Blog

Customer feedback is crucial in understanding the value your business offers its customers and how customers are using your products and services. Customers who don’t find value or growth will find a new service. But taking time to listen to their concerns or struggles and taking action will increase customer loyalty and retention. As you prepare your voice of the customer VoC research program, here are 9 best practices and 9 common mistakes to keep in mind.

Building an Effective Voice of the Customer Program

To create a voice of the customer (VoC) research program, there are a few key things to take into consideration:

• What is the research for
• Who will you interview
• What customer segments and audiences to cover
• How will this feedback be collected and stored
• Who will be involved in this process
• How will the data be analyzed
• What next steps will your business take

By answering these questions, you can start building a focused research program with a clear idea of what you want to find and how you will handle data.

How to do VoC Research

There are a few different ways your research teams can go about collecting customer feedback. However, your goals and resources available will help you decide how to conduct customer research.

For instance, if your business interacts with customers primarily via phone conversations, then you would choose phone interviews for the research. On the other hand, if you want to collect feedback about a new service feature or product update, then you can insert a micro survey in the dashboard or send it in emails or push notifications.

Check out our detailed guide to voice of the customer methodologies to find the right methods for your VoC program.

VoC Research: 9 Best Practices

What practices should a research and feedback collection team implement when conducting voice of the customer research? Here we list 9 VoC best practices so you can get the most out of your research efforts.

1. Outline How the Program Will Run

First, design an effective voice of the customer research program. Determine what type of feedback and research you want to collect. How will you (or your research team) collect this research (methodologies)? What tools and resources will you use? Where will all the data be stored and analyzed? What do you hope to do with this information and feedback? What are the end goals?

Answering these questions will help prepare your teams. And when the time comes, your teams will be equipped to communicate with customers, understand their needs and pain points, collect and study data, and find ways to improve the customer experience.

2. Collect Feedback & Insights Across All Communication Channels

If your business communicates with customers on different channels, then you will want to collect feedback from all those channels. This means not only doing phone and email surveys but also chat and social media, if applicable.

Basically, any platform or channel you engage with customers and prospects on is a valuable platform for collecting voice of the customer research. You can decide the form and length of your survey or questionnaire based on the channel. Create short surveys and embed them in the email or chat window or attach links to longer surveys that may need more time.

You can increase the number of responses you receive by collecting feedback from all communication channels and also get varied responses and perspectives.

3. Collaborate with Other Teams & Share Reports

Depending on the purpose and goal of a research project, all relevant departments should have a say in how feedback should be collected and studied. Identify key leaders and players from each department. Get their support via perspectives and suggestions. Invest in the right communication tools to collaborate effectively with these teams. Once research is collected, share insights and reports with these leaders and departments.

4. Personalize VoC Requests

Think of every interaction with your customer as a way of delivering value. Therefore, when conducting VoC research and collecting feedback, treat your customer as a partner. Demonstrate that the purpose of this survey or phone interview is to understand how you can serve them better. Ask relevant questions; customers will not answer questions that have nothing to do with them or how they use your product.

5. Seek Feedback at the Right Touchpoints

This practice depends on how you stage your interviews and surveys and what data you want to gather. For example, do you want to know how your product is doing overall? Or, do you want to understand how specific processes are working? Hopefully, you want both.

But timing your requests for feedback is crucial. Doing so gives customers the opportunity to let you know about their frustrations or struggles and also let you know how a new feature or service is working out. Good moments for feedback can include:

• After the customer has onboarded
• As a follow-up to new product features or add-on services
• After the customer has completed a big task or achieved a goal
• As a response to customer behavior such as low levels of activity
• After the customer reaches out for customer or tech support.

6. Respond to Customer Feedback

Don’t ignore feedback once you’ve collected it. Respond to the feedback by offering solutions or changing processes. Let your customers know that your business is aware of their concerns and working on a solution. Don’t leave them hanging.

7. Study Data & Act on Feedback

Don’t stop at collecting data and sharing it with other departments. Study and analyze the data. Then, together, work on creating action plans based on the feedback provided to make processes simpler and improve customer experience. This is the whole purpose of conducting voice of the customer research.

8. Consider the Voice of the Employee

Don’t forget about your employees. They are a big part of customer interactions and can provide valuable insights and perspectives. They may notice trends in customer queries, struggles, achievements, or pain points. And they can help you identify areas of improvement within internal policy and processes. In other words, they can direct your attention to areas that impede their ability to deliver good customer experience and service.

9. Track & Measure ROI

Finally, look at the results. All this work will be for nothing if you don’t get results that match your business goals. If your main goal is improving customer experience, you will also improve business ROI. This is because both work hand-in-hand: the better the customer experience, the longer the customer stays with your business and continues to purchase your products and services. Track your efforts and measure ROI to ensure your efforts and goals are aligned.

VoC Research: 9 Common Mistakes

Poorly designed VoC programs can greatly harm your research efforts and may even negatively affect your relationship with these customers. Here are 9 common mistakes to avoid when conducting voice of the customer research.

1. Being Unprepared

Not knowing what you need to do or how to do it is the biggest hurdle your research team can face. Do the research and talk to your leaders. Come up with realistic goals (more on that below) and a game plan that everyone approves of. Prepare a list of questions for inclusion in the survey or phone interview. And research the customer and their business to ensure your questions are relevant to their experience. In other words, don’t talk to them without knowing what you are looking for or what the end goal is.

2. Not Researching Customers Before Connecting with Them

If you prepare generic questions which may or may not be relevant to each customer, you run the risk of not getting accurate or helpful responses. This is because customers who don’t find your questions relevant to their experience will not know how to answer them. And if there is nothing for them to gain, they will not want to waste time.

Create questions that are customer-focused and not business-focused. Conduct market research to uncover their problems and potential pain points. What can your business do to solve a particular issue?

3. Setting Vague or Unrealistic Goals

This mistake may have pricey results. If the goals set are not clear enough or achievable, your team may end up wasting time and resources in this voice of the customer program. Additionally, in certain situations, goals may need to be adjusted or re-evaluated. Take time to do this and make a case for it based on insights gathered.

4. Asking the Wrong Questions

Not asking the right or relevant questions will cause a lot of wasted time. For one, customers may not provide valuable insights. And two, you may miss out on getting to the main point. Keep your VoC research goal in mind and draft questions accordingly. When you conduct interviews, you may come across other angles and perspectives to include in future questions; make a note of these. Ask follow-up questions and focus on “how” and “why” questions. These will help you dig deeper into their goals and how they use your product to achieve those goals.

5. Failure to Secure Support

Research is not easy; it takes time and demands resources. This means stakeholders need to buy in to your program and goals. The whole point of VoC research is to identify ways to make your company and its products more customer-friendly. The more satisfied customers are, the more your business will grow.

As such, VoC research can highlight changes that may affect the company culture and values. Therefore, if your VoC program does not have adequate support, the results may not be taken seriously. And these insights may get buried in other more urgent projects. Ensure your team and leaders understand the value of the research you will undertake before you begin.

6. Not Collaborating with Other Teams

Work closely with other teams before, during, and after the research project. Their perspective can help you devise better questions and valuable results. This means taking the time to sit down and talk to your marketing, sales, and customer service teams. You may even meet with product managers and development teams to get their take on the product and its purpose, and what future developments are possible.

Without working and collaborating with other members, you may miss out on key perspectives that can drive your research. For instance, if you do not speak with your sales or customer service teams, you may not learn of common customer problems that your research can help solve.

7. Not Using Automation When Available

Research is not easy; it takes time and needs resources. However, without the right resources and support, it can prove to be more expensive and less effective. Think: customer automation tools, lead qualification tools, data analytics tools, and so on.

Streamline your processes. Create separate workflows for different types of audiences and segments. Use efficient tools and resources that make it easy for your team to identify customers and leads and to collect and study the data.

Related: 6 Ways to Automate Customer Service in 2021

8. Not Sharing Insights & Feedback

While there is a tendency to ignore similar and low-level feedback, make it a point to keep sharing insights and feedback with your teams and leaders. Even a low-level issue can become a larger issue if it occurs consistently. Something that may seem like a small issue might be the root cause of a larger issue. The point is, sharing your insights with others may help you see things differently. And will also help leaders and managers learn more about their customers.

9. Failure to Act on Feedback

Finally, not acting on feedback defeats the whole purpose of conducting voice of the customer research. Whatever the feedback, work on ways to make the customer experience better. Customers should know that your business cares and is working on making their lives and jobs easier.

Why Voice of the Customer is Important

VoC research helps your business pay attention to the customer’s voice and feedback. At the end of the day, if your product or service does not cater to customer needs, they have no loyalty to your brand. Considering how competitive the market is, customers will find new services. Don’t lose out on valuable customers. You may even be able to use these insights in creating and updating customer journey maps that will, in turn, show you ways to bring more customers on board.

Your business will see huge returns from working with customers and learning from their feedback. And gradually, your customers will become brand advocates and help your business grow.

2021 was hard. Let’s face it: many businesses lost valuable customers and many customers lost their favorite businesses. However, there is still hope for those who need it. Reconnect with past customers and ignite the flame with new customers through customer success trends for 2024.

2021 Customer Success Trends

What is customer success and why is it going to be important in 2024? Customer success is the process of proactively reaching out to customers and clients and working on improving their experience with your business. While customer service is reactive (after a customer reaches out to a business), customer success is proactive and takes the first step.

The 2020 global pandemic caused much uncertainty and dramatically changed business practices. As such, customers need more care in the new year than ever before. This is where customer success comes in. Make your customers happy, develop strong customer relations, and increase sales with these 6 customer success trends for 2024.

1. Virtual and Multichannel Communication, Especially Video

COVID-19 led to many businesses coming up with creative ways of staying in contact with their customers and making themselves reachable. This led to a rise in multichannel communication and customer support with businesses offering voice calls, text messages, live chat, emails, and video calling.

Video streaming and video conferencing are important customer success trends for 2024. In 2021, many businesses had to switch to video conferences for sales and customer support services. With video streaming and conferencing, these businesses were able to engage in detailed and personalized meetings with valuable customers. In a time of uncertainty, this helped bring many customers on board. As such, customers will expect some degree of video and virtual support in the following years.

Related: 5 Ways to Win Back Your Post-Pandemic Customers

2. More AI and Automation Technology

AI and automation in business continue to be a growing trend. Businesses across the board are finding ways to streamline and automate simple, repetitive processes so that their employees are free to focus on more complex and important tasks. Customer success teams can also benefit from automated processes. Some common customer success automation tools include:

• Welcome emails and follow-up messages
• AI chatbots
• Automated IVR systems and auto-attendants
• Personalization with regards to deals and offers
• Ability to segment and prioritize customers

One example of an efficient customer success automation tool is the automated IVR system. An IVR system answers incoming calls, identifies the caller and their needs, and proceeds to assist. The IVR system can be programmed to simply transfer callers to the right department or employee. However, more advanced IVR systems can even assist callers in completing tasks without the need of an agent. These tasks include, but are not limited to:

• Collecting feedback and surveys
• Providing troubleshooting help
• Providing information about the company (hours, location, services offered, etc.)

Phone system automation can help streamline services, increase efficiency, and help your teams work like a well-oiled machine. Plus, you are guaranteed more accuracy when you use AI to conduct basic tasks.

3. Proactive and Customer-First Strategies

Customer success focuses on being proactive, as opposed to customer service which is reactive. In other words, customer success occurs before the customer reaches out to you. More specifically, in customer success, your business reaches out to customers to make their experience better.

Here is a great opportunity to put those customer-first strategies to use. These strategies focus on:

• Understanding the customer’s needs and expectations.
• Working closely with the customer to provide useful and relevant solutions.
• Collecting feedback from current customers.
• Conducting market research to develop strong buyer personas for your target audience.
• Creating better experiences and interactions for your customers.

4. Personalized Experience and Service

Over the years, businesses have noticed that customers respond better to personalized service. Providing personalized service for your customers can include:

• Personalized or customized sales and customer service — researching or studying your customer and their needs before pitching them or providing assistance.
• Including personalization features in your phone system that identify callers and help them with their account or query, keeping their history in mind.
• Personalized email marketing with customized and relevant products and services.

By offering custom solutions and personalized service, your customer understands that their business is important to you. Additionally, you make it easier for them to see how your products and services can directly relieve their problems and make their lives or businesses function better.

Furthermore, by executing such an approach, you can increase your customer lifetime value. This is a great way to increase your value as a business when marketing to target customers.

5. Focus on Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is one of the most important customer success trends for 2021. Customer success as a service involves working closely with customers and clients and helping them achieve their goals. As such, your customer success teams will need to measure and map their journey.

For most businesses, the customer’s journey starts at the moment they show interest in your product or service. It ends when they make a purchase. However, for companies focusing on customer success, the actual journey begins at the customer’s purchase. How can you continue to serve this customer and ensure they will come back for more?

So, what is customer journey mapping and why is it significant? Customer journey mapping involves creating a journey map for your customer. In other words, developing a map that details the visual story of your customer’s interactions with your company. By doing so, your customer success teams gain insight into each customer’s behavior, needs, and perspective. And by understanding these factors, your business can provide better services to valuable customers. With customer journey mapping, you can:

• Understand customer preferences via feedback
• Create better alignment between teams
• Measure and enhance customer experience
• Define milestones and work towards them
• Execute better customer success strategies that are more likely to be successful

6. Collecting and Reviewing Customer Success Metrics

Lastly, as with any significant business process or strategy: Collect, Measure, and Optimize. Collect data and feedback regarding customer experiences. Measure important customer success metrics such as customer health scores, CLV, customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), etc. And based on your findings, improve and optimize customer experiences and interactions.

Strengthen Customer Relations with Care

Customer success helps you work with customers to better understand and serve them. By doing so, you can strengthen their relationship with your business and convert them into recurring customers or those that recommend your business to others! Give the above customer success trends for 2021 a try and give your business the tools it needs to thrive in the new year. Call us to learn more at 1 (888) 908 6171.

Knowing your customers’ value and how much they bring back to your business is essential in understanding where your business stands and what it can do to increase revenue and sales. In this post, you will learn how to calculate customer lifetime value (CLV) and how to improve your business’ CLV by increasing customer retention and loyalty.

What is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a customer success metric that determines how much net profit your business is able to make from one customer over time. The CLV can tell you the dollar worth associated with a long-lasting relationship with any customer. This is a metric used to determine the value of your customers and how much money they bring to your business. This metric is key when it comes to bringing aboard new customers and deciding how much to spend on existing customers.

Why Measure CLV?

Going by this definition, the higher your business’ CLV, the more revenue each customer brings into your business. Therefore, with each customer’s value increasing, your sales and marketing teams can afford to take on new customers. In other words, your business can spend more on attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. And this is simply because each customer is valuable and brings more to your business. CLV is important because:

1. Acquiring new customers is expensive and difficult, at times
2. Loyal and recurring clients will be your best promoters
3. Current customers can help your business growth

So, calculating CLV can give you insights into the quality of your customers and what your business can do to increase revenue and sales.

Calculating CLV

Calculating your customer lifetime value can be tricky. Understanding the core components will prove helpful. We break this down into easy-to-follow steps. Calculate your CLV scores by following the below steps:

Step 1. Calculate Average Purchase Value

Value of each purchase.

Average Purchase Value = Total Revenue / Number of Orders

Step 2. Calculate Average Purchase Frequency

Frequency of each purchase.

Average Purchase Frequency = Number of Purchases / Number of Customers

Step 3: Calculate Average Customer’s Value

Value of a customer.

Average Customer’s Value = Average Purchase Value / Average Purchase Frequency

Step 4. Calculate Average Customer’s Lifetime Span

Number of years that each customer visits or uses your service.

Average Customer’s Lifetime Span = Sum of Customer Lifespans / Number of Customers

Step 5. Calculate Customer’s Lifetime Value (CLV)

Your Business’ CLV score

Customer’s Lifetime Value = Customer Value (step 3) x Average Customer Lifespan (step 4)

9 CX Strategies to Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

When thinking of ways to improve customer lifetime value, there are three main factors to consider:

1. Average Transaction Value
2. Number of Repeat Sales
3. Average Customer Retention Rate

By influencing or increasing these factors, your business’ CLV and customer experience (CX) will improve. So, what can you do to better these numbers?

1. Conduct Surveys and Ask Questions

One way to improve your product or service is by increasing the number of repeat customers and subscribers. To do this, you need to identify what keeps customers coming back and any significant deal breakers. The best way to learn more about what your customers like and expect is by asking them. Conduct surveys, ask questions, and collect voice of customer data. Learn more about your customers so you can serve them better and convert more into recurring customers.

2. Enhance Customer Service and Customer Success

According to a study conducted by PwC, 32% of customers will end their relationship with a business after a bad experience. And so, this goes without saying but improving your customer support and customer success services can go a long way in retaining customers and making them advocates for your brand.

Consider investing in omnichannel and multichannel customer support. By increasing the number of channels that customers can use to connect with you, you can appeal to a wider customer base and offer more responsive service.

You may even find it useful to utilize self-service options such as knowledge bases and support centers, automate IVR services, chatbots, trouble tickets, and more. Self-service options give users the ability to solve their problems themselves and on their own time. Read our post about customer service trends to determine where your business is lacking.

3. Design Relevant and Easy-to-Use Products and Services

How relevant your business and products are can greatly impact how prospects view and interact with your services. Stay relevant, discuss current issues, and offer up-to-date information and features. If customers find more relevant usage elsewhere, they will go to a competitor without hesitation.

4. Develop a Customer-First Strategy

To enhance CX for your business, you need to create a customer-first strategy. Such a strategy requires your sales and marketing teams to take time to understand the customer, their needs, pain points, and preferences. And then develop a strategy that supports them and their needs.

5. Consider Usability Testing

Usability testing is a kind of market research. In usability testing, your marketing and services teams observe how users interact with your product, software, or service. You can test specific processes (sign-up, purchasing stage, etc.) or the entire system. Usability testing lets you identify areas that need improvement; specifically what processes and features are not clear or easy-to-use. Then, you can create better products and software that make customers more comfortable and less confused.

6. Cross-Sell and Up-Sell

Most sales teams already know that cross-selling and up-selling can greatly improve customer retention. Offering additional services and add-on features is a good way to reduce cart abandonment and build customer loyalty. Furthermore, offering products and services that are relevant to your customers will make a great difference. Customers appreciate personalization and customized recommendations and see them as an effort to really help improve their lives.

7. Create Valuable and Engaging Content

Keep your customers engaged by creating and sharing valuable and informative content. Utilize your blog page, emails, and social media platforms to educate and inform your customers and also establish your business as a trustworthy and credible one. Show readers that your employees know the industry and are developing first-class products.

8. Consider Loyalty Programs

Invest in customer loyalty programs to keep your customers coming back for more. Discounts, member-only promotions, etc., will help retain valuable customers. Treating them with special care and effort will give them more reasons to stay.

9. Continue to Delight Your Customers

Lastly, don’t stop delighting your customers once you lock them down. Keep them happy. Surprise them with small gestures; these can be holiday greetings, birthday vouchers, gift cards, etc. These little gestures can go a long way in securing customer loyalty.

After All, It’s All About Customer Relationships

Your customers drive your business’ growth. Without them, your business can easily fall behind and into the shadows. Try these CX strategies to improve the way customers interact with your business and give them a reason to come back for more. Competition is everywhere and so it’s up to you to make your business stand out. How far are you willing to go?

Learn more about how Global Call Forwarding’s communication features can help your business communicate better. Reach out to us today to learn more!

Customer service has always been central to the success of any business. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted how businesses offer customer support as well as customer service expectations held by consumers. Now, more than ever, each business needs to evaluate how they are engaging their customers and offering care and support. Here is where ensuring your reps and employees practice empathy in customer service becomes crucial.

What is the Role of Empathy in Customer Service?

The first thing we should learn about is the concept of empathy. It is the process of imagining or putting oneself into another’s shoes in an attempt to better understand the other and what they are going through. And so, empathy should be understood as one of the most important traits when interacting with customers. But what does empathy in customer service look like? And as a Chief Customer Officer, how can you train your team and yourself to be more empathetic?

What is Customer Empathy?

Customer empathy is the process of understanding your customers by digging deeper into their pain points, concerns, motivations, and more. This means taking a step forward instead of simply saying “I understand” and proceeding with stock responses.

Empathy in customer service, therefore, means taking the time to understand each customer individually. What are their concerns? What is their situation? How can your product help them specifically? And so on. By paying attention to these questions and each customer individually, your team can provide a more holistic and meaningful customer experience.

Why You Should be More Empathetic When Dealing with Customers

According to research conducted by PwC, about 32% of customers will end their relationship with a brand after having one bad experience. Customer service expectations have increased and customers no longer tolerate bad-to-moderate service. They expect businesses to go above and beyond and, specifically, to be considerate and empathetic.

Being more consciously empathetic in your customer interactions can prevent the loss of potentially valuable customers. If your business does not take steps to improve customer experience by creating products and services that are customer-focused, your customers will not hesitate to go to your competitors.

6 Signs Your Business is Lacking in Empathy

In order to determine whether your customer service team is lacking in empathy and needs to up its game, look closely at how your team is performing. Some key indicators include:

1. Low customer satisfaction scores
2. Negative customer feedback
3. Multiple call transfers among agents
4. Long wait times
5. Bad customer reviews
6. Low customer retention rates

9 Ways to Practice Empathy in Customer Service

Customer service and customer interactions happen in a variety of ways and across different platforms. Among these are:

• In-person meetings
• Phone and video conversations
• Live chat
• Email interactions
• Social media platforms

Your customer service must be consistent across these platforms so that each customer leaves your business happier and more satisfied than when they arrived. How can you and your team be more empathetic in customer interactions? Here are some helpful tips:

1. Maintain Eye Contact

This one goes without saying — Always maintain eye contact. It is often considered rude if you are paying attention to anything other than the person you are interacting with. This becomes even more important when you are engaging with customers on video calls. It is easy to get distracted and focus on the slide share or other materials, but take time to look at your customer and listen to them. Make them feel seen and heard.

2. Adopt Active Listening

Don’t just assume that you know what the customer is going through and that it is a common issue. Even if the issue is one of the most common complaints you receive, try to treat it with a new perspective. Your customer may have tried different methods to resolve the issue. This could provide you with more information and insight.

Once they have described their issue, repeat it back to them so they know you were paying attention to every detail. Listen actively so you can provide helpful advice that they haven’t tried before.

3. Have a Positive Attitude

No matter what the situation, try to adopt a positive attitude throughout the interaction. Chances are your customer is really upset about the issue they are facing and their frustration may leak into their interaction with you. Don’t let that color the way you respond to them. Take a moment to understand what they may be going through and focus on solving the problem for them.

4. Be Patient and Respectful

Similar to the above tip, strive to be patient, kind, and respectful in your interaction. Give them time to speak (or vent, if they are really upset), avoid getting frustrated yourself, and focus on the end-goal which is resolving their concern so they can continue to enjoy your product or service.

5. Avoid Biases

As with any interaction, avoid making assumptions and biases based on your own perceptions. This means respecting the person for who they are and what they are trying to achieve. Don’t assume they don’t know anything or that they know everything. Always ask for clarification instead of making an assumption.

6. Be Careful When Cultural and Language Barriers are Involved

This is another area of concern where empathy in customer service is essential. When cultural and language barriers are present, there is room for confusion and misunderstanding. Take time to understand your customer. If you are struggling, ask to put them on hold, and find a supervisor or rep who can help. Make sure to get back to your customer soon, don’t keep them hanging on hold for long. Also, keep international phone etiquette in mind when calling customers in different regions and parts of the world.

7. Ask Follow Up Questions

This is a good way to show your customer that you are interested and invested in this conversation. Ask follow-up questions that are relevant and can help narrow down the issue at hand. This can also help you offer more personalized solutions.

8. Match Your Customer’s Tone

Whether it is through email or phone conversations, try to match the tone and enthusiasm of your customer. Don’t be too formal if your customer appears informal and casual, and vice versa. Personalize your interaction with each customer to connect with them in a better way.

9. Build a Bond, Be Flexible

Look for common interests. For example, the online pet company Chewy’s customer service agents always ask customers about their pets and share stories about their own pets. This is a good way to create a bond with their customers and talk about something both parties love: their dogs or cats!