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When we co-hosted the New York Customer Experience Meetup, we had the great opportunity of meeting 40+ top CX professionals. We shared best practice case studies on Voice of Customer analytics and also hosted a fireside chat with Albert Hu, Senior Analytics Manager at Jet.com. Here are some key takeaways from the event:

1. Running a low effort Voice of Customer program

Reading through general market research or a Forrester & Gartner report won't help you understand your company's unique Voice of the Customer, so it is important to conduct your own analysis. The good news is you don’t need a big budget or a lot of time to get started with Voice of Customer research. Here are some quick actionable approaches you can try:

• Interview some of the agents about the common feedback and trends they are seeing from new customers and their interactions
• Read through your company's touchpoints throughout the customer journey (e.g. samples of email / chat transcripts, social media conversations, customer surveys and survey responses)
• Listen in on some customer calls from your customer support contact center to understand your customers' needs

You can do these activities on your own or invite other company stakeholders to join focus groups during a session. These approaches can yield quick customer insights but you also have to be careful to avoid using isolated anecdotes to drive major business investments. It’s best to confirm your initial findings through analyzing a larger sample of customers for thorough data collection.

2. Getting more support from across the organization

Many CX leaders have difficulty getting budget to invest in Voice of the Customer strategy. Another challenge is getting different stakeholders (e.g. Product, Operations, etc.) to understand the business value and implement the recommendations from a Voice of Customer strategy. Not every decision-maker understands the importance of customer-centric initiatives. Here are some techniques to overcome this:

• Partner with the CFO — The finance team is analytical and they’re typically looking for data to help guide decisions on where to invest. If you can tailor your VOC report to the interests of the finance team, they can use your work as input into resource allocation. Follow-up with them to show results of VOC initiatives. This will encourage the different teams pay more attention to VOC recommendations
• Put VOC metrics in the executive dashboard — Senior leadership periodically reviews core business metrics like revenue, customer growth, budget, etc. Many executives also look at Voice of Customer metrics like CSAT and Net Promoter Score (NPS). You can get more support for your program if additional CX metrics (customer retention, customer loyalty, etc.) are shown on the same screen / page as the core business metrics. For example, the change in the Contact Rate could be communicated after a new product launch.
• Tell a story — Combine your metrics with a compelling customer story or anecdote that demonstrates the impact of your VOC strategy on your customers and your newfound business success. Illustrate the impact of what can happen when a company prioritizes customer success and exceeds its customers' expectations.

3. The future of Voice of Customer analysis

Here are some trends that will impact the evolution and lifecycle of VOC analysis

• Increased focus on customer privacy — Recent scandals and VOC data breaches are leading to heightened awareness of the need to protect sensitive customer data. CX leaders need to ensure that their Voice of the Customer data and programs are secure and privacy safe, which are fundamental in all customer relationships.
• More skilled talent — Many new hires are coming into organizations with SQL skills. According to LinkedIn, Machine Learning Engineer and Data Scientist were at the frontline of emerging jobs in 2017. Some CX teams are capitalizing on the influx of talent by hiring an analyst role directly onto their teams.
• Easy and low cost tools — Software and Machine Learning is making it possible for CX leaders to get insights with little effort.

The bottom line is: companies are shifting increasing focus onto customer satisfaction, and using data to help build impactful Voice of the Customer programs. At Chatdesk, we recently launched a solution to make it easy to run a VOC program — Chatdesk Trends automatically tags customer feedback in real time across all channels (e.g. product feedback, sentiment). We’re working with companies in a variety of industries including clothing, beauty, bedding and more. Our customers are using their Trends dashboard to reduce churn, optimize product merchandising and increase self service.

What are your predictions for the future of Voice of Customer analysis? Let us know in the comments

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