Why Voice of the Customer Matters — and How to Get Leadership Support

In today’s world, contact centers must keep their focus on the voice of the customer to succeed. It’s important to ensure agents are working efficiently and technology is running smoothly. At the same time, you need a plan and a system to hear what your customers are thinking.

In these challenging times your customer’s voice matters more than ever — but this information can get lost among everything else going on. Even if agents are distracted and issues are coming up, contact centers must provide the same level of satisfaction as they would have before. How can you prioritize excellent service no matter what’s going on in the world? Establish a Voice of the Customer Program.

Successful contact centers around the globe are flipping the script and asking “How can we make service even better for our customers?” Tuning into the voice of the customer through customer surveys, interaction analytics and more is what thriving contact centers are doing today to continue providing exemplary service.

Explore the difference a VoC program can make in your contact center. Here’s the impact a VoC can have.

A VoC Program Solves Big Picture Problems

As your contact center agents solve customer problems one by one, they may miss the big picture. While quick solutions are great, they may not reveal deeper patterns or systemic issues. VoC programs ensure that contact centers take action and stay ahead of trends and issues that can unexpectedly snowball into larger challenges.

NICE research, surveying thousands of consumers, illustrates that businesses might not understand big picture pain points like they think they do. The study revealed that businesses underestimated satisfaction through the phone channel by a statistically significant eight points. Conversely, businesses overestimated satisfaction with online assistants/chatbots and IVR by nine and seven points, respectively. A VoC program  gives you the opportunity to understand customer attitudes about your service channels.

Customer analytics is the 20-20 lens that removes bias and spots issues before they become major mishaps. With AI-powered contact center analytics, you’ll be able to review your customer experience through the magnifying glass of targeted KPIs to identify the root cause of what could quickly grow into a bigger issue. Just imagine what you could accomplish when you analyze100% of your contact center interactions!

With customer analytics software in your VoC program it’s possible to improve every customer’s experience through a gold mine of feedback. Equipped with data, your VoC program will show important insights and areas that need your action. Using your new perspective, you’ll be able to improve your CX and begin eliminating blind spots.

VoC Programs Demystify Customer Sentiment

How much data do you have on hand about how your customers actually feel? Really listening to the voice of the customer stretches beyond data points. Consumer behavior research shows that how customers feel has a 1.5 times greater impact on their purchase, loyalty and advocacy actions than how they think. By gaining an understanding of how customers feel, you and your contact center agents will be better able to predict their actions and implement strategies for improved CX.

The impact of negative emotions is jarring. The statistics are staggering: nearly 50% of customers report they will stop doing business with a company that frustrates them. Additionally, only 32% of those frustrated consumers will actually contact the company to complain before taking their business elsewhere.

On the other side of the equation, positive emotions pay off. When customers feel positively about your organization, they’ll keep coming back. The key for your contact center is being able to understand what emotions your customers are experiencing and how you can improve them.

Your VoC program can give you the ability to reach beyond 1-10 ratings and into true customer sentiment. Suddenly, customer dissatisfaction that didn’t make sense before is plain to see and simple to respond to. Through extraordinary software and soft skills, look forward to seeing your customer satisfaction soar.

VoC Programs Offer Omnichannel Feedback

With customers interacting with organizations on more channels than ever, interaction feedback can be more difficult to come by. Utilizing technology is key to gathering and making use of this insightful data.

Digital channel preference is increasing at astonishing rates. Research shows 90% of Generation Z and 84% of Millennials report digital channels as their top preference. As customers shift to digital, so should your reporting. However, getting all that data together and making sense of it requires an intentional approach.

With digital and mobile omnichannel experiences, customers have the ability to contact organizations in whatever way is most comfortable to them. VoC programs enable contact centers to bring in data from all these channels with the help of interaction analytics and survey tools. Omnichannel analytics will empower your agents as well, giving them access to direct feedback for areas to improve.

Don’t lose track of the customer experience just because your omnichannel offerings span numerous channels. With your VoC program and AI real-time analysis, you’ll be able to keep up with customer feedback.

VoC Programs Improve Decision Making

How do you know what to change in your contact center if you haven’t gotten important feedback from your customers? VoC programs provide much-needed information for your critical contact center decisions.

What’s the impact of decisions on your bottom line? Studies show that the effectiveness of your decisions is 95% correlated with financial success. Without feedback straight from your customers, organizations have insufficient data to make truly effective decisions. You might be surprised what you find when you listen to the voice of the customer. Natural biases and assumptions can easily get in the way of what strategies we really need to be implementing.

How will VoC help you gain quality feedback? Contact centers have shown that the best way to encourage customer feedback is to show you’re listening and do something about what you hear. Contact center software enables personalization in your VoC interactions that enables organizations to reach customers in an individualized way. As your surveys and questionnaires elicit more responses, you’ll gain more data to make your business decisions.

When you tap into the voice of the customer, you’re able to make highly-informed decisions that will lead your contact center in the right direction.

VoC Programmes Increase Revenue and Cut Cost

VoC programs offer a surprising amount of financial incentives. It all comes back to the power of personal customer feedback. According to Gartner research, collecting feedback can increase upselling and cross-selling success rates by 15% to 20%. In addition, with a well-implemented VOC program, you can better retain your customers – think higher customer loyalty scores, less churn and a higher customer lifetime value, thanks to repeat purchases.

The benefits don’t stop there. In addition to bringing in revenue, VoC programs can also cut costs. Feedback from these programs can decrease customer retention costs, as companies with active VoC programs report spending 25% less to keep customers than those that don’t.

One key area in which VoC makes an impressive impact is in agent performance. With VoC tools like customer satisfaction surveys, contact center leadership will be able to train agents to perform better in areas where service may be lacking and empower them to use tools that will help them self-correct behaviors that have been flagged in direct customer feedback. What exactly will that change in your contact center? Just imagine decreased agent training expenses, fewer incidents of misinterpretation and proactive agent improvement.

Perfecting your contact center’s VoC program may bring in more financial benefits than you previously thought. Additionally, VoC tools are flexible and customizable to fit your business needs. Whether your budget is big or small, you can begin to utilize the many benefits of VoC.

Getting Started and Gaining Support

The ability to deliver exceptional customer service, even in the midst of incredible challenges, is what separates the average from the excellent. Ready to experience all the benefits and begin rolling out and developing your VoC program today?

Get the information you need to get started and secure senior leadership’s green light in The Inner Circle Guide to The Voice of The Customer: Communicating Your Message to Top Decision-Makers.

Take a look at what’s inside:

• Key steps to create and develop an insightful VoC program
• How to prove the value of VoC to leadership with quick wins
• Differences between successful and failed VoC programs
• How to get a VoC program started on a small budget
• What AI and digital innovations mean for VoC in your contact center
• Strategies to get support from organizational leadership

Learn all this and more when you download this robust, insight-packed Voice of the Customer report. Your customers are waiting to be heard! Click here to get the report now.