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CXPA's Guide to Voice of the Customer
One of the key responsibilities of customer experience professionals is being the voice of the customer in the company. All departments have their own challenges, KPIs and targets to achieve. In this world, someone should remind other departments that organizations exist for their customers. In that manner, customer experience professionals take on a great responsibility. Customers’ requests, thoughts and complaints should be listened to, considered carefully, and forwarded to related departments for awareness and action.
On the other hand, all products and services should be designed to meet customer’s needs and expectations. How can you be sure if your products or services met your customer’s needs? You cannot understand the needs without listening. Like Dr. Ernesto Sirolli mentioned in his Ted Talk, you have to listen if you want to learn their thoughts.
There are 2 ways to listen to the voice of customers. First, you contact them and learn from their experiences. Second, you can analyze their interactions with your touchpoints. There are some breakdowns in these two. Now let’s look at them.
1- Organizations touch the customers: This is basically that organizations reach the customers and ask for their thoughts about the experiences they had. It is divided into two according to the type of research:
- Qualitative Methods: These are the methods used for understanding customers’ deepest needs and reasons for their decisions. Such as focus groups, diary studies, in-depth interviews etc.
- Quantitative Methods: These are the methods used for reaching more customers and monitoring average scores. Surveys are included in quantitative research. NPS, CSAT, CES are some of the metrics measured with surveys.
2- Customers touch the organizations: Not only organizations touch the customers, but also customers reach organizations to be heard too. Customer experience teams should carefully monitor these interactions that take place at the frontlines and digital channels.
- Information: Customers can reach the organizations for getting information.
- Request: Customers can reach the organizations for requests such as changing a phone number, understanding a bill, or changing a product they use.
- Complaint: Customers can also reach the organizations for solving problems they are experiencing.