Allegiance Blog

After an evening party at the Cosmopolitan Hotel’s Bamboo pool, VoCFusion attendees were up early for Wednesday’s events. The day started out with a demo of new Allegiance capabilities that will help companies uncover insights fast by identifying patterns in customer feedback and operational data.

More than 350 Voice of Customer (VOC) and customer experience professionals gathered today at the Metropolitan Hotel in Las Vegas for the first day of VoCFusion 2012. In temperatures approaching 100 degrees, attendees stayed cool inside and shared experiences on how to apply customer intelligence to fuel financial and operational growth.

Today, most VOC practitioners generate insights from their data by following the basic flow of the scientific method. They pinpoint some kind of problem that they want to investigate, such as customer churn or dissatisfaction. Then they think up a hypothetical explanation (a hypothesis) that they can test. Data mining changes all that.

in a today’s highly competitive world, companies that don’t’ do anything with customer feedback might as well not bother to gather it in the first place. The challenge (and the reward) lies in quickly analyzing feedback to identify customer insights and share them with the people who can do something about it. Here are some examples from Allegiance customers.

During last week’s webinar with Forrester analyst Kerry Bodine, we discussed the importance of what she calls the “customer cascade,” which goes like this: Companies need to develop deep customer insight in order to design and deliver great customer experiences and ultimately reap the financial rewards that follow. Insight, action, result. It’s a true and beautiful pattern, and it’s been pretty well documented in recent years.

You may have been in the data gathering business in the past, but the future lies with data insights. You cannot gather more data only to deliver tepid insights. Your value and your place at the highest levels of the company is weakened by this result. However, your value is highest when you deliver insights to the right people and help them act upon them.

Both Forrester Research and Gartner have predicted continued annual growth of between 15-20% for the customer experience and voice of customer industries. At Allegiance, we certainly see this growth happening. But what kind of changes will occur as more corporate boards, c-suites and leadership teams add savvy VOC pros? How will business change as a result of the insight that comes from these experienced people adding their voice to the mix, and sharing the data they produce?

It has been a joy to watch our clients’ Voice of Customer initiatives season and mature over the last few years. Some things do get better with age, and a finely-honed VoC initiative is no exception. This is a reminder, however, to continue sweating the small stuff. Specifically, I mean reacting to tactical customer feedback in a prompt fashion: Addressing customer concerns and complaints swiftly and sincerely with empathy, and responding quickly to customer compliments to reinforce their enthusiasm. Read this post for an excellent example.

Best practice companies are not only listening to voice of the customer, but they are using that feedback to increase customer retention and loyalty, solve customer challenges and develop new products and services. They are also using new technologies to streamline surveys and feedback management programs to gain a better understanding of why customers do business with them. From our experience working with them, here are nine habits that make them successful.

What do Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A’s, and your
company’s Voice of the Customer (VOC) initiatives have in common? Metrics, analytics, and
insights that can provide teams and businesses with unfair advantages.