As a business owner, you need to know what your customers are seeing in your store. A dissatisfied customer will be quick to steer their friends and family elsewhere, negatively impacting your profits as a result. By utilizing a VoC, or Voice of the Customer program, you can find out how your customers really feel about your business.

What is the Voice of the Customer? (VoC)

VoC is a program to get feedback from your customers about their preferences and their experience using your product or service. It helps determine if the customer experience met their expectations and their level of satisfaction as well as where they believe you can improve. Understanding your customer experience is crucial to compete in today’s customer-centric market. By implementing a VoC program within your business you can give yourself a competitive edge in your industry.

How do you collect the Voice of the Customer?

A VoC program can take many formats including:

• Online surveys
• Emails
• Focus groups
• Customer interviews

Customer Satisfaction Surveys may also generate suggestions for new product or service ideas. The text and sentiment data will tell you where the problem is occurring and the impact of the issue. This allows you to prioritize your efforts to create the most efficient impact on improving your business.

In addition, VoC surveys are a form of customer service. When a customer sees a survey, they realize you care about them as a customer and see them as more than a number or dollar sign.

How does Voice of the Customer Programs Help Your Business?

The businesses that perform the best will be the ones that listen to their customers. Numbers don’t tell the whole story, and your customers will make their decisions based on what they see and feel. Those decisions can make or break your business, so it is important to see the customer’s perspective. By understanding your customer experience better, you can respond to customer preferences and problems in the most efficient manner.

Voice of the Customer programs are gaining popularity with market researchers across many industries due to the quick listening and response time. These programs have demonstrated the ability to help business create better product lines, improve customer service, comprehensively understand the customer experience and strengthen customer retention. Organizations that incorporate VoC programming can expect to increase revenue and reduce expense costs.

What’s the Difference between Mystery Shopping and Voice of The Customer?

Mystery Shopping sends a person directly to the location in order to observe the store and employees. They typically visit and shop from each department while observing the operations. This allows the shopper to be the “eyes and ears” for your company. The shopper will report areas that need improvement as well as their overall experience. The mystery shopper will typically report their customer service experience and report on the specific employees serving them.

A VoC program will contact customers directly and survey them on their experiences and observations. This allows you to determine how your customers feel about the employees, the product or services, and what improvements they feel are necessary. The program also allows your customers to tell you what they think you’re doing right.

Why Choose Shoppers Confidential?

Shoppers Confidential helps you fully understand your customer and allows you to meet them where they are. We work with you and for you to help meet your customer satisfaction goals. We give you the tools necessary to make the best decisions possible, knowing that you’re giving the customers what they want and need in the process.

We collect and analyze the data from all areas of your business. Customers impact the bottom line from the point of sale to the CEO office, and we will involve all the touch-points to ensure the customer is heard by everyone. We help everyone in your business know what they can do to listen and respond to the customer’s voice.

The Shoppers Confidential Voice of Customer Process:

• Comprehensive Data Collection
• In-depth Behavioural Data Analysis to provide Key Insights
• Customized Reports and Information
• Customer-centred Strategies for Service Improvements

Don’t allow your customers to wonder if you care about them or their experiences. Contact us today, and we’ll show you your customer’s perspective. Once you hear their voice, you can respond and interact with your customers in a way that will have them coming back again and again.

How to Create a Successful Voice of The Customer Program

In order to make the most of a Voice of The Customer program, it’s essential to have a clear strategy in place to ensure the right customer information is gathered. Here’s what you need to know about creating a successful Voice of The Customer program:

1.Establish Clear Program Goals

Before beginning a Voice of The Customer for your business, it’s essential to begin with a clear understanding of the goals you would like to achieve with the program and what you hope to achieve with once the program is completed.

2. Get the Right People Involved

Ensure that essential stakeholders are involved at every step of the program. Get different departments and team members involved in the survey creation to ensure that the right information is collected to represent each team or area of focus.

3. Share Program Insights & Information

Share program reports and information with all departments and team members so that the information collected may be benefited from all departments.

4.Connect Survey Software with Business Applications

If you have internal business applications for your various departments such as CRM’s, or marketing automation tools, be sure to integrate the survey software with these applications to get a better view of survey responses across all platforms.

5.Evaluate Your ROI

Once you’ve completed the Voice of The Customer program, it’s important to gain an understanding of the success of the program by evaluating the return on investment. Understanding if the program was a success and comparing the goals outlined before the program began will allow you to determine if it’s beneficial to perform the program once again in the future.

Benefits of a Voice of Customer Program

Voice of The Customer programs offers several benefits to business owners and entrepreneurs alike. Depending on the individual goals of the program, benefits can include:

Improve Customer Service

A strategic and successful Voice of The Customer program will allow you to truly uncover what the customer service trends are for your business. You can get a real understanding of how customer’s feel about the service they are receiving. From there you can determine if the service meets your service benchmarks and if improvements need to be made in order to make your customers more satisfied.

Brand Management

If your business has an established set of brand standards put in place to ensure consistency across all areas of the business, it’s important to ensure that these brand standards are maintained throughout each customer interaction and touch-points, at each and every location of your business may have. Let a professional Voice of The Customer program help to gain an understanding of those brand standards and if they are being attained, surpassed or unmet.

Keeping Up with Customer Needs & Demands

How are you to know if your business is successfully meeting customer needs? It’s not always easy to know what your customers expect from the business – whether it be service provided or products offered. That’s where Voice of The Customer programs come in to play. These programs help you gain a true understanding of what your customers are looking for, what they expect when they interact with your business – allowing you to make smart and strategic changes to your service or product offering to appeal to your customers.

Updating Product Lines

Product demand changes and what was once popular may no longer be. Voice of The Customer programs allows businesses to evaluate their product offering and compare industry trends, customer insight and other factors, to help you make more informed decisions about the products and services you are offering to your customers.

Competitive Advantage In The Market

For all businesses, having that competitive edge laid out is key to standing out from the noise of industry competitors. If you don’t know what that competitive edge is, – you may be missing out. Let a Voice of The Customer program help uncover what missed opportunities there may be within the industry or what niche markets your business can best serve with professional competitive analysis.

Identifying At-Risk Customers

At-Risk customers are customers who may at one time had a great experience with your business or brand, but now don’t feel quite as loving. They may feel unsatisfied, underappreciated as a customer or may have had a less-than-perfect experience recently. It’s important to understand and re-engage with this group of once excited customers. A VOC program will help to better understand this group and re-engage them in a new and positive way.

Positive Reviews

Today, the path to purchase has changed significantly. Consumers are far more informed than they used to be. They are now relying on online research to determine the very best service provider or business to solve their problems – and that often starts with reviews. A professional Voice of the Customer program will allow you to effectively make positive internal business changes, leading to a greater base of satisfied customers. This will lead to more positive online reviews where new and potential clients may be searching.  Learn more about the importance of a Social Listening program.

Increase Share of Wallet (SOW)

By enhancing your customer experience using a Voice of The Customer program, you can uncover the elements of your current customer experience journey that are successful – and which require some attention.  By leveraging the customer insights and information, you can create an internal plan that focuses on customer retention and repeat customers – in turn, resulting in an increased share of wallet.

Let Shoppers Confidential Help Uncover the Voice of Your Customers

Don’t allow your customers to wonder if you care about them or their experiences. Contact us today, and we’ll show you your customer’s perspective. Once you hear their voice, you can respond and interact with your customers in a way that will have them coming back again and again.