Four Must Dos for your VoC Program

From mycustomer.com’s Voice of the Customer measurement: Which metrics are right for you? by Stacey Nevel, here are four “must dos” for a successful Voice Of the Customer (VoC) program:

Engaging stakeholders – align your VoC program with the business goals and provide actionable insights to support those objectives like increase revenue, reduced costs, increase cross sell, increase customer-centricity, etc. That makes it easier for stakeholders to make business decisions and do their jobs more effectively.

Linking loyalty metrics to financial KPI – ensure that major financial metrics and segmentation models are included with respondent data prior to collecting the feedback. Often called ‘upload or background’ variables, they may also identify data such as tenure, lifetime value, revenue, purchase behavior and other demographic data that can be used to analyze customer segments and behavior alongside feedback. With this type of data, you can easily segment the value of the happiest customers, as well as the value of those who are least satisfied. Better still, feedback data can tell you what would make the ‘unhappy’ customers ‘happy’ again, and models can be run to see the financial impact of that change.

Established VoC metrics – Customer satisfaction (CSAT); Customer Effort Score (CES); and Net Promoter Score (NPS) all have their place.

Softer metrics for engagement and loyaltyunderstand the customer’s journey through the interaction or experience that is being measured, self-assessing which of these have the biggest impact on the customer’s total perception of their experience and listing the ‘attributes’ of the impact moments and interactions.

VoC programs must provide measurable Return on Investment. The consideration given to the choice of metrics used and the way in which you engage others to buy into the program are equally critical components to success. What’s more, if a range of other KPIs and financial indicators to measure alongside feedback are not brought in at the start of the program, the likelihood is it will be difficult to accurately assess returns. Final advice from Stacey Nevel:

“The key is in the detail and much of this needs to be looked at in the planning phase. So, before you start building your list of metrics, stop and think. What is the business trying to achieve and what rewards are you expecting to reap? Only then can you start to put the metrics in place that will help you realize your goals.”