What Is Voice of the Customer? Related Articles Voice of the Customer Solution Guide Voice of Customer Analytics: Everything You Need to Know 20 Smart Ideas to Improve Your Voice of the Customer Programme Definition: What Does Voice and Non-Voice Process Mean in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)? © carballo-Adobe Stock-322648967 341 Filed under - Industry Insights, CallMiner Robert Stanley of CallMiner introduces us to Voice of the Customer (VoC) and discusses how it is used by organizations. As businesses race to define customer needs in ever greater detail while aligning their own market offerings to better cater to them, the importance of gathering intelligence from customers grows significantly. Voice of the Customer or “VOC” is a technological approach to gaining insight into consumers’ collective interests. More specifically, through the use of Voice of the Customer technology, organizations can identify customer needs and organize them by relative importance. Voice of the Customer technology helps in establishing operational courses of action and defining crucial elements of product/service design early on. Through its use, business decisions can be closely matched to verified customer needs. Such a process yields excellent results for businesses that harness it correctly; however, there are numerous ways to go about implementing a VOC strategy within an organization. To better understand how VOC processes work and precisely how you can set them in motion within your own company’s systems it helps to have examples and structural resources at hand. Below, we describe the VOC process in detail and provide you with a few useful templates and examples of the functions that comprise such a system. Voice of the Customer Functions To deploy a comprehensive Voice of the Customer system, organizations should aim to implement each of eight distinct functions. These functions are essentially stages in the VOC information handling process, leading from target setting to ongoing study. They are as follows: Establishing Customer Focus This phase of the VOC process marks the starting line by working out the “why” and “what”. In addition to defining exactly who your customers are and defining their profiles, companies should use this opportunity to define the inner workings of their own product development team. Defining decision makers early can help in ironing out the rest of the VOC process. Collecting Information Here, various tools are chosen and put to use in collecting information from customers. It is important to decide on the kind of information you need to collect in addition to the ways in which you intend to go about collecting it. The two major types of data you will encounter in VOC are qualitative and quantitative (descriptive labels and numbered metrics). One collection tool that helps in narrowing down target customers to interview is a VOC matrix. This tool is essentially a series of fields that you can select based on your project’s goals. Once selected, these fields combine to form a clear description of your target audience. Specialized software can offer the same functionality as a traditional hole-punched VOC matrix if your organization keeps accurate customer profile data in digital formats. Interpreting Information Although the information captured during the collection phase of the VOC process is labeled, it might not be particularly usable until it is accurately interpreted. Interpreting collected data involves translating raw customer input into actionable language. Once done, designers, developers and project leads can assess the information and take immediate action. Specifically, desires expressed by customers should be translated to long-term needs to gain a clearer perspective on a project’s ideal developmental roadmap. Structuring Information Achieving a usable data structure boils down to minimizing redundancies and grouping related information intuitively. AI-based VOC sorting solutions can prove to be tremendously helpful for such purposes. A clear example of the way in which data might be intuitively structured for later use is a simple tree diagram. This diagram arranges information in connected levels of branches to give context to each bit of data. Quantifying Information At this stage of the VOC process, structured information should be rated by its importance or end-user utility. This allows for insignificant data to be dropped in lieu of data representing more pressing concerns. Verifying Information Cross-referencing data sets occurs at this stage. Doing so ensures the veracity of any conclusions your team may reach after analyzing the information your VOC system yields. Deploying New Strategies At this point, the Voice of the Customer data has been collected, organized and verified, but must be weaved into your organization’s development plans to be of use. This may involve setting specific technical requirements for product designs, establishing varied pricing models for subscription services, etc. Tracking Trend Changes Keeping up with sudden shifts in market sentiment should be a top priority and actively interpreting new VOC data makes this possible. Changes in customer needs over time can be worked into future development goals to keep your offerings closely tied to their intended markets. Voice of the Customer provides businesses with unique insights that can be used to imbue future development goals with premeditated purpose. By using VOC technology, your organization can not only listen more attentively to its clientele, but respond to their requests and suggestions in meaningful, profitable ways. This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of CallMiner – View the Original Article For more information about CallMiner - visit the CallMiner Website About CallMiner CallMiner is the leading cloud-based customer interaction analytics solution for extracting business intelligence and improving agent performance across all contact channels. Read other posts by CallMiner Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper. Author: CallMiner Published On: 22nd Apr 2020 - Last modified: 29th Apr 2020 Read more about - Industry Insights, CallMiner Recommended Articles Voice of the Customer Solution Guide Voice of Customer Analytics: Everything You Need to Know 20 Smart Ideas to Improve Your Voice of the Customer Programme What Does Voice and Non-Voice Process Mean in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)? Related Reports White Paper: How to Operationalise AI Workflows in the Contact Centre White Paper: How to Drive Business Improvements with Customer Insights eBook: How Customers Can Lead Your Business Transformation in 2024 White Paper: Five Secrets of Top Performing Contact Centres Contact Centre Reports, Surveys and White Papers Get the latest exciting call centre reports, specialist whitepapers and interesting case-studies. Choose the content that you want to receive. Contact Centre Reports, Surveys and White Papers Invites to exclusive Webinars & Events Weekly Newsletter