The Power of Modern Voice of the Customer Analytics

In the past 10 years marketing has evolved a lot. Data-driven performance marketing is now the standard conducted by savvy companies and it’s the natural application of big data. While most of this data is behavioral and automatically collected, it’s easy to forget that there is always hidden information behind the numbers. To fully understand your customers you should keep on collecting qualitative voice of the customer (VOC) data. It’s often the only way to answer the question WHY and understand the purchase motivations and feelings of your customers.

Has anything changed in the way how you listen to your customers?

The old way:

• Once a year a massive customer survey
• Difficult to correlate results with behavioral data
• Slow to implement
• Responsibility of marketing and research departments
• Low response rates
• Results not actionable

The modern way:

• Continuous surveys with limited length
• Collecting trends instead of snapshots
• Multiple simultaneous surveys for different target groups
• Fast to implement
• Shared responsibility of many departments
• Integrated to web analytics
• Integrated to conversion optimization
• Including social aspects through social media analysis

Nowadays it’s ever more important to hear the voice of your customers. While many products and services are technically almost the same it can be the feelings of consumers that really matter. This can even shake traditional industries. For instance, a new direct bank Simple was launched in 2012 by people who were frustrated by the way financial institutions treated customers and wanted to put emotion into customer experience.

Brand image has proven to have a significant influence on purchase decisions. For example, 2015 Accenture Digital Consumer Survey indicates that a positive feeling about a company’s brand is a key selection criterion when consumers purchase new smart phones. However, these days brand image is more difficult to build and control by the marketer because it’s greatly affected by social sharing. Several studies support this conclusion. In a survey conducted by Dimensional Research 88% of customers say their buying decisions are influenced by online customer service reviews. Consumer omnibus survey results from May 2015 by Goodsnitch found out that 89% of Americans believe companies should proactively leverage both negative and positive customer feedback to optimize their products and services. This can positively impact brand image, customer satisfaction and employee morale.

New VOC techniques and tools

The good news is that voice of the customer data is now easier and faster to collect than before. Website exit surveys, Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score, cart abandonment surveys and usability feedback are common types of intercept surveys that are shown to online visitors to collect VOC data. These surveys can be highly targeted for different customer segments, product categories, services, traffic sources, etc. The fast speed of implementation and ease of modifications make these types of surveys ideal for fast-paced online businesses, such as ecommerce sites.

VOC data tends to be more accurate and valid than before and it can also be integrated with other data sources with less trouble. For example, many survey tools like Qualaroo automatically integrate with Google Analytics, which gives you an easy way to correlate VOC data with web analytics data in order to do better segmentation. Recently, I conducted a survey for a food manufacturer which identified 8 consumer segments (e.g. health-conscious, gourmet lovers, price-oriented). Corresponding segments were then created in Google Analytics and used for more personalized advertising and tailored recipes to facilitate sales and enhance brand loyalty.

The same way you can integrate VOC into conversion optimization process for example with Opimizely. The important question that needs to be answered is “Why aren’t visitors converting?”  You must understand different visitor types and intentions, visitors’ most common objections and identify user experience problems. Gathering this information leads to better formulation of hypothesis and more valid A/B test plans.

Social VOC tracking includes buzz volume, sentiment, key topics, influencers, top mentions and so on. Social media should be treated as an important source of VOC insight. There are many service providers who offer social media analytics. There are still challenges though. While the accuracy of automated sentiment analysis has improved in recent years, the various software packages still don’t match the precision of a human reviewer, typical out-of-the box accuracy being 30-70%.

Conclusion

If you don’t have a budget to invest in a large VOC program using sophisticated customer insight and action platforms you can still utilize cost efficient tools to hear the voice of your customers. There is no excuse not to make VOC data collection and analysis an integral part of your website development, marketing, ecommerce optimization and CRM processes.