Collecting customer feedback without integrating it into a comprehensive and valued program that guarantees actionable insights wastes not only your organization’s time, but also your customers.
Although many organizations have now adopted formalized Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs, regrettably, for many, this incredibly valuable customer data receives only a superficial look or is summarized on a slide, where it risks being overshadowed by seemingly more important priorities. And that’s it! A month or so later and the cycle repeats: data is collected, examined, documented, and then left to be forgotten.
Acting on insights
If an organization aims to truly prioritize its customers, simply asking for their opinions falls short. A structured process must surround the customer feedback, ensuring that insights are not only gathered, but acted on. This involves integrating it into a well-defined program which is designed to understand the customer feedback, tell the story to the wider team, and get it into the hands of the right people at the right time to ensure appropriate actions are taken.
Incorporating feedback into a more extensive action-driven framework is what makes it truly valuable. To maximize the benefit from a VoC program, clear goals and a plan need to be established to understand how the business will respond to the insights and in some cases, even close the loop with customers on the actions they have taken.
The four main reasons that organizations collect feedback are:
- Getting to the root cause of common customer complaints or call drivers
- Product and process improvements
- Business reporting
- Employee training for customer facing teams
Closing the loop
Once you’ve secured your customer insights, you must create relevant action plans, assign responsibilities, and define the metrics and benchmarks you’re going to use to gauge success. To maintain a continuous improvement cycle, ensure you close the loop on your change management process with your customer-facing teams and anyone else who may be impacted by these changes.
Additionally, where possible, it’s important to close the loop with the survey respondents! For example, if a customer has suggested a specific change, follow-up and let them know their voice was heard and tell them what you’ve done as a result.
One of the unique benefits of Cyara’s CentraCX is that it can help to operationalize the VoC feedback gathered for your business. CentraCX features capabilities to create the processes to ensure the VoC is embedded in your companies’ day-to-day operations and future planning.
The risks of not making customer feedback an integral part of your operations are: falling back into old habits, failing to transform, wasting your customer’s time, and having the data become ‘shelfware’ rather than a catalyst for change – ultimately undermining the reason the organization sought to collect the feedback in the first place.
So once you collect valuable insights from customers, don’t just leave it sitting on the shelf, make sure you take the time to act on it!
