Voice of the Customer: A Post-Pandemic Must

By: Kathy Kent Toney, President of Kent Business Solutions

Happy customers…what does it take to truly make them happy? Many organizations struggle with answering this question, but it's especially important in the post-pandemic world. Organizations need to do a better job of listening to their customers, not only to thrive, but survive.

That’s why effective customer feedback strategies are so important, and using Voice of the Customer techniques is a great way to get there.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term Voice of the Customer, here's the definition:

It's an in-depth process that is used to gather customer requirements and feedback in order to provide customers with best-in-class services and/or products.

And Voice of the Customer works!

A study conducted by the Aberdeen Group shows that companies with VOC programs outperform all others by as much as 22%! The study was done across nine categories, including annual company revenue and customer win-back rate. When organizations have these programs in place, knowing what customers want becomes more second nature, and products can be more easily created to meet their expectations.

Whether the focus is using VOC techniques to determine customer satisfaction levels with current products/services, capturing feedback to develop new products and/or services or ideally using both approaches, consistent use of VOC principles works.

What Happens When You DON'T Use VOC?

How many of you have been involved in New Product Development (NPD) efforts and have experienced a newly launched product failing in the market? I bet it wasn't a pretty picture!

I'm sure all of us have heard of at least one such failure. I always love telling the story about one of the most epic failures of all times...the New Coke launch in 1985. It's a perfect case study of what NOT to do. Coca-Cola certainly didn't do a good job of gauging customer buy-in. And their competition took advantage of it!

There's a good chance that this failure could have been avoided if VOC activities had properly occurred during NPD efforts. That is why capturing VOC is so important!

In the end, a lack of VOC due diligence can result in:

• Mounting customer complaints stemming from poor product quality
• High levels of customer churn
• Wasted resources
• Poor sales
• Poor ROI

What Happens When You DO Use VOC Principles?

Many of these problems can be avoided when a VOC process is properly integrated into an organization. That way, a standard methodology and tools to capture customer feedback are at each employees' finger tips. Consistently gathering valuable feedback then becomes more of an everyday experience, if employees know how and when to use such tools. That’s when great things like the following can happen:

• Better alignment of products/services with customer needs for improved profitability
• Increased customer retention
• Improved products/services that attract new customers
• Increased customer engagement

The Bottom Line

Today’s post-COVID world requires an ever increasing need to listen to what customers want and expect from companies.  To do otherwise is...unwise.

When VOC techniques are consistently used by an organization's employees, making your customers happy will no longer a guessing game, and who doesn’t want that?


Is your organization in need of such a strategy? If so, I'd love to have a conversation!

Click here to schedule a 15-minute chat.

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