3 Ways to Leverage Communities to Capture the Voice of Customers

Metrics like churn rate or revenue can only tell a part of the story. That is why paying attention to what choices customers are making is the key to the success of any business.

So, how can businesses gain an understanding of why customers make certain choices or decisions?

Enter-Voice of Customer (VoC).

Voice of Customer is the method of collecting feedback from the customers. This approach thoroughly visualizes the disconnect between the real customer experience and customer expectations. It enables organizations to understand the customer’s sentiments based on the actions they take in their buying journey. But, collecting VoC requires diligent research. So, the majority of organizations are now leveraging communities to simplify the process of VoC and ace business goals.

How Community Engagement Optimizes the Voice of the Customers?

Today, 89%^[i] of companies compete on the basis of the quality of customer experience they provide. While 80% of companies believe they deliver superior experiences, only 8%^[ii] of customers agree with this. This clearly shows the gap between expected and real customer experience. Having said that, companies have a long way to go to meet the expectations of their customers.

Communities thrive when they encourage honest conversations. This depends on the interactions that take place in the community. Thus, VoC is the perfect choice for brands to fine-tune their products and services based on what the customers ask for. Today, many brands focus on instilling two-way communication which is a key example of VoC. It bridges the gap between the brand and the customers by boosting engagement and building trust.

In short, community outcomes give an insight into the customer experience. And, brands can leverage that to strategize their customer experience management while promoting business development.

When businesses leverage VoC the right way, they can achieve positive business outcomes, including –

• Improved decision-making
• Better product development
• Improved NPS
• Efficient operational processes
• Enhanced customer experience
• Improved customer retention
• Increased brand advocates

How Online Communities Help Capture the Voice of the Customers

Collecting feedback can be a huge task. It includes collecting data, understanding the intentions, extracting insights, and putting everything to work -which is a lot of work to do. Thus, here is a simple three-step process that you can implement in your community to hear your customer’s voice, close the loop, and deliver value.

1. Listen

Community makes your audience connect and converge. Thus, it is the ideal place to ask questions and promote discussions. All you have to do is find the right audience and ask them the right questions.

To find the right person, you must create personas within your community. It will help you identify who is involved with your product and at what level. The one who is already involved will probably answer your questions too.

There is a good rule to keep in mind when you want to frame the right question. Post a question that you, as a brand, are ready and willing to take initiative for.

Create strategies to ask the right questions to your customers. Then, converge the topics you need feedback on. Use different methods like questionnaires or surveys to get your audience to participate.

2. Act

Once you’re done collecting the feedback from the audience, it is time to address them. As VoC best practice suggests, customer inputs (positive or negative) must be addressed and resolved without delay.

Any person who shares their voice is an asset to your brand. And, delayed or unanswered feedback can result in losing out on valuable customers.

3. Analyze

Now that you have adequate data, it is time to analyze what works and things that need improvement. Following is the data you should focus on-

• NPS trends
• Follow-up response time
• Performance of your customer outreach program (the number of people who took the survey & ones who dropped out)
• Other data like customer intent, tone, and the theme of feedback

The analysis will help you identify how to improve your performance. In addition, you’ll be able to gain a high-level view of customer health and an overall view of customer experience.

As brands are leaning towards more authentic mediums to source VoC, communities have become the most preferred medium. That’s why brands are now optimizing communities to encourage discussions, host events, and reap engagement. This is how communities have become an invaluable resource for brands to gain VoC.

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References

[i] Gartner Surveys Confirm Customer Experience Is the New Battlefield
[ii] Closing the delivery gap