Allegiance Blog

Voice of the Customer (VOC) objectives are vital for any organization and provide roadmap to a successful VOC program. It’s like going into a new city and trying to navigate without a map or GPS. Without having clear directions to the address, you can spend a lot of time, resources, and energy trying to get to your destination. The same applies to your VOC program objectives.

Many VOC professionals have realized that in order to add value to the organization, they must spend less time telling a VOC story and more time telling a business story. Think of this new approach as a fundamental mental shift starting with the VOC leadership team. You must ensure that the data you collect is actionable and relevant to other business leaders in the organization. The best way to do this is by asking leaders what they really want from you instead of giving them what you think they want.

Join us for Allegiance Radio in 2011. Every week, Allegiance will announce the weekly topic and time along with the URL to connect to the live broadcasts. These will come as tweets on the Allegiance Twitter account or Allegiance on Facebook. You are invited to “call in” to chat live on the air, or you can listen after the airing of the broadcast via podcast on iTunes or any other audio playback device.

The design of any world-class customer feedback program should include a closed loop process that makes the customers feel that they have been heard and promotes learning about what to do to improve the business in ways that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The focus of VOC is not to gather more surveys and data; it is to create actionable business intelligence that moves the needle. VOC practitioners are not great at this second part today, but getting better, and quickly. This is the reason VOC programs are gaining quick adoption now when they have stalled in the past. VOC best practices require a shift from data gathering, creating charts and reports, to providing prescriptive and predictive outcomes that support a business story.

After months of client meetings, focus groups and quantitative studies, one thing stands out: data is everywhere, and VOC pros want help making decisions from their mountains of data. That’s why we are committed to accelerating the delivery of actionable business intelligence from VOC data. It’s not about gathering more survey data, it’s about the insights business leaders need to move the needle.

Email has become the major method for delivering survey invitations. With so many types of legitimate and junk email hitting inboxes every day, people have become more selective in opening and responding to email invitations. However, there are a few actions you can take as you create your survey invitations that will help you increase your response rates, legitimize your survey and ensure that you are CAN-SPAM compliant.

In Tamilnadu, South India, the chef is complimented following a well-cooked meal with the phrase “Kai Manam,” meaning the knowledge, care and soul the cook’s hands imparted to the meal.

This is also true for Voice of the Customer champions who try to convey a similar sense to their customers through surveys, analysis and the action thereafter. By acquiring knowledge to understand the needs of the customer and communicating care, VOC experts strive to deliver improved products and services and create happier customers.

Think about the many customer touchpoints of your organization, and then think about the various departments in your organization that might be asking customers for feedback at each of those touchpoints. It can be quite overwhelming — for you and for your customers! To make sense of it all, you should compile a Customer Feedback Map to accompany your Customer Touchpoint Map.

The core objective of your feedback program is not to drive improved survey metrics. The ultimate objective is increased business performance and improved results. Dutifully reporting to a senior executive or business unit owner that “customer engagement scores have increased for the past eight quarters” is nice. Telling that same audience that “in this same time period, quarterly sales increases of 8%, on average, and a steady decline in customer attrition of 24% have been associated with increased customer engagement” is a much more compelling story.