Understanding Voice of the Customer Feedback

Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback is one of the most important tools available to companies. It’s one of the crucial pit-stops on the road towards optimization and ignoring it can leave your company in a really difficult situation. VoC refers to a system by which feedback from customers from a variety of different stations within your company, social media, in-store, customer service phoneline et al., is collated into a unified data set and put under the purview of a team who are prepared to use the data to make the small and large improvements that the feedback indicates need to be made within your company. VoC is made complex by the fact that no company could ever successfully operate under the pretense that when a customer makes a complaint or suggestion that change would then immediately be made. This is why the unit within your company which receives the bulk feedback need to be adept at spotting trends, at reading a deeper significance into the data and then making an informed decision about how viable it is to make a certain change which seems like it is wanted by the customers. So, with that said, let’s get into VoC and how you can use it to bring success to your company.

Feedback Generation

A diverse policy is best when looking at the platforms through which you might choose to receive the VoC feedback. In the modern era, there are so many different ways for customers to keep in touch with companies and, for a company that wants to stay ahead of the VoC curve, none of them should be ignored. This means that you need to have each potential portal, email, social media (and that you have), phone calls, texts, letters, all properly staffed so that the valuable VoC data can be collected and forwarded appropriately to begin to really fashion a useful image of customer concern. Make sure that you also have customer service representatives at each of these portals as well, to ensure that customers feel well received and that they find the answers that they want efficiently and with ease.

Who Is It All Useful For?

The most optimized and prepared companies when it comes to VoC are, ironically, the smallest ones. A moments thought will reveal to you how this could be though since smaller companies can all afford to be more responsive to customers. It’s actually why some companies choose to stay small. For example, imagine a tailor opening a store on Saville Row in London. They know that every customer who walks through their door can be delivered a truly high-class service for a great cost. They might never opt to open stores globally because it makes it less and less possible to maintain the quality of customer attention that they have built their reputation on. Really rigorous VoC work is most useful for large companies who want to maintain at the very least an illusion that their company is very optimized and tailored to the average customer, whilst also using their bulk data sets to see whether, within all the complaints or comments they receive, there is enough evidence to suggest that a change needs to be made.

Importance Of Teamwork

Effective VoC optimization requires the contributions of people from all different aspects to a company, as well as the really strong team at the heart of it, processing data and establishing what, if anything, needs to be changed to benefit the company long term. It’s imperative that there is a production line. A continuous flow of information on customer behavior which, through its consistency, quality and the clarity of communication, can lead to improvements where there need to be improvements as quickly as possible. One underappreciated facet of VoC which again require clear teamwork and communication is when to ignore the customer. Outwardly, this is never the course of action and you should always, at the very least, consider a change. But it isn’t practical for a large company to be shifting policy over VoC communications constantly. There has to be a degree of consistency and to make sure you are using your time most wisely, you will want to have a built-in understanding between, for example, the social media team and the VoC team as to what data is worth sending and what should be ignored.

Conclusion 

Overall, VoC is a vital element to a successful, modern, client-facing company. Being blind to customer comments and complaints is extremely dangerous and having an inefficient communication route for your VoC data can be almost the same thing. Stay optimized, stay flexible and make a change when you need to.

Chloe Bennet is a customer support manager at Do my essay for me online educational portal.