Unveiling the Power of Customer Voices: Best Practices for Listening and Responding to the Voice of Your Customers

In today’s VUCA environment, understanding the Voice of the Customer (VoC) has become paramount for success. Organizations that actively engage with and respond to their customers’ feedback are better positioned to thrive. In my book Driving Explosive Growth, I shared many examples of how companies I served leveraged the voices of their customers to realize explosive sales growth.

Here are some best practices to harness the invaluable insights embedded in the voice of your customers.

Create a Seamless Feedback Loop
You can set up a structured feedback loop encouraging customers to share their experiences effortlessly. To capture diverse perspectives, utilize various channels such as quarterly VOC interviews, Win/Loss interviews, surveys, social media, and customer support interactions.

Listen Actively Across Channels
Monitor and analyze customer feedback from multiple touchpoints. Create a Google Alert to notify you if someone discusses your company online. Comprehensive listening ensures a holistic understanding of customer sentiments, whether it’s social media, online reviews, one-on-one interviews, or direct surveys. We encourage our associates to listen to learn rather than reply. The power of discussions versus other methods is gaining a deeper understanding. When we uncover a customer challenge, we ask open-ended questions to gain a better understanding, like…

Could you tell me what caused that to happen?

What is the impact of that?

What is the cost of not resolving that issue?

How long has that been an issue?

What have you tried to solve this issue?

Implement Real-Time Feedback Mechanisms
Embrace technology to gather real-time feedback. Implementing tools that instantly capture and analyze customer sentiments allows for timely responses and demonstrates a commitment to promptly addressing concerns. Some clients add feedback links to their invoices or offer a 1-800 phone number to make real-time comments on the overall buying and service experience.

Several of our clients are manufacturers of large machines that range in price from $500,000 to over $2 million per machine. Here, we implement automatic loss mitigation interviews each month when our clients win orders and when they lose orders.

We aim to find actionable insights to help our clients improve their close rates.

We often discover deals sales have determined lost and have yet to purchase. These become opportunities to nurture red and profitable sales in the future.

Segment and Prioritize Feedback
Categorize customer feedback into segments based on customer size, markets served, customer ranking in terms of an A, B, or C account, themes, or issues. Prioritize addressing critical concerns to showcase your commitment to customer satisfaction and to focus on improvements that matter most to your clientele.

When we engage with clients, we often ask for contact data like the following.

List of A, B, and C Accounts and Revenue
List of Inactive customers, customers who have not purchased in 6 months
List of prospects quoted but did not close
List of prospects who inquired but were not quoted
List of all prospects quoted and determined lost

The above contact lists have helped us deliver actionable insights to help our client scale revenue profits, grow their current, and reengage with inactive accounts.

Empower Frontline Teams
Equip customer-facing teams with the tools and autonomy to address customer concerns immediately. Frontline employees are often the first point of contact and can significantly impact customer experience when empowered to take swift and practical actions.

Do you know if your frontline associates have been trained to handle customer concerns and complaints professionally?

These moments of customer concern can become relational building blocks if handled appropriately.

They can also create brand damage and future lost revenue.

We must train and empower our frontline teams to deliver strong customer experiences.

Utilize Customer Journey Mapping
Gain deeper insights by mapping the customer journey. Understanding the various touchpoints and emotions at each stage helps identify pain points and areas for enhancement, contributing to a more refined customer experience.

Could you compare and contrast previous customer journey maps, identify how your customers have changed, and strategically adapt?

Implement Closed-Loop Feedback
Could you close the feedback loop by communicating with customers about the actions taken based on their feedback? This fosters transparency and reinforces the notion that their voices are heard and valued.

Several of our clients create content they share with the customers we interviewed. This content demonstrates the company appreciates their customer’s participation and how they plan to act on the insights the customers shared. When your team produces a customer-facing document, it will significantly improve the participation in future voice of customer research.

Invest in Customer Analytics
As we often share with our clients…there are dollars in your data if you know where to look. Leverage advanced analytics tools to derive meaningful insights from the amassed customer data. Analyzing patterns and trends helps make informed business decisions and tailor strategies to align with customer expectations.

Several clients engage with us to increase sales and gross profit margins. A powerful analysis is Net Profit by Customer Analysis. Here, we review sales revenue and factor in the cost of sales. Our objective is not to identify each cost of sale but to focus on the leading 12 sales costs.

Typically, when we produce a whale curve for a client, we find 20% of their customers represent 3005 of profits, 60% are break even, and 20% of their customers are profit leakers. Profit-leaking customers drain the profits you won from your most profitable customers. When we identify and train sales teams on the top five ways to improve profit-leaking customers, our clients typically realize a 2% to 4% profit lift in 90 to 120 days.

We also leverage large key account data by industry to develop key account growth strategies and plans.

We seek data to drive business discussions and deliver insights to our clients.

What items have grown with other accounts like your customer, but your customer experienced a different growth? Why?

What do other large accounts like your customer purchase, and what items are this customer not buying? Why? What’s our plan to win that business?

What products are trending down? Why?

What are the sales of new products introduced in the last 12 months?

Does this customer buy a few products, or do they buy many products?

Other clients who buy____also purchase ____, ____, and ____ to give their customers the best overall experience.

We also are often engaged to perform a sales pipeline audit

Here, the objective is to audit the current sales pipeline and determine the accuracy and level of confidence in future revenue projections. Often, salespeople need more realistic optimism when it comes to sales pipeline projections. They believe because they quoted an opportunity, it will close

We review the CRM data to ensure the opportunities are properly qualified. If we find opportunities lacking one of the four critical elements of a qualified prospect, we often interview the client and fill in the needed information.

It is expected to find sales pipelines overinflated by 30% to 40%.

Encourage Customer Advocacy
Identify and nurture brand advocates. Satisfied customers can become powerful allies in promoting your brand. Please encourage them to share positive experiences and testimonials, amplifying the positive impact of the Voice of the Customer.

We highly encourage and often facilitate customer advisory boards. We have quarterly meetings we facilitate for our clients to talk about industry issues and challenges and address any recent concerns your customers have had.

Again, we must actively listen. We must create an environment for customers to share success stories and concerns without judgment. As we often share, your customer’s perceptions are their current truths. Our job is not to argue or sell our clients but to actively listen, learn, and develop strategies to provide a better buying experience.

Iterate and Improve Continuously
Customer preferences and expectations evolve, and so should your strategies. Please regularly revisit and refine your VoC initiatives to stay tuned to changing customer needs and market dynamics.

For example, one of our clients experienced a significant decline in sales post-pandemic. We interviewed customers across A, B, and C customers. We interviewed recent wins and recent losses as well as inactive customers. We found across the board that our client needed to offer less than truckload quantiles per order. Many of their customers had moved to a just-in-time inventory management focused on improving cash flow. Once our client adjusted their minimum orders, sales climbed above pre-pandemic levels.

By integrating these best practices into your business strategy, you enhance customer satisfaction and foster a customer-centric culture that can drive sustained success in today’s competitive marketplace.

Remember, the voice of your customer is not just feedback; it’s a roadmap to delivering exceptional experiences and building lasting relationships.

If you would like to capture the voice of your customers to build a strategic plan that helps your team scale revenue and profits, let’s schedule a call.

In approximately 30 days, our team will interview a statistically significant number of your customers and deliver the insights your team needs to drive explosive growth.

If you want more information on Voice of Customer, you can download my eBook and read other articles.

Also, I’d like you to please watch for my new book on leveraging the voice of your customers to drive explosive growth, which will be published in December of 2023.