Brand Strategy 101: How to Really Listen to Your Customers

Thinking about the customers 24/7 might sound easy, but many brands are still lacking customer-centricity. Start refining your Voice of the Customer (VoC) strategy by discovering what VoC really means, why it matters more now, and 3 key ways to manage successful VoC programs.

 

(Your brand offerings) (+) (A market’s needs) = Successful Brand

That’s the simple formula it takes for businesses today to grow. Or, as Aberdeen Strategy Research spelled out, A + B = C.

A equals what value your brand delivers to customers. B equals the consumer demands. C equals the result in which we call “growth.” 

However, as the research further shows, some businesses in 2021 still believe that A can equal C. And those brands that think meeting the minimum of consumer expectations are enough to make them successful might just probably fail in the future. The main reason is that these companies consider the consumers’ preferences and needs far less than their more successful counterparts. 

In other words, the customers’ voice to some companies is more of an option than a must. 

So are brands making the most out of consumer feedback? This article will highlight brand strategy basics: how to implement Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs properly. However, first, we briefly explain what VoC is and why it matters. 

Whether you’re a new business or here to reiterate your knowledge of VoC, you might leave feeling like you’ve got the equation all figured out.

The term “Voice of the Customer” (VOC) refers to when great attention is given to the customer, including what they feel or think, experiences with, and feedback of, your company. It’s a process. Through deep analysis of what customers want and need, and expect, businesses can build a framework around their buyers.

The non-restrictive process of analyzing the voice of the customer involves methods such as surveys, focus groups, forums, and leveraging consumer data. 

In a digital transformative age, the growth of social media has led to more online content (i.e., reviews). Thus, the voice of the customer is ‘louder than ever. At the same time, many companies have been prioritizing customer feedback to become increasingly customer-focused. They do so by finding more and better tools to collect and respond to customer reviews efficiently. Those who truly know how to leverage what their buyers have to say will improve customer loyalty and rack in higher profits. 

According to the same Aberdeen report, there is an expected 2% increase in yearly customer care costs for companies that do not have a strong VoC program in place. In contrast, more VoC-oriented are projected to experience an annual sales growth of 10.9%. 

Successful companies nowadays go above and beyond reacting to their customers’ raised issues. They also leverage analytics to discover trends and correlations to target recurring problems among different consumer groups. 

Also, besides just collecting customer feedback, it’s imperative the brand also knows how to manage the next step – analyzing those reviews properly. To do so would mean having the right technologies to integrate such data into systems like CRM and marketing automation. Employees and executives alike can extract insights from their customers. 

Ensure your teams implement reactive VoC programs with state-of-the-art analytics to take needed actions that alleviate customers’ pain points. The plan will also include real-time insights and alters to notify stakeholders of product issues to exact service issues. Thus, reducing response time, which is a crucial metric for measuring the effectiveness of VoC programs.

To prevent more of the same customer problems in the future, brands can understand and analyze trends over time. In turn, they’ll not only identify new needs in the market but target them quicker to develop products or services catering to those emerging trends. 

Successful companies listen in on the voice of customers to be both reactive and proactive. As such, practical VoC implementations allow them to find what customers need before people even know they need it. For instance, Apple created the iPad, and before that, not many people realized they needed it. The huge mobile brand first had to dig deep into what consumers preferred when it came to using their smartphones and laptops. By doing so, they were one of the first few to identify the market need for tablets – and become the top brand preference in many consumers’ minds.

Wonderflow is one of the few in the VoC software market to help companies be proactive and reactive about their customers’ needs. How it does that is by integrating the latest artificial intelligence, backed by a team of dedicated linguistic experts and developers, to track, monitor, analyze, suggest, predict, plus more, of the customer’s every move. 

Learn more about the new standard in Voice of the Customer analytics by booking a demo today.