Big Gains by Presenting Voice of Customer to All Employees

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Present voice of the customer to all employees, and you will be more likely to reap financial benefits and manage customer experience holistically, according to the 2011 Business-to-Business Customer Experience Management Benchmarking Study.

Voice of Customer

Although only a third of companies are presenting customer feedback to all employees, those who do reported at least 20 percentage points advantage in the performance of holistic customer experience management, as shown by the gaps in blue and red bar graphs below. Examples of business results attributed to customer experience management efforts include:

  • 200% growth in profit over the past 4 years. (Chemicals)
  • 200% increase in market share over the past 4 years. (Semiconductors)
  • 20% improvement in revenue over the past year. (Telecommunications)
  • Over $100M in new and existing opportunities influenced in 2011. (Software)
  • New sales year over near have nearly tripled over the past 2 years. (Software)
  • Increase in revenue 10% year over year. (Medical Devices/Pharmaceuticals)
  • Double digit growth over the past 4 years. (Machinery)
  • 15% reduction in churn over the past year. (Transportation/Logistics)

Presenting voice of customer to all employees was identified as one of six key success factors for world-class performance in customer experience management. The other five success factors are:

  • Coordination among managers of CEM methods.
  • CEM as a determinant of corporate strategy.
  • Calculation of customer lifetime value (CLV).
  • Action on survey results by owners of customer experience key drivers.
  • Funding of cross-organizational collaboration.

Comprehensive management of customer experience is prevalent among companies that present voice of the customer to all employees, as shown below:

  • How We Listen to Customers: Identify and collect voice of the customer from all  the influencers on the buying decision (i.e. initiators, approvers, users, buyers, influencers, gatekeepers, decision-makers). And capture front-line employees’ observations of customer sentiment, and capture customer complaints anytime anywhere.
  • Customer Feedback

  • Customer Engagement: Engage customers in providing feedback through customer references, user groups and advisory boards, and customer communities and forums. And to analyze customer data and use customer relationship management (CRM).
  • Customer Engagement

  • How We View Customers: Include customer metrics in balanced scorecards, integrate customer feedback sources, analyze integrated customer data, use customer metrics to evaluate organizational performance, and stream relevant feedback to all departments.
  • Customer Data

  • How we Focus Employees on Customers: Reward customer experience improvement by teams, align incentive pay to customer experience metrics, create department-level action plans to improve customer experience, use customer metrics in performance reviews, and onboard all employees regarding customer experience programs.
  • Employee Engagement

  • How we Focus our Business on Customers: Listen to customers prior to product development efforts and inform front-line employees' decision-making.
  • Customer Focus

  • Funding of Employee Engagement in Customer Experience Management: Incentive pay, recognition and rewards, customer journey maps and touch-points and customer life cycle, cross-organizational collaboration, internal satisfaction, change management and stakeholder management, internal communications, and internal staffing.
  • Employee Engagement

Recommendations: Expand your VoC audience by streaming relevant customer feedback to all employees company-wide. Scrutinize your voice of customer data collection to ensure you are capturing relevant feedback to guide the day-to-day work of all employees. Recommendations for stronger customer experience strategy, cross-organizational cooperation, and business results are provided in the study, which can be accessed at www.ClearAction.biz/benchmarking.

Lynn Hunsaker

Lynn Hunsaker is 1 of 5 CustomerThink Hall of Fame authors. She built CX maturity via customer experience, strategic planning, quality, and marketing roles at Applied Materials and Sonoco. She was a CXPA board member and SVAMA president, taught 24 college courses, and authored 6 CXM studies and many CXM handbooks and courses. Her specialties are B2B, silos, leading indicators, maturity, customer-centric business and marketing, engaging C-Suite and non-customer-facing groups in CX. CX leaders in 50+ countries benefit from her e-consulting: Masterminds, ROI Dashboards, C-Suite Guide to CX=EX=$.

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