Why is Expectations VoC So Vital Now?
I've gained tremendous appreciation for this model (below), which separates voice of customer into?Expectations VoC?and?Realities VoC. What it says: Use Expectations VoC to educate all facets of your business in their performance standards. This is how customer-centricity is built. And it’s how massive waste is avoided. Additionally, robust Expectations VoC allows you to greatly reduce your Realities VoC investment, minimizing the burden on customers and CX budget.
Natural byproducts of this diagram’s formula are churn reduction, upselling, cross-selling, referrals, and acquisition cost reduction. Rather than committing sizeable funding in perpetuity to recovering from missteps, your expectations VoC educates managers in preventing missteps in the first place. Accordingly, your brand will have a greater magnetic attraction to both new and renewing customers. They’ll naturally want to refer others to your brand and buy more as your brand stands out in?customer experience ?excellence (i.e. issue prevention).
Expectations and perceptions are moving targets, as new forces arise in any influencer’s chain of command, economics, politics, performance trends, external and internal requirements, and so forth. For this reason, an ongoing systematic approach is needed in both Expectations VoC and Realities VoC.
Expectations VoC Ultimate Practices
Expectations VOC is different from typical Realities VoC. Expectations are usually captured through comments. Make use of data you already have before asking customers for their precious time. Data you have on-hand is what one of my colleagues calls “cash in the attic”.
Buying Influencers:?Many parties within a B2B firm influence buying decisions. Make sure your Expectations VoC collects information about each of these parties. What are their pressures? How is their success measured? What do they care about regarding your solution (product/service)? What are their workarounds when your solution doesn’t satisfy them?
Core-Growth Customers:?Some customers are more profitable than others. And some customers are growing faster than others. Your company’s growth is dependent to a large extent on certain customers expanding their purchases. You can’t please everyone equally, so don’t dilute your CX performance by trying too hard too early with non-core-growth customers. A the same time, beware of instigating negative word-of-mouth among any customers.
Get a thorough understanding of your core-growth customers’ needs and do all you can to outperform your customers’ alternatives (your competitors and other substitutes), so you’ll be the clear choice for this customer group. As your bandwidth expands, you can extend your CX efforts to other customer groups.
Almost-Free VoC:?There are many ways customers initiate comments to your company. Typical sources are your contact center, customer success teams, your website, industry communities/websites, symposiums, trade shows, and informal conversations with your employees and partners.
The casual comments made by customers during these interactions can be far more valuable than what’s captured in your Realities VoC. EMC and Dell created a mobile app for employees and partners to send customer comments to a central database.
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To harvest almost-free VoC, invest in text-mining, voice-mining, and/or video-mining technologies for making use of what customers have already told you.
Outside Sources:?Customers’ intended outcomes may be well researched already by your R&D group, your sales team, and/or your customer success department. Mine studies by Marketing, Advertising, and Public Relations for new insights and for adjusting your VoC methodologies and reporting. Go beyond industry studies’ quantitative findings for inspiration from qualitative content from any customers or spectators.
Digital Body Language:?Customers’ digital body language can be as revealing as what they vocalize. Analytics applications can find patterns across the Internet of Things. When you combine all sources of customer data, you can paint a richer picture of what customers expect.
As needed, broaden and deepen your understanding through primary qualitative research, such as executive listening sessions, in-depth interviews, focus groups, user groups, and/or customer advisory boards. The almost-free Expectations VoC sources in boxes 1 and 3 may be all you really need presently to move the CXM ROI needle: obvious directionally correct pebbles (or boulders!) in your customers' shoes. That's the point: improve ease of doing business for magnetic attraction of new and returning customers! Box 5 is non-negotiable: this is an absolute must in order to reap gains that are both substantial and ongoing, as shown in box 6.
Recognizing customers as the source of your company’s ongoing existence, crystalize your understanding of customers’ expectations as performance standards for every group across your company’s ecosystem. When each manager in your company understands how their performance affects customers, they’re empowered to prevent customer issues. This is a much smarter and vastly less expensive way to run your business!
For more VoC inspiration, see the rest of this CustomerThink Editor's Pick article,?How B2B VoC Maturity Drives Growth , covering the following:
For more learning: To help you bring your whole team up to par, ClearAction Continuum is offering?$21 live 90-minute classes?(regular price $89) during October 2021, in honor of CX Day 2021 .?Use code cxday21. Interested in finding great training for your executives? This is the perfect opportunity to?sample a class you can recommend to them. Do you like this idea, but prefer a different day of the week or time of day? Send a suggestion to [email protected]. Want customized sessions for your group? Send me a request. Interested in advice? See?clearaction.com/cx-coaching .
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