More than 45.6% of businesses say that customer experience will be their top priority for the next five years. And 86% of customers say they’re willing to pay more for a better customer experience. (Source: Superoffice)
This means “customer-centric” is no longer a buzzword that’s limited to only large eCommerce businesses. It’s the new competitive battlefield businesses are fighting in to retain customers and improve brand loyalty.
And if you want to emerge victorious, you should invest in a VoC program — even if you’re a small business.
1. VoC programs help you gather actionable feedback to innovate on your existing products.
“Feedback loops drive almost all innovation in tech. Getting a product out to customers and learning what the next adjacency or enhancement is drives all value creation.”
Aaron’s advice isn’t limited to tech and if you look at the most successful eCommerce companies like Amazon, you’ll see they’re thriving because they improve their platform based on customer feedback.
Keep in mind each channel can be skewed towards certain reviews (for example - lots of frustrated customers complaining and posting it on external review sites). That can be insightful, but take it with a grain of salt. You want to find a pattern across multiple channels because that better represents feedback from different audiences. Also prioritize channels that can offer you recent data - at least within the last 6 months.
Social has emerged as one of the best ways to collect customer feedback. If you have multiple social channels and know your customers are actively engaged with your account, start there.
Here’s an e-commerce brand that’s integrated their Facebook, Email, and Instagram channels. The data shows they’re getting the most negative reviews related to delivery and order errors.
By clicking on delivery/order errors, you can get more granular and see the subcategories driving negative sentiment. When you click on ‘Damaged Delivery’, you get the second screen below and see the specific comments.
To get these insights for your brand, sign up for a 2-week free trial and then schedule a demo with us so we can help you get the most out of our tool.
2. They also help you drive more customer loyalty and sales.
“American consumers are willing to spend more with companies that provide outstanding service, and they will also tell, on average, twice as many people about bad service than they are about good service. Ultimately, great service can drive sales and customer loyalty.”
Jim Bush, Executive Vice President, World Service.
Most customers make a purchase decision based on a brand’s reputation, quality, and goodwill. They look up online reviews, visit their social media pages and check out the website to form an impression of the brand before buying from them. That’s why it’s important to maintain a positive brand image - especially online.
Most e-commerce businesses don’t have the budget to invest in marketing copy and in many cases, you may not even need to. If you can see how customers are describing your product or service, you can translate that into your marketing messaging.
For instance, take a look at BlendJet's reviews and marketing messages. The reviews state that the blender is portable and easy to carry while the website and ads carry the same message.
ChatDesk consolidates conversations across email, social media, and other customer support channels and then uses automatic industry tagging to give you a summary of customer feedback. This can save you 1000+ hours of manual labor. Adding custom tags to your dashboard is also possible.
For instance, the pet brand Fable boosted its customer satisfaction score to 100 after using ChatDesk to tag their queries and identify customer sentiments.
If you want to see the difference for yourself and transform customers into loyal fans, sign up for a free account and get started.
