Hear the Voice of Your Customers

Choices for Seeking Customer Input

The contact center market offers many choices for collecting customer input, analyzing it, and putting it to use in line with the strategy you define. The array of options spans technology tools and media. The most prevalent means of obtaining direct customer feedback are:

• IVR. Your IVR is a great tool for short surveys immediately following the phone interaction, and enables a direct connection between the feedback and a specific contact and agent.

• Email or Web. An email or Web survey can gather more information while still linking the input to a specific contact and agent. You can forward the email survey or Web link after every interaction or based on business rules (e.g., every 10th interaction).

• Outbound calls. Outbound call surveys are easy to outsource to a third party. You can also use an outbound dialer or the IVR depending on whether you want a live call or an automated call. This approach must consider the difficulty in reaching the right person.

• Mailings. Contact centers do not use direct mailings often due to the cost, low response rates, lack of immediacy and difficulty in connecting the response with the specific interaction and agent. However, direct mail is easy to outsource and can be a first step in gathering customer feedback.

Table 1 details additional considerations for pursuing the right technology to fulfill a voice of the customer strategy.

Table 1: Voice of the customer technology considerations
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Go a Step Further with Analytics

Some contact centers are beginning to realize that surveys are only one way to hear the voice of the customer. Speech analytics is taking hold as a way to hear the customer through analysis of the customer audio interactions. Analysis of this audio data is valuable in categorizing calls and understanding the call purpose but by focusing on customer feedback, you can also get valuable input on your customers’ views on your service, products, competitors and more.