Voice of Customer Analytics

"I would suggest establishing a Voice of Customer (VoC) program; one that is a virtuous cycle of listening, learning, acting, and acknowledging customer feedback. By consolidating the feedback and analyzing it for common themes and trends and pinpointing the deeper root cause, they’ll enable a more intentionally designed solution that serves the broader customer population’s needs, instead of the needs of only a few," says Serena Riley VP, Experience Management at SkySpecs in Clootrack's 102 CX Expert report. 

Many brands today are encircling their business undertakings with customer expectations, opinions, and requirements. But they are still not able to achieve the desired outputs. Why? Because they lack the right approach and idea that top players in the industry are leveraging to attract customers.

In this digital era, where any brand can access a large amount of data, leading enterprises tap into Voice of Customer (VoC) data to increase customer satisfaction. They derive maximum value by processing unbiased customer data and delivering the ultimate customer experience.

Let's dive deep into this article to understand the basics of VoC analytics, including its importance, elements, steps to implementation, and everything a successful brand needs to know to implement a thriving VoC analytics program.

What is Voice of Customer Analytics?

The Voice of Customer Analytics refers to the process of analyzing the Voice of Customer (VoC) data to interpret the customer opinions on your brand, product, and service. Understanding customer voice is crucial for making customer-centric offers. The VoC analysis helps you to comprehend what customers are asking for or expecting from your brand.

By enforcing VoC analytics, your brand can streamline operations that improve customer-brand interactions at every touchpoint. The more ease you provide customers in their journey, the more they will become loyal to your brand. Moreover, by learning customer preferences through analytics, you can optimize the products and services to improve customer satisfaction and reduce customer churn. 

What is the Importance of Voice of Customer Analytics?

Top brands are utilizing VoC with analytics to create differences that separate them from others. Today's customers are more concerned and well aware of the investments they make while choosing a solution. To stand apart from the crowd, your brand can use the full potential of analytics by utilizing the insights it generates. The consumer insights report helps in-depth customer analysis, making the Voice of Customer analysis an important segment for your brand.

Here are the top 3 benefits that reflect why Voice of Customer analytics is important:- 

1) Improve Customer Experience

Gartner predicted that by 2023, 25% of organizations would integrate marketing, sales, and customer experience into a single function.

And to do so, any organization has to get into customers' minds to stay informed about their thoughts and behavior. Voice of Customer analytics provides valuable insights regarding customer requirements, market trends, feasibility, and capabilities. Your brand can operate to optimize customer-related processes to make them happy and satisfied. With VoC analysis, customers receive the desired results that enhance customer experience. 

2) Optimize Customer Journey

The results of VoC analytics signify what best actions your company can take to smoothen the customer journey. The customer analysis report displays essential details that directly impact customer perception of the brand. With the practical information collected from customer insights, your company can create connected experiences at every point of contact, which bring customers closer to your brand as the authenticity and relevancy of your products and services increase. 

3) Revamp Business Strategy

Analytics reveals the way your business has been functioning. Basically, it discloses the status of your business, where you are standing in the market, what are your weaknesses and strengths, and how you must act to run a thriving business. You can pinpoint procedural errors effortlessly and revamp your business strategy to obtain maximum profits. Additionally, the customer program, when united with the elements of VoC analysis, generates high value for customers that uplifts customer retention and acquisition rates.

Let's find out the critical elements of VoC analysis that help you to design a better business plan to serve your customers with the best solutions.

What are the Elements of Voice of Customer Analysis?

Every program, approach, and process has pillars with whose support it executes and delivers the purpose of its implementation. The VoC analysis has these 4 elements with which its foundation is built to supply best-in-class outputs based on customer reviews and recommendations:-

1) VoC Data

VoC data is data sets showcasing what your customers expressed regarding your brand. It consists of the information customers have shared through offline and online modes concerning your brand. The VoC data is used in the VoC analytics process as input to scrutinize and get a full-scale view of the characteristics that customers would respond to the most. It assists in the identification of the right target audience and the different manners in which your current audience interacts with you.  

Your brand needs to hear the voice of the customer to empathize and create a comfortable environment for your consumers. Without VoC data being used as intake of an analytics program, all the customer-driven activities become hard to perform. VoC data is valuable data for your organization to promote customer loyalty. 

2) Technology

For processing the data, you will require VoC analytics tools to generate actionable insights to draw conclusions that enable you to understand how customers feel. Technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) allow you to analyze VoC data. These techs are your go-to solution for interpreting huge data sets. 

Today's technologies have become so advanced that companies can produce real-time solutions that are profitable for both customers and their organizations. Executing a VoC analytics program in the absence of technology and by employing only manual efforts will be a tedious task that will result to be the least fruitful.

3) Employees

Employees are a vital element of your VoC program for generating focused outputs. To whatever extent your company goes for automation of the processes, you will still require manual force to direct the analytics procedures. On top of that, your employees hold a key ranking in the initial stages of the program. 

The staff members help you to plot the strategy with which the program needs to proceed. Ways to collect customer data, tech stack to be used, responsibilities to be shared, your employees in collaboration with upper management will assist in setting the most critical aspects in place before starting the program. 

4) Operational Framework

Taking calculated steps for running your VoC analytics program prevents failure that will cause the wastage of resources. For an effective VoC program, devising an operative framework is necessary to conduct the program frictionlessly. Without the framework, the flow of the analytics procedures will be haphazard, creating unnecessary chaos and disturbing the program outputs.

The operational framework ensures that the other elements are bound properly as a structure to play their part well when required. The framework on formation answers the hows and whys of the program. Transparency increases productivity and gets reliable outcomes from the program.

How to Implement Voice of Customer Analytics Program?

A suitable VoC strategy is of greater importance as it can assist you in accomplishing customer service goals faster. A pre-planned roadmap for customer research to identify customers' demands helps to maintain an unbroken workflow that supports your business in creating a customer culture.

Here are 5 steps you must follow to implement your Voice of Customer analytics program:-

1) Set VoC Vision

You need to set a vision for the customer programs that you decide to host because, without a clear idea, there is a huge chance that your analytics program might fail. Here are a few questions that you must answer to bring transparency to your VoC vision:-

• Why do you wish to implement this program?
• What are the expected outcomes?
• Whom to involve in decision-making?
• Will the organization adapt the program without any troubles?
• What things to keep in mind to ensure program success?

2) Gather Customer Data

The analysis data sources include:- 

1. Social media platforms, 
2. Dedicated feedback forms, 
3. Online customer surveys, 
4. Customer interviews, 
5. Focus groups, 
6. Recorded call data, 
7. Chatbot data,
8. Website analytics,
9. Emails and many such to perform the VoC data collection process. Gathering data today has become so much easier because of the tools available that extract data from different data sources directly. 

3) Select Tech Stack

After you collect customer feedback, you need to choose the right tech stack, keeping in mind the necessities and capacities of your company. The tech stack assists in the processing of unstructured data and converts it into valuable consumer insights.

4) Analyze and Interpret

You can analyze and interpret the well-organized and aggregated data to recognize the potential area for improvement and innovation. Your product development team can use the processed data to specify areas that trouble customers and rework them according to insight recommendations to enhance the product.

5) Take Actions

Now that you have the actions to execute, be prompt to increase your Net Promoter Score (NPS). You can promote a customer-first mindset by taking action based on insights and encouraging your teams to do the same to satisfy the customers with every interaction. Happy customers will help you in maintaining authority in the industry and increase revenue.

How does VoC Analytics affect the Voice of Customer Program?

In this world where data is the new oil, VoC analytics is like oxygen to the Voice of Customer program. Knowing what your customers perceive is only possible with an effective VoC program backed by analytics. With digitization, a lot of opportunities have arisen, as there is a huge pool of data available that speaks for how your brand must proceed in order to receive the required traction. It becomes super easy to acquire and retain customers when you create operational guidelines that involve outcomes of the analysis process. 

Apart from that, with the assistance of sentiment analysis, your brand can diagnose the attitude of the customers by analyzing online customer reviews. Understanding customer emotions direct the course of your program and help you to achieve what's suitable for you and your customers. Voice of the Customer analytics has positive effects on the analytics program. Here are a few features of Voice of Customer analytics that result in a successful VoC program:-

• The outputs from VoC analytics are reliable as they are customer data-backed. 
• Analytics provide faster solutions than the manual workforce. You can stay updated and act in a timely manner to gain maximum business profits.
• The customer insights produced contain comprehensive details that are dependable and actionable. 
• With fewer efforts, you can bring better and more genuine outcomes that become the reason for your business development. 

Why are Customer Experience Analytics Platforms Your Go-To VoC Analytics Tool?

Brands that are wasting time figuring out how to instate VoC analytics in their business system often lag behind in the competitive race due to a lack of awareness and knowledge. The clients you could have surveyed will prefer your competitor, and there will be revenue loss. Or the other case might be you do not have enough resources to establish an in-house team for the Voice of Customer analysis program. The quick fix to all such issues is customer experience analytics platforms.

These platforms not only deliver customer insights reports but also provide you with market research, brand health monitoring, and similar business-related reports that enable you to rework brand strategies to elevate brand image and perception. The appropriate customer-related results from these platforms aid you in understanding why and how customers make decisions and what steps you must take to enhance customer experiences.

To illustrate, Clootrack, a CX analytics platform that helps enterprises to make impactful decisions, analyzes billions of customer reviews to hear what customers have to say so that you can take suitable actions. Here is a short description of Clootrack's customer experience insights report for the QSR industry. For this report, the total number of customer conversations analyzed was 127,990. 

The report mentions the top 5 customer delighting drivers that improve customer experiences in the QSR industry. 

It also reveals the top 5 customer concerning factors that end in poor customer experiences.

Based on the analyzed data, we can also witness a negligible difference in the ranking of the top drivers concerning gender. 

Similarly, the report holds various practical facts regarding customer preferences that help your brand tweak customer strategy to increase Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score. Any QSR brand can use these customer insights to form a complete picture without wasting time and act as quickly as possible to gain the lead in the niche industry. 

Leverage VoC Analytics for Business Growth

The Voice of the Customer analytics is the pathway to comprehending a customer's voice to fetch the exact requirements and supply them to increase revenue generation. When leveraged with the right set of elements, your team can gain valuable insights into customer behaviors and actions with respect to your brand. 

The analysis report tells you what customer methods to follow to enlarge the customer base and enforce processes that promote a customer-centric mindset in the company culture. With so many benefits and appropriate steps of implementing the Voice of the Customer analytics program, your brand must be ready to achieve sky-high business results. But, before that, you must learn to align VoC with your business objectives.

Here are the steps you need to follow to align VoC and business objectives:- 6-Step Leadership Plan To Align Voice of Customer (VoC) with Business Objectives.