How Voice of the Customer Experience Improves Brand Reputation

0
47

Share on LinkedIn

Customers today don’t just want more from their products and service providers, expectations really are higher than they’ve ever been.

In a recent report by McKinsey, researchers pointed out that nearly 70% of the overall customer experience from a purchase is based on how customers feel they’re treated throughout the purchase process.

Integrating effective customer experiences and ensuring that customer needs and expectations are being met is crucial for organization looking to truly take advantage of service as a strategy.

Word of mouth as a customer driving channel is still a valid opportunity. Taking advantage brand ambassadors is a unique opportunity for those organization that have earned the respect and adoration of their customers. Personal referrals and brand interaction stories play an important part in the future decision of new potential customers.

Be Ready to Act on Voice of the Customer Insight

Often times organizations get hung up on the acquisition of data from Voice of the Customer programs or customer service surveys. However, raw data, without being translated into actionable results that positively affect the customer experience are as useful as no data at all.

In fact, I’d venture to say that once organizations begin the process collecting VoC data or doing any type of surveys, the clock is running on translating customer feedback into service actions.

Once customers begin to hand over their valuable time and feedback, they expect to see results. Customer participator isn’t a typical staff position. Customers give of their time, energy, insight, and feedback in order to invest into the possible outcome of their service experience. If you aren’t ready to act, don’t ask for customers to invest.

Real-time VoC Actions

The proliferation customer contact channels means that the potential for communication with customers is ever present and there’s tremendous opportunity to quickly reach customers and integrate customer feedback into the service process across various contact channels.

VoC data can be quickly put into action across various channels bringing results closer in time with the customer feedback given.

The real question then is, are front-line agents being trained in a way to quickly receive new customer data and act on it? Are service teams training agents to simply read scripts or user data and customer insight as resources in solving customer cases?

When customers in significant numbers provide feedback on products or services like “I feel cheated that…” or “you did this that I didn’t like…” or “I thought this was supposed to…” and “the salesperson said that…” all of these are opportunities for get ahead of a service disconnect. A thousand sorries won’t resolve the underlying issue that is frustrating to customers. Eventually they’ll simply give up and turn into brand detractors.

There’s a critical need for organizations to decouple the rigid process structure that call centers have come to espouse and integrate more fluid approaches to service in order to preserve the customer experience.

With IQPC’s research indicating the majority of companies rely on telephone as a primary communications channel, it becomes critical to manage and improve the quality of service provided by live agents. The reason is simple: Customer service quality has a direct impact on the customer experience, which translates into the way your customers view your company (and, in turn, how others may view your company as well).

From Voice of the Customer to Strategic Advantage

In today’s customer-centric landscape, the power to influence a company’s brand and reputation often lies within the hands of the customer. Your organization can take back control while realizing key benefits such as VoC insights, faster speed to intelligence, and improved customer service performance.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Flavio Martins
Flavio Martins is the VP of Operations and Customer Support at DigiCert, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise authentication services and high-assurance SSL certificates trusted by thousands of government, education, and Fortune 500 organizations. Flavio is an award-winning customer service blogger, customer service fanatic, and on a mission to show that organizations can use customer experience as a competitive advantage win customer loyalty. Blog: Win the Customer!

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here