How to Advance Your Organization’s Voice of the Customer Strategy

Read this guide to learn how organizations can build and mature the voice of the customer (VoC) programs at any stage to improve business performance and outcomes.

The voice of the customer strategy is essentially about customer-centricity within an organization. But what does it mean to be truly customer-centric?

Customer centricity and voice of customer

The idea of customer-centricity is not exactly new. Many businesses declare the customer to be at the heart of their operations and core company values. Some of those companies go to great lengths to monitor customer preferences and pain points, investing in the associated human resources and technology while trying to be ever-receptive to feedback across all channels and touchpoints. Others might claim to be customer-centric but don’t engage in any kind of listening, effectively blocking their ears to valuable customer input.

When we talk about the voice of the customer, we’re not just talking about the ways part of your organization might monitor the conversation and keep a finger on the pulse of what customers want. A great VoC program helps integrate the voice of your customer into existing business processes to ensure that customer feedback is not only heard but also acted upon and that customer voices echo across all areas of your organization. Ultimately, it is something that is built into your organizations’ values and long-term plans.

The VoC is an integral part of the digital consumer intelligence maturity model. Brandwatch
introduced this term to describe the evolving and expanding ways in which its customers were using Brandwatch’s data and technology. It’s a response to a number of societal and technological shifts, from rapidly evolving consumer needs to the proliferation of great AI and technology that businesses (both established and emerging) are using to get a competitive advantage.

5 quick tips for a better VoC strategy

To explore the digital consumer intelligence maturity model further, read our guide and discover at what stage your organization currently is.

“When we talk about customer-centricity as part of VoC strategy, we ask about the
approaches to measuring customer satisfaction, and the value placed on consumer insights,
as well as the role played by consumers in informing future planning.”

— Kelly Autenrieth, Director, Customer Insights

1. For organizations in the early stage

Audit existing opportunities that capture customer feedback. You have to know where you are currently to get where you want to go, so use this opportunity as a roadmap to identify what channels already exist, and where there are clear gaps or a lack of healthy, trusted data.

“Think about it – what’s one thing you could do that would have the biggest impact on
capturing customer data with the least amount of resources needed to get started?”

— Kelly Autenrieth, Director, Customer Insights

2. For organizations at the developing stage

Monitor different sources of data (eg social, search, reviews, sales) to build a breadth of quantitative and qualitative customer data sources, which have sound methodologies and could be used by multiple stakeholders. Remember, one datapoint only tells one side of the story.

3. For organizations at the advanced stage

Begin segmenting audiences and create KPIs that are supported by your VoC programs. Now that you have a breadth of data, start to create segments to identify differences in customers’ needs and pain points, which will ultimately give these customers a more targeted, fulfilling experience.

4. For organizations at the mature stage

Develop holistic personas and jobs-to-be-done frameworks that center around these different audiences. That means bringing your customer to life, incorporating a more sophisticated ethnographic and behavioral understanding.

5. For all organizations looking to improve VoC strategy

From the very beginning, it’s important to highlight the biggest business challenges as anchors to go back to. How can VoC strategy help the organization overcome them? Next, get leadership buy-in and support. VoC takes time to develop, refine, and evolve, and it may not immediately provide measurable results or increase profit. Understand which part of your VoC strategy would initially provide the biggest impact and interest, and use that as a gateway to expand.

With that buy in, look to create a center of excellence that can provide real-time access to all customer insights across your organization.

Takening into account additional aspects when implementing a VoC strategy: How does it fit into the digital consumer intelligence maturity model? What can we learn from real client examples?

You can read the answers to these questions in our full guide. Click here to access it.

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