Best Practices for ‘Voice of the Customer’ Success

Voice of the Customer (VOC) programs and activities are making a resurgence as 86% of executives view customer experience to be a top strategic priority for 2012.

So how do you position your company to make the most of your VOC program?

Following are the 5 Common VOC Best Practices of Market Leading Companies compiled from analysis of 50 VOC programs that have generated over $380 million in bottom line benefit:

1. Data Cleansing & Management – You would be surprised by how many customer lists are out of date, inaccurate or incomplete. This part of the process is essential and requires ongoing management.

2. Respondent-friendly Methodologies – Understand how your customers prefer to interact with you and make it easy and convenient for them to engage.

3. Multi-Dimensional Diagnostics – If you want your VOC to be actionable, you need to move past simple score calculations to identifying the specific drivers of the customer relationship across all touch points and customer segments.

4. Ongoing Measurement – VOC is a process and therefore must be committed to and tracked over time. Taking a one-time pulse is useless.

5. Company-wide Commitment & Visibility – VOC takes a village. All organizations must be part of the process and focused around a common roadmap for improvement.

Now's the time to evaluate your VOC program and make the enhancements necessary to reap the rewards in 2012. See how many of the 5 Best Practices your VOC program incorporates and where you can position for improvement.

 -Read Ziegler (Vantedge - Managing Partner)