When it comes to the success of your business, your customers hold the power. No matter the industry you work in, you need to understand the challenges your customers are seeking to overcome and how to best market your solution to them. You can achieve this by collecting data on customers that reflects their spending habits, likes, dislikes, and any other relevant information. This helps brands to adapt their marketing methods and offer the best service they can.
Collecting customer insights and feedback could be achieved through a voice of the customer programme. This is typically software that plugs into your contact centre systems and actively monitors and collates data from customers.
Here, we will look at some of the reasons why voice of the customer programmes are essential to delivering a great customer experience (cx).
Delivering growth through great CX
First hand data collected from feedback is crucial to take your business to the next level. But when it comes to understanding your target audience, expert analysis of the data helps you unearth valuable insights about your customers. This could include their thoughts on their recent customer service interaction, or their latest purchase from your business. You can do this by collecting data on your current customer base and keeping track of social media analytics to see which platform your target audience regularly uses.
Voice of the customer strategies often include, feedback surveys to customers and measures their feedback before storing it on a dashboard. You can then use this information to check stats and customer experience.
Some examples of VOC techniques include:
- Customer surveys
- Social media
- Live hat
- Customer reviews
- Recorded calls
- Focus groups
- Emails
Once you have a clearer understanding of who your audience is, you can then develop new ways to target them, either through specific keywords, blog posts, or video content. The key is to sift through the information to find what your customers want and then give it to them. With a voice of the customer programme, you can eliminate the need for guesswork and rely on the facts.
Creating Effective Marketing Campaigns
As mentioned, once you know your audience in detail, you can create tailored marketing campaigns just for them. It’s essential that you know how to market to your customers, otherwise no matter how unique or inventive your product or services are, no one will see it!
For instance, if you are targeting millennials, then you will have a better chance of reaching them if you make your business site mobile-friendly. As the majority of consumers make purchases on their mobile devices, this is imperative to bring in more sales. You can also include ads for your brand on platforms such as Instagram, include regular posts on Twitter, and, if you really want to stand out, create video content.
Long form blog content may be appropriate for a target audience who want to learn from your expertise, whereas those who want to be entertained by your content may prefer short videos. Whatever marketing activities you decide on, using your voice of the customer data will help you address relevant topics in the right format for your target market.
Getting Ahead of the Competition
Another reason why voice of the customer programmes are necessary for enhancing the customer experience, is that they can help you get ahead of your competitors and potentially even steal some of their customers. You can use the data from your own business to see if any of your competitors are making similar errors or if they, in fact, provide a superior service. Delivering insights that so precisely tailored to your business is only possible through first hand research methods, like those included in a voice of the customer programme.
In business, you can’t afford to be complacent, and if you can get a step ahead then you’re improving your potential longevity and creating new demand. You never know, you might even discover a gap in the market that your competitors haven’t noticed yet.
Read more about how to create a customer experience strategy that drives business growth.
