Voice of Customer: Methods, Benefits & Examples

What is the Voice of Customer?

Die Voice of Customer (German “voice of the customer”) consists of collected customer feedback. It shows which Expectations Customers had a product or service, and which Experience They actually did with it. The Voice of Customer (also short VoC) gives companies comprehensive insights into the needs, wishes and preferences of customers. With the help of this collected feedback, companies can their Customer Experience And also improve their product or service.

In order to obtain a meaningful voice of customer, data and feedback from various sources are compiled.

Where is Voice of Customer used?

You might think that only product development is listening to the “customer voice.” But many different departments benefit from this insight into the thinking world of customers. This is because the feedback can relate to the products as well as to processes and procedures, marketing, service quality, packaging and more.

That is why it makes sense for the following areas of the company, for example, to use Voice of Customer for themselves:

• customer service — for information about how helpful their service is considered and what they can improve.
• Produktentwicklung — for feedback on whether products should be adapted or developed again or what needs to be considered when it comes to new products.
• Sales — for insights into why customers are leaving or what motivates them to complete a purchase.
• marketing — for insights into how advertising campaigns are received by target groups and which aspects of a product or service are particularly well received and should be emphasized even more in the next campaign.

Voice of Customer has these advantages

Better no feedback than bad!? Companies cannot afford such an attitude in times of fierce competition for customers. Collecting and evaluating customer feedback is worthwhile because it provides companies with valuable insights about customers and their own company. And that has many advantages:

1. By using Voice of Customer for themselves, companies can look at what they can optimize for every phase of the customer journey. Where does customer experience fall short of their expectations and how can this be changed? This improves the entire Customer Experience.
2. By using Voice of Customer to better understand their customers and improve customer experiences, companies have the opportunity to customer loyalty to increase. Because anyone who has good experiences with a brand is more likely to buy there again.
3. Through In-Depth Customer Feedback, Companies Have the Opportunity to Improve Their Processes, Products and Services Develop furtherSo that they meet the needs and wishes of customers.
4. Satisfied customers tell others about their positive experiences. This Advocate Help companies to convince new customers of themselves.
5. By closely monitoring the Voice of Customer, companies can recognize early on whether, for example, a Brand crisis Due to poor feedback, there is a threat and take timely action.
6. Even with New Concepts, Ideas and Solutions Voice of Customer is helpful — based on the data, the relevant teams can evaluate whether they are promising.
7. With Voice of Customer, Companies Can data-based and customer-focused decisions Meet.

Data collection methods

In order to determine the voice of customer, you analyze both indirect input — i.e. data that reflects customer behavior — as well as direct input — i.e. data that reflects customer statements (for example from service discussions).

→ For indirect input It includes carefully examining customer data that is already available from customers and also collecting new data as part of web analyses or market research.

→ The direct input Includes monitoring social media for brand or product mentions, collecting negative and positive feedback from customers, and conducting customer surveys.

You can collect this input in many different ways. Here is an overview of the most common methods:

• Net promoter score: With the Net Promoter Score, you can rate the loyalty of your customers. To do this, take part in a survey to find out to what extent customers would recommend your company to friends. This is how you can find out how satisfied they are.
• Interrogation: This is probably the most common way to collect customer feedback. Whether by email, in person, or over the phone, surveys help you find out what consumers think of various features of your product or service. Depending on the design of the questionnaire, surveys can provide detailed insights about your customers. There are now many different free tools for online surveys that you can use for your customer survey.
• Site behavior: The company website can also provide useful information about customers. For example, Heat Maps show what customers are looking for on the website, what they are particularly interested in and where they jump off.
• Chat: Nowadays, customers ideally want immediate feedback on their concerns. And the best way to do that is via chat. A chatbot Answers customers immediately and can solve many concerns themselves and pass on more complex issues to customer support. These interactions can also be analyzed for Voice of Customer: What concerns do customers report particularly frequently? Where does your company seem to need to improve? Chat therefore offers two advantages: On the one hand, you can immediately clarify customer problems and on the other hand analyze data or then automatically ask customers to rate their experience during the chat.
• Focus group: Focus groups are often used in product development to personally discuss planned products with a small group of customers. In this format, customers express their opinions, expectations and perceptions about a brand or a product, which is then used directly for further development. You can incorporate this information into the Voice of Customer and thus better understand your customers' needs and priorities.
• Social media: On Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Co., customers are only too happy to share their positive or negative experiences with companies and brands. Why not use and analyze this feedback? Social listening tools record all brand and company names on social networks and classify them according to so-called sentiment — i.e. according to whether the mention was positive, neutral or negative.

Companies can therefore collect their customer feedback collectively via these channels. Ideally, various methods are combined to get the most comprehensive picture possible. Special analysis tools now help with evaluation.

Conclusion — Why VoC is important

The Voice of Customer Plays an Important Role for a Wide Variety of Companies. With their help, brands can be more attentive to their customers and offer a seamless, compelling customer experience. By looking closely at customer feedback, companies can understand what influences their customers' buying decisions. They then have clarity about what their customers need and expect from them — so they can better meet their needs.

When companies have an understanding of what their customers expect, they know exactly which product or service they need to offer. Voice of Customer gives them the opportunity to improve their products and offer customers exactly what they want.

Listening to the customer's voice isn't always going to be comfortable for companies. Because not all feedback is positive. But this is exactly where the potential of VoC lies! Even more than positive feedback, constructive criticism reveals the weak points of a product or service. And only when companies identify problems can they solve them. So listening is worth it!

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