4 Steps to Find (and Use) the Voice of the Customer

Tapping in to the collective genius of your customers is a fast-track to massive performance growth for any business. Revealing the hidden thoughts, feelings, and experiences of your customers is the key to creating products and services they'll love, fostering brand loyalty, and driving growth.

While using direct communication with your customer through interviews and focus groups brings a wealth of knowledge, such an investment of time is not available to all companies, nor is it necessarily the most efficient or effective. These 10 tips will help you reveal and use the “voice of the customer” (the VoC) - and fast- without a major investment of time and money.

#1: Know What You’re Looking For (But Don’t Project)

Beware of spinning your wheels, stuck with a mountain of data that isn’t actionable for you. Worthwhile data will help you answer such as, customer needs, pain points, motivations, goals, attitudes, perceptions, behaviors, and usage patterns. Unfortunately, data can easily be skewed by the lens of view, so while you shouldn’t launch a VoC hunt without a goal in mind - leave your questions open ended to protect yourself from inadvertently skewing the data. 

#2: Know Where to Look

You may not need to run a special program or survey to find the VoC. Consider low-hanging fruit like transcripts from live chat sessions, customer support emails, and phone calls to identify recurring themes and areas for improvement. You can also use social listening tools to track brand mentions across social media platforms or online reviews sites. This allows you to see what customers are saying about your brand organically. #3: Know How to Analyze It You asked the questions. But if you think the insights will come easy, be sure to curb your enthusiasm. There are many ways to analyze data, but some of great ideas are to: 

• Identify Themes and Trends with topic modeling, keyword extraction, and sentiment (you can even code chats and recordings based on whether someone has used a voice of frustration!)

• Analyze Customer Behavior using journey mapping, abandonment rates, resolution time from your CRM or website

Pay close attention to what customers are saying, both explicitly and implicitly, in the data you gather. Remember to communicate transparently sharing with your customer how their feedback is being used to improve your offerings. They just might be more forthcoming.

#4 Know How to Use It

We love applying the voice of the customer in marketing. Beyond taking action on your insights by improving your product, service, or customer experience, you can attract leads like a magnet and convert at scale with messages that resonate - using what? The Voice of the Customer. Begin today by adjusting content to include emotion, customer reviews and quotes to showcase success stories of how your product or service has solved specific problems.  Use language that reflects their frustrations, excitement, or sense of accomplishment.

Highlight the "why" behind their purchase decisions. What motivates them and what results do they expect? Replace jargon and buzzwords with clear and concise messaging that is accessible to all. 

It is possible to use your customer’s language while maintaining a strong brand identity. It may take trial and error, but it will be well worth the perfectly tailored outcome. With ad dollars behind you, it’s not hard to become known in a niche. Speaking in the voice of the customer will help them move from knowing into liking you. Remaining consistent will help them to trust you. And you know what comes next… the buy.

By implementing these strategies, the data-driven decisions that improve customer satisfaction and loyalty are just around the corner. Enough reading - go do! We can’t wait to watch your next play as you acquire new customers like lightning.