Popular Ways to Conduct Voice of Customer Research

Understanding your customers’ needs is the first step to success. Companies that invest majorly in proper customer care are always miles ahead of their competitors. 

An in-depth voice of customer research process can help you know who your customers are, their struggles, their attitude towards your business, and what they love. 

In this article, we will discuss some of the keyways to amass the voice of customer data from your customers.

• Customer surveys 

Customer surveys involve the collection of valuable feedback from customers using questionnaires. The goal here is to reach out to as many customers as possible. 

You can send the questions via customers’ email for them to fill out or make the questions accessible on your website for any visitors. 

Surveys can serve as useful techniques for collecting both qualitative and quantitative feedback. 

• Conducting interviews

Interviews allow you to collect first-hand information since they are normally conducted one-on-one. Well, they can be quite time-consuming, but they often guarantee some of the most valuable responses. 

You can choose to interview your customers on phone, in person, or through a video chat. By engaging the clients directly, an interviewer can dig deeper into the customers’ feedback and gather more quality details that other VoC research techniques may have missed.

• Pay attention to social media

Given that almost 60% of the world’s population has access to social media, social media can be a valuable platform for connecting with customers. 

Compared to emails or phone calls, social media is open to more real-time, to-way, and more informal conversations. 

Customers from all walks of life may often engage with your brand on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Still, you can also get quality feedback from other less popular platforms like Quora and Reddit.

• Read customer reviews

You can tell a lot about a specific brand by going through various customer reviews. The more positive feedback the better the services and vice versa. 

Monitoring customers’ feedback is not only vital for winning new customers but also for Voice of the Customer research. 

A satisfied customer will either leave a 5-star rating or lengthy open-ended feedback. Likewise, if you are looking for genuine and unsolicited customer opinions check reviews on a third-party website.

• Measure your net promoter score

Although an NPS survey might not provide you with tons of contextual VoC data, it can help you understand your clientele better. 

A net promoter score is a metric used by companies to gauge customer loyalty and experience. It simply helps you to understand how customers perceive your brand. 

From their feedback, you will know whether they are likely to recommend your products to other customers or not. Read more here https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/9-enterprise-voice-of-the-customer-voc-tools-you-should-know-about/

• Listen to recorded customer calls

A customer will probably contact you if they are deeply interested in your products, happy with your services, or have a complaint. 

No matter the situation, you will often have detailed one-on-one conversations with engaged customers. We recommend recording this conversation for future references. 

These recordings serve as invaluable sources of VOC data since you can identify customers’ successes, complaints, and objections.

• Focus groups

Focus groups are closely similar to customer interviews. The only difference is that the interviewer chooses to interview a small group of customers instead of engaging one-on-one. 

The moderator assembles a group of about 6 to 10 people and then proceeds to ask them questions about the product, brand, or industry. 

Focus groups are a good source of VoC data since they often provide more explanatory research.

• Map customer behavior and UX

It’s important to recognize that sometimes what customers say is not what they always do. This technique allows you to understand the customer’s experience from an analytical viewpoint. 

With the help of tools like Google Analytics, you can get a clear map of the customer’s behavior throughout your website. You can also identify how changes to your product or website affect customer behavior. 

For instance, if you notice a drastic fall in demand for your products after rebranding, you can identify where you went wrong and test to find the best solution.

• Offer a feedback form

It is always important to have a feedback form in your business where customers can leave their feedback. It can be a great way to keep up on your customers’ experience, whether positive or negative. The importance of feedback in healthcare and other industries is imperative for a business to continue to grow and improve upon relationships with patients, clients, and customers. People often respond positively to feeling like they have a voice that is being heard.

You can simply embed this form on your website for easier access or share it via a QR code or link.  Feedback forms also keep you updated on what’s trending on the Voice of the Customer research.

• Talk to your customer support team

A company’s customer support team can be a valuable source of VoC data since they interact a lot with customers. 

The support team is always on the front line in case a problem arises. They can identify and fix several problems including product deficiency, or software glitches. 

The other important customer-facing employees are the salespersons. This team can offer invaluable data on customer needs, objections, and what other competitors are doing. Click here to read more insights.

Conclusion 

If you want your business to succeed, your decisions should be based on facts. Conducting a voice of customer research is a great way of gathering relevant information from real people instead of depending on rumors. You can take advantage of this data to make strategic business decisions and grow your business. But first, get to learn and understand the various approaches a company can use to collect this data from clients.