By
Sagar Rajgopal
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Date Published: September 23, 2013 - Last Updated August 22, 2018
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Comments
A VoC program should lead to actionable insights in order to improve the customer experience. So how do you make sure your program will be successful?
We’ve harnessed the Ubiquity team’s collective experience to come up with five key questions you should ask before getting started.
1. Which customers do you want to measure?
Like most businesses, you will have different customer segments based on usage, profitability and other factors. Your customer segments might be looking for different value elements from your product or service. They may also have different customer experience expectations. To help you draw out the nuances of different feedback from each customer category, you must have the ability to categorise responding customers. For example, a high use customer may have different expectations than a low use one. Knowing this will ensure you are measuring the most important interaction elements of your most important customer subset.
2. How are they interacting with your product or service?
If you have multiple channels of potential customer interaction, it’s best to recognise the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each. Then you can seek insights and inputs into what elements are working for the customer, and what is redundant or a cause of friction.
In a multi-channel environment, identification and prioritisation of the channel for which you are seeking feedback on should be included as part of the program planning phase. This may be based on any number of factors ranging from the size of the channel to the type of channel your most valued customers prefer.
3. How can you provide a Frictionless Survey Experience?
We know the most frequent responses are from customers that have had either an amazingly positive experience or a supremely bad one. While these are useful instances for feedback, we can’t forget that a multitude of other customer interactions fall in between those two bookends of customer experience. In order to tap into that wealth of potential data you need to provide a smooth feedback experience. That means short, crisp surveys and a survey delivery vehicle that is nonintrusive and aligned with your customer profile. For example, if your customer demographic leans younger, you should explore surveys delivered via text or email. On the other end of the scale are post call IVR surveys or even live person delivered outbound call surveys. They key element is to think through the customer profile with a view on maximising response rates and balancing this against the cost of execution.
4. What data will enable you to make actionable decisions?
Given a robust enough collection mechanism, you should have enough data to be able to start making decisions. But before jumping in, be wary of these surprisingly common traps:
- Get the sample size right. Always ensure your sample sizes for data are statistically significant. Ensure you have collected enough data points from the start, so you are able to make valid inferences.
- Record specific individuals involved. It is critically important to be able to identify the specific individuals in the interaction who triggered a survey response. The value of this will become increasingly evident when you begin using the data from your VOC program to understand root causes of issues. It will also help you push for ownership from frontline teams engaged in customer interactions.
- Establish baselines. When you launch your program, try to run it for 1-3 months with minimal operational changes to services and processes in order to establish a rough baseline. That will give you a better sense of the magnitude of jumps and dips in your VOC metrics when you start taking actions based on VOC data.
5. How can you involve stakeholders?
The long term success of your program will ultimately be driven by the changes you make based on the feedback you collect. It is critical to get the buy in of all the stakeholders within your organization who impact the customer experience. Their support of the program will ensure the execution of the internal changes that are needed.