How to Measure Your Voice of Customer (VoC)
It isn’t enough to develop an idea of how customers are experiencing a brand just by looking at sales or the amount of time spent on a website. Advanced metrics provide specific data that shows how customers interact with a brand. These metrics and Voice of Customer tools are essential for giving concrete information on CX.
What Is the Voice of Customer?
As the term implies, Voice of Customer refers to opinions, criticisms, preferences, and sentiments of customers relating to a brand or product. They may voice these feelings on social media, in reviews, in focus groups, interviews, or surveys. Voice of Customer solutions are designed to measure these attitudes and sentiments and inform marketing strategy.
As essential as brand storytelling is consumer listening. People like to express their feelings about products and features. Think about how often social media posts appear to discuss a positive or negative shopping experience online or at a new neighbourhood store. Diners often photograph their entrees for social media posts. Consumer commentary is everywhere.
Voice of Customer marketing involves using VOC tools to measure how people interact with a brand or product. Examining every step of the process, from clicking on product descriptions to customer service interactions, to check out as well as reviews provides a full picture of consumer sentiment. Keeping track of how consumers feel about and interact with a brand with VoC solutions creates a roadmap for marketing and product development.
Mapping the Customer’s Journey
There are so many different ways consumers interact with a brand that can be a challenge to create a full picture. Mapping the complete journey through specific metrics and tools can fill in the customer’s story’s blanks.
The customer journey can be measured as a whole or be broken down into phases. Analyzing touchpoints that are telling indicators for specific features and products is the concluding phase.
From these steps, marketers can recreate customer experience and get a closer view of pain points and what drives customer actions.
The Big Picture
One approach is to start with the big picture perspective to get an idea of the consumer’s journey as a whole, and only later focus on specific phases. This can create a useful starting point because it gives clues on what aspects of the experience require more focus later on. Metrics that effectively reflect the overall consumer experience are Customer Effort Score (CES), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).
A Net Promoter Score tracks how likely a customer is to recommend a product to someone else. It gives both the general view and breaks it down into specific points, such as price, customer service, retail experience, and brand. Those who recommend a product to others are happy with it and often share what aspects of the product or service provided the most satisfaction.
Customer Effort Score measures how much effort a customer had to expend to achieve something, such as buying a product, having a customer service query answered, or using the website. This metric relates to the notion that the more challenging someone has to work to buy a product or get a satisfying answer from customer service, the less favourably they will view the company.
According to Gartner, 94% of those surveyed said a low level of effort in CX was a significant factor in purchasing from the company again.
Customer Satisfaction can be measured by CSAT or a Customer Satisfaction Score, which can be given for the overall experience or specific phases. One example of CSAT is the pop-up surveys that appear after a purchase has been made or after a customer service chat.
The survey will ask participants to rate how satisfied they were with the service, and the quick surveys can include several questions about various aspects of the experience.
Track the Consumer Journey
There are ways to track specific points in the customer’s journey, from awareness of the brand to mulling over buying a product to recommend the product after purchase. There are different ways to measure this activity throughout the entire journey.
Share of Voice in the market or number of visits to a website indicates how aware consumers are of products. Organic website traffic shows that shoppers are considering buying certain products. Abandoned shopping cart rates reveal which visitors are not completing purchases. CLV or Customer Lifetime Value and customer service tickets indicate repeat customers. NPS and reviews reveal which customers are recommending brands to others.
Identify Touchpoints
Every company has touchpoints that may signal an upturn in buying or the opposite. There may also be certain factors that connote customer satisfaction. Locating those touchpoints by observing data is crucial to being able to predict what customers may do next.
A marketer might notice that basket size is inversely proportional to the likelihood a cart will be abandoned, or for some products, the two metrics could be proportional. Paying attention to drop-off points in customer service chats could also provide clues. Maybe the visitor feels like the pain point is too difficult to solve and gives up. Perhaps they end the customer service chat to go and buy the item. Each touchpoint tells its own story.
Listening to Data
Consumers are eager to talk about products and brands, and in addition to leaving user-generated content, they also provide a data trail that can be decoded to create a full view of CX. Measuring the number of referrals, customer satisfaction, and consumer behaviour provides a broad view of CX.
Looking at various phases of the customer journey and paying attention to touchpoints give direction to business strategy.
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