings but also textual reviews from which you can learn a lot.
Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with what Voice of the Customer is and how your business can benefit from it, pick one of the techniques described above (or even better, test a few) and start collecting valuable customer feedback.
