Gathering data on customer interactions with businesses is a priority if you want to improve consumer interactions, but customer feedback isn’t always easy to get. Survey questions can only get you so far, and it is difficult enough to get customers to give meaningful feedback to customer service as it is. If you are looking for an effective way to process customer interactions a breeze using the voice of the customer methodologies, here are some ways you can go about it.
Identify Use Cases
If you want to improve your company, you’ll need to set out a plan so you know what feedback you are looking for and what you will do with it. This might sound like an obvious first step, but when starting out with your set a goal that makes sense in the context of your business.
If you are running a restaurant you might want to know what kinds of foods your customers enjoy, or if you are a real estate financial advisor you might want to have a few reasons to move to Florida to boost your marketing campaign and find new customers. Once you have identified what you want to know you can start gathering relevant information. This can be achieved in any number of ways, but the simplest way to do this is to ask for customer feedback directly and make it clear that you want to use this insight to make customer satisfaction projections and improve their customer experience.
Direct Customer Feedback
Interacting with your customers directly is the most literal application of the “voice of the customer” methodology, and it has its own benefits. Impersonal data collection methods like telephone or internet surveys are convenient, but not everyone cares to take the time out of their day to utilize them. Having a server ask how their meal was or a sales associate if they found everything they needed is the most natural way to garner “voice of the customer” feedback, and this is occasionally undervalued by modern marketing.
Other sources of feedback to look out for including social media commentary and website reviews, as these metrics represent a deliberate effort on the part of the customer to make their customer experience known. Just keep in mind that not all feedback on the internet is equal; it is all too easy to attract the attention of people who submit negative feedback that isn’t a real customer experience for no other reason than spite. There are still lots of people who are willing to give good scores, so try to aim for a good net promoter score if you can.
Website Traffic Analysis
Another way to gather data based on customer input is by analyzing the way customers find your company online and how they navigate your website, which can be a vital part of a “customer journey.” Google Analytics has a number of tools that were built with these sorts of applications in mind, and with the proper application, you can track what pages are visited using what links. If you use this data compare it with data gathered through other collection methods using various metrics, you can use this information to make decisions to improve your investment platform or product quality based on the high or low correlation of your data.
Community
The bottom line is that voice of the customer marketing strategies requires customer interaction, so cultivating a working relationship with your business’ consumer base can make a big difference when it comes to retention. Holding giveaways, contests, voluntary focus groups, or even just hosting a blog for people who are wondering, “is Yieldstreet legit?” can help improve customer interactions in the future.
A Florida resident, for example, might be looking for investment options, and if you can build a positive relationship with this new investor they might be more likely to talk to you about real estate investment opportunities both local to and outside of the sunshine state. Once one or more investors have made an investment in a new home they know who to talk to about investment offerings and they can tell their friends about you as well, giving you more opportunities for the voice of the customer feedback as a financial advisor.
Word of mouth marketing is the most effective when it comes to getting the word out about your business. A good way to approach the word of mouth marketing is to meet customer needs while also understanding the context of customer feedback. In other words, doing your due diligence with the various types of feedback you can expect to receive will go a long way toward increasing customer satisfaction and customer retention.
