Interactive Marketing & Understanding the Voice of Customer (VoC)

Last Updated: December 16, 2021

Customer listening isn’t a new concept, but as consumer expectations become increasingly demanding, understanding the true voice of the customer (VoC) is critical, writes Jeff Gallino, founder & CTO, CallMiner.

Customer listening isn’t a new concept, but as consumer expectations become increasingly demanding, understanding the true voice of the customer (VoC) is critical.

Customer listening isn’t a new concept — but as consumer demand for personalization reaches an all-time high in a world cluttered with vendor options, analyzing and tracking the true voice of the customer (VoC) to excel in customer experience (CX) has never been more critical.

In fact, CX is overtaking product as the No. 1 brand differentiatorOpens a new window – meaning that solely relying on legacy strategies and feedback methods to effectively target consumers and adjust strategies just isn’t going to cut it anymore.  Surveys, interviews, random call sampling and even net promoter scores (NPS) can only do so much when it comes to revealing true, complete VoC.

Benefits of AI-Enabled Speech Analytics

It’s time to really get to know your customers – and that starts with leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled speech analytics to unlock invaluable benefits in several important areas of business.

Learn More:  Ingredients for a Successful Customer Analytics ImplementationOpens a new window

1. Performance

Interaction analytics allows organizations to combine performance scores across all relevant channels to determine the root cause for any outcome, good or bad. While the most obvious benefit is its ability to then influence each CX initiative based on a holistic view of customer perception, it can also be used to make informed predictions based on knowledge gained from VoC. Through predicting NPS, customer satisfaction (C-SAT) and customer effort (CES) scoresOpens a new window , agents can then decide on an approach to best serve each individual customer in real time. AKA, it’s officially time to say goodbye to call scripts.

Another key factor in effective customer service is empathy, which also happens to be something many struggle with — despite its impact on the bottom line. In fact, Harvard Business Review reported the top-10 most empathetic companies are over two times more valuable than the bottom 10. Speech analytics can also analyze sentiment hidden in VoC, going beyond the words spoken to interpret language patterns and acoustics. Detecting agitation, rate of speech and context on both sides of the conversation then provides a more objective analysis of both VoC as well as the voice of the employee (VoE) — ultimately enabling employees to adapt their communications style when necessary.

2. Personalization

The top advice for brands when it comes to earning consumer loyalty is simply making them feel valued. However, many existing customers agree brands focus too much on gaining instead of retaining — which is why organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on their marketing teams to create an emotional connection with customers (and for good reason, as GallupOpens a new window indicated those that do outperform competitors by 85%).

What most fail to acknowledge, however, is the connection between campaigns and the contact center. If your agents fail to deliver a similar experience, all the hard work you’ve put into a marketing initiative goes out the window. Real-time speech analytics tracks VoE, identifying whether an agent’s actions are aligning with your brand values to ensure this doesn’t happen.

3. Peace-of-mind

Marketers are encouraged to think outside the box. But what happens when your campaign goes haywire? That’s when a company’s ability to detect hidden insights in VoC becomes critical. With the help of machine learning, speech analytics can immediately make assessments across multiple channels to determine how well a campaign is resonating its audience. If it does trigger a negative response, teams are then able to actionably respond to the situation. Or, when a topic experiences a significant volume increase, teams can investigate the ‘why’ behind it. In both cases, organizations can almost instantaneously react before any irreversible damage is done.

Learn More: Tech-Driven Marketing: Four Capabilities Marketers Need TodayOpens a new window

4. Profit

Companies are often left to connect the dots when it comes to their customer feedback. But with avoidable customer churn costing U.S. businesses a hefty $136 billion per year, there’s no room for mistakes. Speech analytics uncovers the root cause of dissatisfaction by identifying words or phrases in VoC that are commonly associated with churn and offers a mitigative course of action before it’s too late. In addition to avoiding revenue loss, this kind of structured data can identify trends to predict demand inflation and even pinpoint when customers are most willing to accept an upsell offer — generating more sales opportunities as they arise.

Just about any executive would agree data analytics greatly improves the ability to deliver a positive CX, but that data needs to be accurate. Chances are you’re already using call center recordings in combination with surveys and other solicited feedback methods to analyze VoC. These legacy strategies, however, only provide a look into anywhere 10 – 15% of your customer interactions — and that’s the best-case scenario. With over half of today’s marketers adapting their strategies and tactics according to customer interactions, capturing and turning that data into value-add insight is critical. Your customers aren’t settling for mediocre — why should you?

Jeff Gallino
Jeff Gallino

CTO and Founder, CallMiner

As Chief Technical Officer, Jeff Gallino oversees research, language development and future product direction. Gallino was President and CEO during CallMiner’s first five years. During that time, he led the company to become an internationally recognized and award-winning enterprise software company. Jeff has over 25 years of experience delivering complex software and hardware solutions to enterprise and government customers. Prior to CallMiner, Jeff worked at companies such as ThinkEngine Networks, Grant Thornton Consulting, as well as spent 11 years in the United States Air Force. He holds a BS degree in computer science from the United States Air Force Academy.
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