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Are You Listening? The Importance of the Voice of the Customer

In order to deliver experiences that live up to your customers’ expectations, it is crucial to understand those expectations as much as possible. With this in mind, the process of capturing customer feedback, also known as the Voice of the Customer, should be a top priority for all CX-driven organizations. Are you listening to your customers? Read on to learn more about the importance of the Voice of the Customer, and the best method to gather feedback at scale.

Voice of the Customer – The key to improving customer satisfaction

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is your organization’s most valuable asset. It has an unrivalled impact on an organization’s success, being a key driver of customer retention, growth, and overall revenue. For this reason, every organization should be proactively improving CX – but how?

The best way to learn more about your customers is to ask them directly. Customers know where the pain points in your customer service are, and recognize what an excellent experience looks like.

Capturing the opinions of your customers, their wants, needs, expectations, and preferences is crucial to understanding them better. According to a study by Ventana Research, customer feedback is the foremost data source organizations use to create a 360 degree view of the customer.[1] With these opinions in hand, you can extract the insights you need to improve your products and services, gain a competitive advantage, and drive long-term brand loyalty.



Interest in customer feedback can make or break customer relationships

96% of customers are prepared to go elsewhere if they receive bad customer service from an organization.[2] When they do, they are likely to share their poor experience with others, which can influence the behavior of prospective consumers. 

Asking for feedback directly after an interaction can dramatically improve a customer’s relationship with your organization, especially in the event of an issue with an order or an unsatisfactory service experience. 46% of customers say that a legitimately empathetic experience, and genuine interest in their feedback, would help to win back their trust and support.[3]



Time is of the essence when it comes to feedback

If your competitors have more up-to-date data than you do, their messaging could be more relevant, allowing them to take your market share. You also risk frustrating your existing customers, leading to higher churn rates and lost revenues.

In order to improve service levels continuously, you must ensure your customers have the opportunity to provide feedback regularly. You must also ensure that you have the means to gather individual customer feedback across thousands of interactions, and multiple channels, which is a near-impossible task to do manually.

There are numerous ways that organizations can capture the Voice of the Customer, for example interviews, surveys, and focus groups. Out of all of these methods, surveys are the easiest to conduct at scale and across multiple channels using automation. Instant, multi-channel surveying is key to improving the efficiency of all your business-as-usual feedback gathering processes, and collecting, collating and analyzing customer feedback will empower your employees to deliver truly personalized experiences.

Find the Voice of the Customer with storm® ASK™

storm® ASK™ is a cutting-edge tool designed to collect, collate, and draw insights out of customer feedback. ASK enables both proactive and reactive surveying across multiple channels, including voice, email, SMS, the internet, web chat, and social media. Survey results can be seen in storm VIEW™, Content Guru’s real-time and historical reporting module, keeping contact centers constantly up to date.

ASK gives your organization the responsiveness and agility to capture the Voice of the Customer, which is all-important for maximizing customer satisfaction. As such, ASK enables you to build lasting relationships with your customers, simultaneously improving your service and saving you money. Fit for all your surveying needs, ASK gathers feedback in real-time, is easy-to-use and cost-effective.

Capture the voice of the customer with storm® ASK™

[1] Ventana Research, The State of Customer Analytics, September 2019
[2] Forbes, Ninety-Six Percent Of Customers Will Leave You For Bad Customer Service, 2020
[3] Customer Contact Week Digital, Market Study: Customer Experience Trends, Challenges & Innovations, August 2021