Voice of the customer

“A typical business only hears from 4% of its dissatisfied customers, the other 96% leave quietly.” (University of Pennsylvania)

Talking about the Voice of the Customer is becoming increasingly popular at the moment. Every business conference, trade magazine or internal improvement team seems to discuss the Voice of the Customer and stress the importance of hearing what customers think and feel.

And a few customers make this easy – they shout loudly, and make sure that we pay attention.

But only a few – 4% according to the University of Pennsylvania.

So why isn’t the 'Voice of every Customer' heard loud and clear in your business?

Traditional methods for trying to capture this tend to struggle with speed, accuracy, cost and an effective process to capture what the customer is actually saying.

For a start most interview/questionnaire processes cost far too much per survey and so are applied to a small sample of customers only. Most customers contacting your company never have the chance to provide their feedback and comments, so their voice is simply lost.

And if customers don’t get asked for their feedback:

“68% [of dissatisfied customers] never reveal their dissatisfaction because they perceive an attitude of indifference in the owner, manager or employee” (University of Pennsylvania).

The slow speed of traditional feedback mechanisms also reduces their value. Not only does accuracy suffer:

“Feedback captured straight away is 40% more accurate than feedback captured 24 hours later”

(Gartner)

but the information can take weeks to be available to your organisation. This is far too slow to identify operational problems and act immediately.

Surveys, questionnaires and feedback forms are very good at getting customers to tick boxes and select options off a list…but these questions reflect the company’s measures NOT the customers’ Voice.

Think about the last survey you filled in, or the last questionnaire you completed. Did the tick boxes reflect what was important to you? Did the topics that you were asked to score actually ask you about what you thought was important?

There was probably one part of that survey, one section on the questionnaire, which actually asked what you thought – the “Any other comments?” box at the end.

And that little box of free format verbatim comments, which can contain the gold that is the Voice of the Customer, is the hardest part of the survey to analyse, assess and act upon.

We have developed the award winning solution to these challenges: Rant &Rave. We can tune into the Voice of your Customer and analyse exactly what they are saying in their comments, quotes, feedback and your agents’ call notes.

And you don’t have to wait for the results – the analysis is provided live through our clear and simple Dashboard, so you can take action that day.

Why not try out this service through our fast and free Sentiment Challenge?

You provide 1,000 pieces of feedback or customer verbatim comments, and we analyse it for you to find out what the Voice of the Customer is telling your business.

To take part call Annette or Duncan on 02476 011 910 or email marketing@rapide.co.uk

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