The corporate world has long known the power of the voice of the customer.  This started decades ago with traditional paper feedback forms but has evolved to include Net Promoter programs (that measure advocacy), customer satisfaction surveys and online communities that all give your customers a voice.  Now thanks to the prevalence of social media in Australia, listening to the blogosphere can inform you almost instantly of your successes and failings.  And, if integrated with your CRM system, you can up-weight the complaints from Detractors that are in your high value segment.

The most challenging element to VOC programs is not getting your customers to take the time to engage with you, but the change management process once those insights have been discovered.  That is, influencing the senior decision makers within your business to listen to customers and resolve their issues in a way that is mutually beneficial.  The key to influencing decision makers is to make sure that the insights you are gathering will positively drive the KPIs of your business (e.g. sales revenue or accounts), are aligned with the strategic focus of the management team (e.g. new product development or cross selling) and are within your organisational capabilities. 

Each method of capturing the voice of the customer has benefits and pitfalls. For example, Net Promoter programs can gather insights about your products, channels, customer service (either at the transaction level or overall relationship level) but it is not the right place for open collaboration with groups of customers.  An online community is a lot less focused on gathering specific data but can be a great destination for open collaboration with the customer base.  You include a blog where the business starts conversations about particular subjects but the community can change the subject and talk about something completely different.  You can’t and shouldn’t censor this off-topic content because it is valuable engagement.  When these two forms of customer engagement are integrated, the symbiotic nature of the customer touchpoints can help you find the best solutions.

Imagine that your Net Promoter survey feedback has uncovered a problem with your e-commerce channel. You blog about the problem to your community and ask customers to help you rethink the user experience. You then review the customer ideas, implement the best ideas and feed back to the community how their input has been actioned.  This encourages community members to come back by feeling embedded in your business.  Or the other way around, you find a common complaint appearing on your community site about a feature of your loyalty program (that is not normally included in your Net Promoter survey).  You can then add a new question to your NPS survey or send a bespoke survey to all members to establish if the problem is limited to a few customers or more extensive, thereby helping the business to react quickly and avoid negative word of mouth.

Customers are willing to invest their time in helping companies to improve if the company is willing to listen and act on that feedback.  It is not enough to simply track your NPS score and gather customer ideas that never see the light of day.  Planning for change management at the start of your journey with VOC programs is essential to success.