It has become increasingly more challenging to craft a customer experience that is high-value and high-impact throughout a multifaceted journey, especially when customers’ expectations continue to expand and evolve.
A well-built, sophisticated Voice of the Customer (VoC) program provides the fuel for your CX delivery, unveiling your customers’ needs, behaviors and perceptions of their interactions with your brand and informing where and how your organization needs to make improvements.
How to Design a Sophisticated VoC Program
The most successful organizations leverage their VoC program as a cornerstone of their CX strategy. When properly designed and implemented, this program provides insight into the evolving trends and expectations of your customers, enabling more informed decision-making at multiple levels across the organization.
A VoC program has the potential to provide invaluable information about your customers and experience delivery. However, maximizing the effectiveness and application of this information is not always easy. While there is no single formula for creating a successful VoC program, there are core characteristics you should strive to instill into your VoC efforts.
Here are the core elements of the most successful Voice of the Customer programs:
VoC Program Planning
Typically, VoC programs seek to understand what customers are experiencing day to day by setting up “listening posts” at various touchpoints and thereby get an overall picture of customer opinions and needs. The overarching goal is to monitor the “state of the customer.” But this will look different in each organization.
Before building and executing your VoC program, you’ll need to take a step back to establish the foundational needs and objectives of the program. This will require meeting with stakeholders across the organization, so you can understand their objectives and them into the overall goals and change management approach of the program.
A sound change management strategy is key to this planning stage and will be pivotal to achieving cross-functional buy-in and support for your VoC program. It is essential that key stakeholders — from the CEO down — believe in the importance of this customer listening exercise, so every individual involved is fully committed to supporting the program and is willing to engage in the process.
These proactive planning exercises may be difficult and time-intensive, but they will become the backbone of your VoC program activities and initiatives going forward. If it’s not feasible for your organization to execute these processes on your own, consider partnering with an experienced third-party consultancy firm to help plan and perform these foundational processes, as these preliminary steps are foundational to the all-up success of your VoC program.
VoC Program Execution
Now that you have assessed the full needs of each department and built a change management plan to future-proof the success of the program, you are ready to begin researching the current state of your customers’ experiences.
How you begin building this current-state customer understanding will depend on the priorities of the organization and will often require preliminary data mining and Voice of Employee exercises. But the best course of action is to start on a small scale: pick one customer segment or channel to begin building your awareness of the current customer journey. This preliminary customer listening exercise will highlight the biggest, most pressing challenges in your customer journey, and help determine which goals, channels and audience segments you need to prioritize.
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Now you can begin building a roadmap for your VoC program: defining plans and delegating responsibilities, as well as designating timelines and resources for reaching each unique goal and scheduling check-ins to keep everyone on track. Consider working with an expert VoC consultant to build this roadmap for your organization, offload the work and ensure success of the program.
VoC Program Technology Selection
Choosing the right technologies and methodologies to realistically achieve your VoC program goals is the final planning step before you are ready to execute. But this can be easier said than done.
There is a slew of different VoC tools, applications and third-party integrations available for your organization to leverage, so it can be challenging to know which options are best for your needs. These can include customer surveys and feedback loops, data visualization and analysis, agent and staff feedback exercises, contact center interaction monitoring and more.
The key is to come back to the foundational CX goals and priorities you’ve established and invest in VoC program technologies and strategies that will best support those objectives. Third-party consultation can come in very handy during this phase of the planning process. VoC program experts like Avtex have their finger on the pulse of the technology landscape and are adept at making recommendations aligned to your customer needs, business priorities and desired organizational outcomes.
Avtex Ensures VoC Program Sophistication and Success
Execution of a successful, sophisticated VoC program can take a lot of time, energy and resources. From VoC program planning and execution to compiling, analyzing and applying VoC program findings, this core CX strategy can be quite an undertaking for any business.
With decades of VoC program planning and execution, deep relationships with world-renowned technology and SaaS partners like Qualtrics and unparalleled CX consultation and expertise, Avtex offers end-to-end VoC program support that is unlike any other organization in the market.
A partnership with Avtex also presents the following added benefits to your VoC program:
- CX expertise: With a detailed knowledge of CX, the Avtex team provides the guidance needed to design and maintain a customer-centric VoC program that ensures maximum impact on your business.
- Change management: Our certified change management experts will help ensure the adoption and success of your VoC program.
- Design thinking: We consult with organizations to first understand their key challenges and only then design solutions to address those identified needs.
Learn more about how Avtex can support your VoC program and CX strategies. Contact Avtex to receive a free VoC program consultation.