Voice of the Customer Study Shows Metrics-Driven Approaches Drive Customer Support

Vovici™, a Verint®Systems company and that provides enterprise feedback management solutions, announced results of its Voice of the Customer (VoC) survey, “Don’t Be in the 4%: New Research Reveals That 96% of Companies are Leveraging the VoC to Improve Business Performance.” The study was conducted in collaboration with customer strategy consultancy Peppers & Rogers Group and 1to1 Media® to gauge the current state of Voice of the Customer initiatives.

The survey results show that organizations of all sizes in a wide range of industries are investing in VoC initiatives. Key findings include:

• Ninety-five percent of respondents say their VoC initiatives are breaking even or generating positive value. Companies can gain greater value by identifying the specific metrics at the beginning of VoC efforts.
• Data-related challenges—collecting the right data, analyzing and acting on the data and removing data silos—continue to be the highest priority for almost  50 percent of respondents. This was followed by assigning ownership and enlistment in VoC initiatives at 31 percent; selecting success metrics and connection to ROI at 15 percent; and budget at five percent.
• 42.8 percent of organizations responded that VoC initiatives have been assigned to either “a specific customer experience department,” “a specific VoC department,” “a cross-functional team of leaders from across the enterprise” or a “C-level executive,”  indicating that while the Marketing function typically owns the VoC initiative by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, the need for a dedicated VoC department is emerging.
• Because cycle time for customer feedback is shrinking, organizations need to “prepare for change” by quickly leveraging customer data to adapt to changing circumstances and customer attitudes.

The study concluded that “As long as companies aim to enhance their customers’ experiences, improve customer loyalty, and increase profitability, there will always be a demand for VoC programs and supporting tools.”

“These findings serve as further reinforcement to the power and strategic importance of voice of the customer programs and the undeniable impact they can have on customers, employees and businesses alike,” says Nancy Treaster, general manager, strategic operations, Verint Enterprise Intelligence Solutions™.  Verint’s Voice of the Customer Analytics™ solutions include speech analytics, text analytics and enterprise feedback management, and are designed to capture customer feedback across channels and interpret it in the context of business objectives, to support  proactive customer engagement strategies.

The VoC survey was conducted in December 2011 among 80 global organizations with voice-of-the-customer initiatives underway. Read the full press release, visit the Vovici website, or the Verint corporate website.