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Table of Contents
Introduction
Exceptional customer support addresses an audience’s needs, expectations, and problems, establishing a business as trustworthy and reliable. Meet your clients where they’re at, better than ever before with Voice of the Customer (VoC) technology. Read on to learn how to use VoC insights to forecast contact center demand.
Key takeaways
- VoC Data Utilization: Voice of the Customer (VoC) data captures valuable customer feedback across various channels, offering deeper insights into pain points and service gaps to enhance customer support strategies.
- Improving Customer Experience (CX): By regularly leveraging VoC insights, businesses can identify common customer issues, address them proactively, and create a better, more responsive customer experience that encourages loyalty.
- Predictive Analytics and Proactive Service: Analyzing VoC data historically allows businesses to forecast demand, predict trends, and ensure agents are prepared to handle customer inquiries during peak seasons, improving overall support efficiency.
- AI Integration and Sentiment Analysis: Integrating AI tools with VoC data enhances sentiment analysis, enabling businesses to track emotional tones and customer satisfaction levels in real-time for more informed decision-making and support strategies.
What is Voice of the Customer (VoC) data?
Voice of the Customer data is the information a business collects to quantifiably track customer feedback. VoC insights offer deeper understandings of potential pain points to improve on in business operations and customer support strategies.
Types of VoC data
VoC data comes from however you gather feedback: surveys, reviews, net promoter scores, chat communication, social media activity, observations of customer behavior, and interactions between customer and support agents, to name a few. Each has its own purpose and can provide valuable insights into the customer experience. Determining which is right for you depends on a number of factors, but an outsourced contact center will have the resources to comprehensively take on the task for you.
Defining VoC in the call center context
Call centers are equipped with technology to track and monitor not only calls but also specific requests and pain points within calls and other methods of communication. This tracking empowers agents to deliver actionable feedback to a business about what issues are preventing customers from effectively using a product or continuing a membership.
How VoC differs from traditional customer data
VoC sources data from many sources while tracking who each piece of feedback comes from, allowing a business to focus on top priorities such as leads and loyalty customers or empowering them to analyze data according to specific metrics, such as location, language, or age group.
VoC offers a more comprehensive view of the customer experience than traditional customer data can by capturing what customers say, who they are, and why their feedback is important.
Why call centers need VoC data
Call centers are hubs of crucial information not only to field complaints but also to manage them, to help customers feel seen and heard, to resolve issues, and to escalate issues to experts who can fix them. VoC data organizes all of these nuances to help companies prioritize and act on specific measures.
Enhancing customer experience (CX)
Businesses regularly leveraging Voice of Customer data enhance customer experience by quickly identifying pain points and ensuring each item is followed up on. This helps customers feel heard and valued, bringing them back to your company for support or uninterrupted future use.
Identifying pain points and service gaps
VoC allows agents to organize complaints by type, reflecting volume and level of importance. This identifies problems and service gaps business owners may not have previously noted or properly allocated resources to, proving their importance.
Informing staff training and development
Often these pain points and service gaps prove significant and widespread enough to signal to a business owner that some changes need to be made for more efficient processes and higher customer satisfaction. Use these VoC insights to inform staff training, and set up a culture of constant improvement to match volume, skill, and knowledge demand.
Driving proactive customer service through predictive analytics
VoC data can be tracked historically, allowing businesses to anticipate problems and strategically ramp up support. Look at your data to predict trends. Do certain issues only arise at peak seasons? How many tickets can each agent handle at peak seasons? Answering these questions prepares and empowers you to proactively own an excellent customer service strategy.
Methods for collecting VoC data in call centers
Call centers employ VoC best practices with technologies and personnel trained in these important methods.
Real-time customer feedback channels
Real-time feedback captures sentiments at the time of a customer’s experience or immediately after an interaction. Addressing these in a timely manner shows customers that you value their time and have the resources to promptly resolve issues.
Channels that provide real-time customer feedback include the following:
- Live chat support
- Online surveys
- Email feedback requests
- Social media monitoring
- Customer reviews and testimonials
- Feedback forms on websites
- In-app feedback
- Customer feedback software
- On-site feedback tools
Post-interaction surveys and follow-ups
Businesses can actively seek feedback by asking customers to fill out surveys after buying a product or using a service. This approach encourages customers who might not otherwise write a review to do so, providing businesses with fresh insights into processes.
Using speech analytics and AI to capture insights
You can learn how to improve Voice of the Customer data with AI tools that analyze emotional tones and sentiments during interactions. Complex algorithms detect cues to capture customer satisfaction levels without manual transcription or analysis, saving time and money.
Social media listening and sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis tools track a brand’s presence on social media, and more importantly, with what sentiments the public is discussing them. This new social media marketing tactic alerts business owners of conversations, identifying issues that may not be portrayed in reviews.
The outsourcing partnership requires trust and security. Allowing anyone access to a business and its customers’ confidential — often financial — information presents security risks, but this isn’t a reason not to outsource. It only highlights the need to be aware of data security risks and the need for secure outsourcing partners.
Professional partners will hire agents certified with the necessary certifications and come equipped with powerful technology that securely manages data.
Want to scale your business?
Global Response has a long track record of success in outsourcing customer service and call center operations. See what our team can do for you!
Transforming VoC data into actionable insights
Now that you have VoC best practices, learn how to make the most of the VoC experience.
Analyzing feedback for patterns and trends
Identifying patterns alerts professionals to common issues in their product or service. Analyzing these patterns by demographic or particular trends can help you find the cause of the issue for swift resolution.
Aligning VoC insights with call center KPIs (First Call Resolution, CSAT)
Analyzing your VoC customer service success includes targeting specific key performance indicators. How long does it take, for example, for agents to handle a call (AHT), answer a call (ASA)? What abandonment rates (ABA) should you aim for? How often does an agent resolve an issue on first call (FCR)? How do you determine customer satisfaction (CSAT), numerically?
First, capture these metrics at their baseline. Track trends, take into account peak seasons, and establish trends. Then deploy new strategies for improving processes or agent success. Track how your numbers change across different time frames to pinpoint your most effective strategies.
Case study: How VoC data improved a client’s call center experience
In 2013, Rack Room Shoes embraced social media monitoring as part of their customer care strategy. Rack Room Shoes worked with Global Response to customize the social media care process to Rack Room Shoes’ needs, including hours of coverage, response protocols, escalation decision trees, and more to understand how customers talk about the brand.
Rack Room Shoes now monitors social media during extended business hours, holidays, and weekends for day-to-day care.
Implementing VoC-driven strategies in call centers
VoC insights improve processes in call centers by applying data trends to day-to-day operations.
Streamlining processes based on customer needs
Customers provide valuable information on redundancies. A fresh mind can tell you a lot about what can be cut and how processes can be streamlined for better usability or more efficient use of information.
Developing personalized training programs for agents
VoC insights highlight not only customer feedback but agent communication, as well. Conversation data allow businesses to identify topics for further training or building out in an accessible knowledge base.
VoC in call routing and customer interaction customization
Tracked call routing data helps you customize your systems for certain easy answers to requests. For example, setting up your telephony with automated answers for requests such as contact information or hours of operation will answer these questions easily, improving contact rates, call volume, and customer satisfaction.
Measuring the impact of VoC data implementation
Implementing these VoC strategies will improve business processes and customer satisfaction. FILA outsourced Voice of the Customer support with Global Response, who resolved all of the brand’s hundreds of backlogged cases for increased first call resolution. Global Response provided FILA with a direct line to customer needs through transparent VoC best practices.
The future of VoC data in call centers
Businesses will enhance their connections with customers as they embrace technologies’ feedback tracking tools. Outsourcing support to call centers empowers you to scale support according to your busiest seasons, making the most of resources all around.
AI and machine learning in customer sentiment analysis
AI technologies are only getting more sophisticated, expanding our abilities to quickly assess customer sentiment across multiple channels. This empowers agents to meaningfully engage with customers and provide swift, relevant solutions.
VoC data and omnichannel customer experience strategy
Diversify your VoC customer service options by incorporating an omnichannel strategy including social media, text, phone, and email support.
Predictive customer behavior and anticipating needs
Showing that you’re a business that understands your customers and anticipates their needs will set you apart as a business that is not only in tune with the trends but is, more importantly, ahead of them. Set yourself apart as an industry leader by building out your business’ exceptional customer care.
Discover how you can utilize Voice of the Customer best practices. Contact us for a free quote!
