Every company has some voice of the customer (VoC) programs in place. VoC in short means gathering data from the customers about their requirements, complaints and expectations about the company or on any specific product. The company then processes all these inputs in the form of furnished information which turn out to be highly profitable for the company in taking right decisions from business perspective. Each and every company in present market is customer oriented. This means the companies manufacture or provide services based on their customer’s requirements.
Understanding Voice of the Customer Analysis
What are the Ways to get VoC?
There are various ways to gather information about the customer expectations and requirements or voice of the customer. Below mentioned are some of the prominent processes that are currently in practice:
E-mails: Email is the most powerful way of gathering information about the customer expectations. Millions of people around the world use email as a means of communication. An idea of the global view about the product or company can become a boon for the golden future of that company. A well defined compact mail with few valuable points about the product or services can do magic.
Surveys: Conducting surveys is another powerful gift of information technology for the business fraternities. A successful survey can produce the actual face of customers around the world. In present era of globalization the customer is the king. So, business enterprises have to go with the customers to survive profitably.
Some important points to be followed during a survey are :
- Questions asked in the survey have to be short and customized
- Number of questions should be minimum and short
- Output of the survey must meet the end goal
- Surveys must be displayed automatically in the company’s website
- Customers should find it interactive and interesting to take part in the survey
Onsite Surveys: In case the organizational goal is limited to a particular geographical area, then on spot surveys can be quite handy. In this process representations go with the sample of the product or highlights of the services offered by the business. Companies in this way can get a hand on experience about the practical market. The feedback if analyzed properly can result in huge advantage for company’s future.
Interaction via Call: At present around 95% of the world’s population use mobile phone. Business establishments can use this tool to communicate with their valuable customers and draw a conclusion about their needs and expectations. Here are some important tips for effective telephonic communication with the customers.
- Use of short and simple questions is preferable
- Listen to the customer patiently
- Ask questions relevant to the company’s objective
- Enquire about the customer’s problems related to the company’s objective
- Read customer’s mind and ask questions that can meet their requirements
Social Media: Every company nowadays uses social media to analyze current market demands as social media provides this facility in quite an interactive way. Companies have now joined hands with social media websites and customized an interesting survey tool which is designed in such a way that the maximum number of people can enjoy participating in it. View some of the key points about a successful survey:
- Key questions relevant to the customers
- Interesting and interactive queries
- Questions should be from customer’s perspective and not from organizational point of view
- Each question should meet both the party’s requirements
- The highest priority and focus should be on attaining the end goal
Feedback Option: This option is found in most of the official websites of business houses. Through the customer feedback option the business houses can easily gather positive and negative customer reviews about their company or product. So, to gather the original voice of customer it is very important to customize the process in a user friendly way. Check out few vital ways to find out the actual voice of the customer in its truest sense:
- The feedback form has to be short
- MCQ should be given instead of traditional question answer format
- Mandatory registration forms need to be abolished
- An open platform should be in place where the customer can give his feed back without registration
- Expert analysts should be in place to read the comments and to find out the actual customer’s requirement
Why Companies Fail to Understand the Real Voice of Customers?
Failing to analyze the customer’s needs and expectations can be devastating for a company. Let’s look into some of the possibilities that may lead to wrong interpretations of the customer’s needs:
Email communication is the easiest as well as the most difficult job to get customer feedback. Top reasons for which the customers fail to respond properly are:
- Content of email is very lengthy to read
- Vital questions which interest customers are missing
- Follow up emails are not send on right time
- The customer expectations are not addressed at all
- Most importantly, the analysts fail to come out with correct conclusion about the customer’s expectations and requirements
Most of the companies do a lot of survey to find out the real demand of the market. Either they do online surveys or onsite surveys. But in both the cases before they go to survey a detailed study on every minute detail are not done properly. Have a look on the following points to know why organizations fail in survey analysis:
- Surveys are not constructive and questions are irrelevant
- Length of surveys are too long resulting customers to stop in the mid way
- Questions asked violate the sentiment of the people
- Analysts fail to understand the core issue and come out with a conclusion against market demand
Interaction via call is a challenge if the executive does not listen to the customers need properly or asks useless question. A powerful tool like social media gets wasted due to wrong questions, wrong timing for survey and absolutely dumb analysis of the survey report. In some cases with onsite survey inexperienced and dull people goes on the field and ask non relevant questions or present wrongly manipulated data resulting in a diversion from the core objective.
Feedback option though a very effective tool, if not used sincerely is of no use. Customer’s feedback should be taken by the company in a genuine way by taking the customers into confidence so that they could share the truth. In this the companies often fail as they perform this task as a formality and the customers feel it is something imposed on them and not real. As a result the data that the companies come up with is either false or half true.
To rule the market every business establishment has to understand the views of customers appropriately. All flourishing companies at present date go with the customers needs and not by the needs of the company. To get a hold of the rapidly changing global market the only useful tool is to understand and value the actual Voice of the Customer. Failing in this means a dark future for the establishment.
