Did you know that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience? This staggering statistic underscores a fundamental truth: in today’s world, customers hold the reins, and their expectations are higher than ever.
Welcome to the Age of the Empowered Customer, where businesses operate at the mercy of customer preferences and evolving demands. The power dynamic has shifted, and this change is redefining how companies interact with their customers.
Curious to Know More? Let’s Dive In:
Gone are the days when offering decent customer service was enough. Today’s customers expect nothing less than excellence, and their needs can shift in the blink of an eye. This means businesses must be vigilant and proactive in how they treat their customers.
A single misstep—like a service glitch or unmet expectation—can result in significant customer churn. But here’s the good news: listening to and acting on customer feedback is the key to staying ahead of the curve.
Understanding and prioritizing customer feedback isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a business imperative. After all, your customers are not just your audience—they’re your greatest asset.
According to the experts, the best way to provide a stellar customer support is through understanding the Voice of the Customer (VoC).
To explain in simple words – Voice of the Customer (VoC) refers to customers feedback about their experience of dealing with a business and the kind of expectations they have from a product and service.
Voice of the Customer empowers a business to understand the customers’ needs and expectations related to product and service. Based on these insights, they can proactively serve them with the desired quality. This is the reason that approximately:
36 percent of businesses have deployed Voice of the Customer Programs to connect and engage with customers at key points in the customer journey.
The benefits of doing it are as follows:
Businesses are implementing these VoC insights for customer experience (CX) improvements. They are doing products, services and add-ons customizations to meet the needs and wants of the customers and maximize overall profit.
Building an Effective Voice of the Customer Program
Every business has multiple touch points throughout marketing, sales and customer support. As and when customers move across these, businesses need to gather their opinions and use the information in a well-timed way.
Although online surveys and customer feedback forms are easiest and common ways to garner customer feedback – sales, marketing and customer service representatives are the best resource to dig into the customers’ minds.
That is because these are the customer-facing professionals who interact with targets, prospects and customers always. So they can exactly tell the opinions, grievances and preferences of the customers. Right?
In addition to using sales, marketing and customer service agents, there is another way to capture customer opinions – KENNETH A. CROW suggests Direct interaction of Product Development professionals with customers.
Regular interaction with the customers will empower the product development team to be better at their job. They can understand the customers’ experience of using the products and services and can modify their approach accordingly.
For instance, product developers can focus more on factors like ease of use and flexibility to enhance customer experience. On the other hand, customers too can develop a greater empathy towards the brand, after looking at its effort to serve better.
Tip: Some businesses often rotate their sales, marketing and customer service professionals with product development team. You can do it too.
Once customers’ voice is captured, it needs to be organized for a detailed analysis. So all the customer data needs to be transferred into a centralized database that is accessible by the key members of the business.
Use Customer Service software such as CRM for carrying out this activity. It allows the business to store the data in one central platform and avoid any data discrepancy and data redundancy. Members throughout the business can use the CRM to analyze customer data, identify the key points and instruct clear actions to the employees.
Not just this, it also empowers you to have a 24×7 pulse on the customers to discover feedback trends and make improvements across the process.
To sum it up, CRM software performs the following roles in a VoC program:
Do not worry about the implementation aspect. The new-age CRMs are flexible, easy to use and incredibly powerful. Simply choose a renowned cloud CRM software and get on with it. Capture the customer data through the CRM, analyze it and start benefiting from your VoC program in a few days. It is that easy!!!
For any further doubts on Voice of the Customer or CRM, put in your comments below.
What else do you think can be included in the Voice of the Customer Program? Write in to us at the comments section.
