If you’re planning to listen to the Voice of the Customer, you’ll need some technology for collecting customer input, analyzing it, and putting it to use in line with your defined strategy. The most prevalent means of obtaining customer feedback are:
IVR – A great tool for short surveys immediately following the phone interaction. It enables a direct connection between the feedback and a specific contact and agent.- eMail or Web – Gathers more detailed information while still linking the input to a specific contact and agent.
- Outbound calls – Easy to outsource to a third party but must consider the difficulty in reaching the right person.
- Mailings – Lower usage due to the cost, low response rates, lack of immediacy, and difficulty in connecting the response with the specific interaction and agent. However, direct mail is easy to outsource and can be a first step in gathering customer feedback.
The appropriate technology choice for your Voice of the Customer program should be informed by the following considerations:
- Contact Media: The survey media you choose to offer will exert the biggest influence on your technology needs, including sourcing strategy.
- Current Technology: If your existing vendors have a VoC component, you may be able to get into the VoC business quickly. Your IVR, performance tool (QM/WFM), and CRM vendors are good places to start.
- Integration: The survey application might need to integrate with your IVR, email routing, or your website. Moreover, best practice suggests consolidating VoC input with internal metrics comparisons and balanced scorecards, which could also trigger other technology integration needs. Make sure your solution providers become acquainted with your internal systems and practices.
- Immediacy: Your surveys will be more valuable when you deliver them to your customer as soon as possible after their interactions. Your ability to react appropriately to the feedback is also dependent upon timely feedback.
- Neutrality: Avoid programs where the agent “offers” the survey or where customers can opt in or out based on their frustration level during the interaction. These circumstances can strongly impact your technology approach.
- Flexibility: Different technologies vary in their ability to alter the questions and/or customize response formats. While consistent questions and response formats enable trending over time, flexibility allows for quick reactions to find out what your customers think about recent changes to your service approach.
Whatever means you choose to secure customer feedback, you’ll maximize the value of that data by using the appropriate tools to analyze the input and identify actionable outcomes. Load your VoC data into a datamart to identify trends and anomalies, relate outcomes to other events within the contact center or company, and track through balanced scorecards.
What to learn more? Download Make the Right Technology Choices to Hear the Voice of Your Customers.