Data-Driven Programs Amplify Voice of the Customer

By combining traditional measures of customer sentiment with product and operational data, B2B organisations can create a more comprehensive view of customer experience that helps create the case for action

In a world where many products are commoditised, the way a company interacts with its customers is often a differentiating factor. B2B companies can set themselves apart by listening attentively to their clients and taking their feedback into account. Historically, many organisations have relied on net promoter scores or customer satisfaction measures to gauge how clients feel. Yet those metrics are one-dimensional, revealing customer sentiment at just one point in time. If clients rank their experience with a business as a 5 out of 10, for example, that indicates dissatisfaction – but doesn’t offer any actionable information.

To gain insights that can help improve customer experience, companies should understand why their customers feel the way they do, incorporating information from sources as varied as product telemetry and tech support tickets. In fact, B2B buyers would prefer greater personalisation, according to recent research. Buyers are frustrated that vendors don’t use all existing data to tailor interactions – and about two-thirds of surveyed respondents would stop doing business with sellers that don’t customise their communications.

To address this challenge, many businesses have implemented more sophisticated voice of the customer programs, which measure sentiment as well as product usage and operational data at critical points along the customer journey. For example, a business may contrast high product engagement numbers with low customer sentiment scores to deduce that clients aren’t getting the support they need. By gathering insights like this on a regular basis, companies can translate customer insights into a clear plan for improvement. This can help brands deliver a more personalised experience to customers while increasing loyalty. In fact, research shows that when customer experience falls short, one-third of B2B buyers won’t renew – meaning an ineffective voice of the customer program can jeopardise one in three contracts.

Designing an Experience-Focused Program

In many organisations, there is a voice of the customer team, which collects and generates insights on a regular basis and drives accountability for acting on those insights. Often, this group is aligned to the customer success team, if one exists. To build and maintain an effective voice of the customer program, experience-focused leaders can follow these strategies:

Find the moments that matter. By identifying critical engagement points along the customer journey, businesses can focus on the occasions that make or break the customer experience. A software provider, for example, may want to concentrate on the moments when customers are evaluating potential solutions, setting up a new program, optimising use to achieve business outcomes, and renewing or expanding their contracts.

To determine the most important points in the customer life cycle, leaders should align on a comprehensive vision of the end-to-end experience, driven by an understanding of what customers are trying to achieve at each stage. Companies can also examine existing data sources to identify important points of engagement. A high number of support tickets related to onboarding, for example, could indicate that adoption is a critical stage in the customer journey – and may need extra attention.

Establish success metrics. Once businesses have agreed on a handful of critical engagement points, they can set up standard measurement tools – such as customer surveys, social listening, call centre transcripts, or product telemetry – and identify key metrics for each touchpoint. It’s important to take a holistic approach to understanding how customers feel, examining not just customer satisfaction and willingness to recommend but also trust, which drives customer loyalty, employee motivation, and repeat purchases.

The most effective voice of the customer programs should also capture data throughout the customer journey and across all areas of the business. This can be achieved by designing and activating the right architecture for gathering customer input. Organisations with multiple product lines may have different ways of measuring success – whether that’s the number of subscription licenses sold and activated or the amount of cloud storage used – but all areas of the business should have a defined metric that’s tied to the customer experience.

Translate insights to action. Customer experience leaders should establish a standard process for sharing relevant data with stakeholders across functions, including marketing, sales, operations, finance, account support, and IT. Leaders also should help ensure there is accountability for acting on insights, which may require each function to establish new KPIs that better align with the most important customer metrics.

With regular access to relevant insights, individual business units can better apply them to improve the customer experience. Marketers, for example, can finetune their messages more precisely based on where customers are in their journeys and how they’re feeling about the brand. Sales teams can automate renewal conversations where account health is trending well, giving them time to focus their efforts on the least satisfied customers. Meanwhile, product teams can make quick updates based on fresh data and follow up to let customers know their feedback has been incorporated.

The most advanced voice of the customer programs can provide data and analysis on demand to other groups within the company – on top of regular updates. In this insights-as-a-service model, business units can approach the voice of the customer group with a hypothesis about how to improve the customer experience. The voice of the customer team can then run a detailed analysis of the issue, partnering with the business not only to interpret the data but also to create a plan for improvement.

“To gain insights that can help improve customer experience, companies should understand why their customers feel the way they do, incorporating information from sources as varied as product telemetry and tech support tickets.”

In contrast to prior, more static measures of customer experience, robust voice of the customer programs can help B2B companies gather real-time, in-depth insight; take action to drive improvement in customer sentiment; and increase customer value. With the right approach, a holistic voice of the customer program can yield continual insights that improve customer experience, deepen trust, and benefit the bottom line.