5 Steps to Integrate the Voice of the Customer (VoC) in Your Messaging

Voice of the Customer converts raw feedback and opinions into action points for your marketing strategy. This could play a significant role in enhancing the impact of your campaigns and products. In this article, we share five steps to make Voice of the Customer part of your messaging approach.

There’s no denying the importance of customer feedback in today’s competitive marketing environment. No matter the industry in which you operate, the chances are that you face stiff competition from new entrants and need to refine your brand’s messaging for greater impact constantly.

Last year, Forrester released its cloud-based platform for real-time feedback collection across digital and physical channels, called FeedBackNow 2.0. Such moves underscore the need to accurately analyze feedback and obtain actionable insights.

The Voice of the Customer encapsulates feedback and customer sentiment from various channels into a single, comprehensive picture. A robust Voice of the Customer program can be extremely beneficial in fine-tuning product strategies and marketing campaigns so that you stay in-sync with customer expectations.

So, how can you leverage the Voice of the Customer for more effective marketing communication in 2020? Let’s delve deeper.

Learn More: Interactive Marketing & Understanding the Voice of Customer (VoC)Opens a new window

5 Steps for a Successful Voice of the Customer Program in 2020

A Voice of the Customer program lets brands collect, consolidate, and act on customer feedback in a meaningful way. Beyond obtaining metrics on your branding campaigns, it offers useful suggestions on the way forward. For example, a Voice of the Customer survey can reveal the exact reasons for which most customers buy your product.

These reasons can be incorporated into your web copy to drive conversions. Here are five steps you can follow to maximize this tactic in 2020.

1. Acknowledge that Voice of the Customer has a broad definition
 

The first step is to ask what exactly is Voice of the Customer? The answer isn’t one-dimensional. On the surface, it may look like another approach to garnering feedback – but once you start exploring what Voice of the Customer is, several other benefits and impact areas emerge.

Why do customers use your product? Have they switched from a competitor? Are customers using other products alongside your offering? All of this falls under the definition of Voice of the Customer.

There are also several Voice of the Customer methodologies to consider, including 1-on-1 interviews, chatbots on your website, social media, website browsing patterns, and so on. Acknowledging these nuances can help to strengthen your Voice of the Customer program.

2. Select the right Voice of the Customer tool for you
 

This step is critical to the success of your Voice of the Customer program, as it will define your reach and actionables.

For instance, you could use a tool such as CrazyEggOpens a new window that analyzes website behavior. It generates a heat map that indicates places where the messaging should be altered, UI elements that need changing, and the pages that have the highest traction.

You could also adopt 360-degree Voice of the Customer tools such as ClarabridgeOpens a new window . And if a highly customized Voice of the Customer surveyOpens a new window is what you’re looking for, consider tools such as SurveyMonkeyOpens a new window or and Google Surveys 360Opens a new window . These offer highly detailed research on customer sentiment that can be converted into actionables via advanced feedback.

For example, Lenovo used Google Surveys 360Opens a new window to embed the Voice of the Customer in key developmental processes.

3. Don’t limit yourself to only Voice of the Customer surveys
 

Remember the first step – Voice of the Customer has a broad definition. Marketers can go far beyond traditional feedback surveys and collect customer sentiment data from a variety of sources.

One element that should be a staple in every marketer’s toolkit is the Net Promoter ScoreOpens a new window (NPS). This uses a few key questions to rank every customer as a promoter, passive, or detractor of your brand. While NPS offers a bird’s eye view of the Voice of the Customer, methodologies like focus group analysis and contact center data give you more granular insights.

We would recommend a judicious mix of all of these techniques. Start with a focus group if you’re trying out a new product or messaging approach, and validate the findings with data from other sources.

4. Identify opportunities for making the Voice of the Customer part of messaging
 

Making feedback actionable is probably the top priority for any Voice of the Customer program. First, identify opportunities for messaging and marketing copy improvement. For example, do your email campaigns have a great open rate, but poor click-through? This suggests that while email subject lines are spot on, there is a dissonance in the main body copy and design.

Formulate Voice of the Customer questions that directly address the opportunity you have identified. Your Voice of the Customer questions could be “What made you buy our product for the first time?”  or “Which features did you find the easiest to understand?” And realign the body copy according to the answers for a more effective email marketing campaignOpens a new window .

Apart from email, opportunities for Voice of the Customer integration include web copy on a product’s landing page, article topics for your content strategy, social media posts, offline campaign taglines, etc.

“If Adobe didn’t have a CSAT mechanism through Gainsight, we’d never know if we were giving our customers the type of content that was actionable for them,” said Domenico Batteate, Program Manager, New Customer Experience at Adobe, while commenting on Opens a new window how it used Gainsight to understand the Voice of the Customer.

5. Conduct A/B tests to assess the impact of your Voice of the Customer methodology
 

Finally, it is important to test the performance of your Voice of the Customer program. This can be done via an A/B testing Opens a new window strategy, where you assess customer sentiment/satisfaction both before and after you refine your brand’s messaging.

For example, let’s say that customers buy room freshener to invoke a sense of wellness and calm. Accordingly, the marketer changes the landing page copy from “make your bedroom smell fresh” to “experience a sense of calm and tranquility in the comfort of your bedroom.”

It is advisable to test website behavior and engagement before and after the messaging alteration to assess the impact of the Voice of the Customer methodology.

Learn More: Could a Voice of Customer Program be the Ultimate CRO Hack?Opens a new window

The Bottomline? You Can’t Afford to Ignore the Voice of the Customer in 2020

In a 2018 study, Forrester found that companies who are “experts” in customer engagement are more likely to collect feedback than those who are “experimenters.”

Only 16% of experts faced difficulty in collecting feedback across channels, while over twice as many experimenters found this to be a hurdle. This suggests that there is a direct correlation between a company’s feedback gathering and actioning capabilities, and its business success.

 A good example of a Voice of the Customer program in action is AdobeOpens a new window – its strategy has three components: listen, act, and analyze. Using feedback, it was able to improve its CSAT score for customer onboarding from 8.25 to 9.15.

As companies aim to deliver differentiated experiences and game-changing products, a clear grasp of the Voice of the Customer is critical. It offers valuable metrics and insights into customer perception, expectation, and motivation, allowing you to tweak your messaging for the desired impact.

Are you ready to launch a Voice of the Customer program in 2020?  Tell us on LinkedInOpens a new window , FacebookOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window . We are waiting to learn about your strategy!