Voice of the Customer

8 out of 10 executives believe that their company loses sales each year because of a failure to create engaged customers*. It’s unsurprising that Voice of the Customer (VOC) Programmes have increasing prominence – helping organisations design, execute and monitor the effectiveness of their business strategies.

*Economist Intelligence Unit data

Our Solution

Our Voice of the Customer service enables you to efficiently and cohesively gain fundamental insights into what your customers really need from your business, products and services.

Our systematic, multi-source methodology maps customer expectations, experience and pain points, to provide granular and timely insights into what drives satisfaction, engagement and advocacy.

Leveraging our analysis will enable you to prioritise the right improvements, through the right channels, to build competitive advantage and achieve deeper customer profitability.

James Kershaw
Partner, Voice of the Customer

Solving These Challenges and Bringing These Benefits

Challenges

  • Poor and/or decreasing sales performance to target customer segments.

  • Increasing customer attrition and churn rates or low renewal rates as customers migrate to competitor products.

  • Underperformance against crucial business metrics, e.g. low ROI, cross-sell effectiveness.

  • Poor satisfaction ratings/NPS scores (low brand loyalty) relative to the market.

  • Outputs that fail to meet the needs of the target audience or the objectives of the business.

  • Loss of competitive advantage due to new market entrants, disruptors or innovations.

  • Poor visibility of customer trends and ability to forecast operational and servicing requirements.

Benefits

  • Improvements in key business metrics, e.g. customer satisfaction/advocacy, product take-up, sales effectiveness, attrition and churn.

  • Unassailable insights about what your customers want; their likes or dislikes, expectations, pain points and suggestions.

  • Quantitative data to inform where best to invest resources to optimise business outcomes.

  • Segment-level evaluation of where to expand existing features and capabilities or develop next-generation products.

  • Intelligence on future market changes and challenges to forecast potential headwinds and develop both tactical and strategic business plans to mitigate.

  • Clear visibility of customer needs allows the business to unite internal functions to align divisional objectives focused on smart customer outcomes.

What We Do

Using a proven methodology, along with complimentary service modules, we develop a bespoke VOC programme for you. Tapping into meaningful and actionable insights that put VOC at the heart of your organisation to drive continuous improvement in key performance metrics:

‘As is’ Evaluation

We assess all relevant internal and external contexts, e.g.:

  • ‘As is’ proposition and future plans.
  • Sales and GTM strategy.
  • Operating and service model.
  • Competitive landscape.

Review of existing capabilities and measures of customer satisfaction to determine:

  • Who are the right customers to seek feedback from/how many?
  • What are the right functions?
  • How expansive should our VOC capture methods be?
Best Fit Capture Methods

Our approach is to map out typical customer journeys and align data capture methods to key touchpoints.

Multi-source, multi-channel feedback is collated to reflect what a customer does as well as what they say.

This may include a mix of qual sources – surveys, interviews, focus groups – and quantitive sources such as operational data, social media monitoring and web analytics.

VOC Platform & Tool Selection

Sourcing the right solution(s) to deliver the VOC activities.

Characteristics we consider when choosing tools:

  • Survey configuration, channels and logic.
  • Data security terms.
  • Progress monitoring features.
  • Data extraction and format.
  • In-built analysis tool.
  • Commercials (pricing, limits, user access).
VOC Dashboard (Fully Integrated Solution)

Creation of a VOC dashboard – creating a single portal for all customer insights and actions.

Integrate with operational data (e.g., complaints, servicing MI).

Test proactive comms and PR plans, linked to VOC outcomes.

Use dashboard to monitor all customer improvement initiatives.

Customer Centricity Scorecard Development

Following the 1st generation VOC implementation, an ongoing operating model is designed for the programme.

Clear customer outcomes and supporting KPIs are agreed.

VOC data outputs are integrated with performance metrics and functional scorecards (working with HR/ Finance).

Targets are agreed upon with stakeholders.

Business Improvement & Ongoing Management (PMO)

Advance from insight collection to actionable improvement plans.

Facilitated workshops to drill into VOC analysis and design solutions.

Solicit further feedback to validate proposed plans.

Collate VOC action plans and dashboard/tracker (programme office for all customer initiatives).

Create PR and comms to feedback to customers.

How it is Delivered

A systematic approach, tried and tested across multiple industries. So your VOC programme yields actionable business insights and helps you drive timely strategies that anticipate and deliver against the needs of your customers. Delivered through 5 stages:

1. Discovery Phase

2. VOC Design Phase

3. Execute 1st Generation VOC

4. Interpret & Analyse insights

5. Design & Prioritise Solution

We begin with mapping the customer experience across all-important customer touchpoints, using priority ‘customer scenarios’ to guide the time investment during this insight stage. Augmenting with customer needs research, analytics and customer service insights where available. As an example, the following end-to-end areas would be analysed for a digital software business:

1. Discovery

Meetings and workshops with key stakeholders to understand functional goals and business plans and how they align around customer outcomes.

Evaluate ‘CX Principles’ at the industry and/or sector level.

Establish key themes for VOC capture. Define USP’s to highlight/test responsiveness.

2. VOC Design Phase

Determine customer prospects and scope for inclusion – assign segmented attributes for analysis.

Map insight capture methods for each customer and segment type to drive optimal response rates.

Prepare communications plan (internal & external) to support VOC rollout.

3. Execute 1st Generation VOC

Build VOC content leveraging a range of tools and best practice methods.

Execute plans based on agreed VOC design (e.g. administer customer interviews, surveys).

Document key observations and implications, pain points and suggested improvement areas.

4. Interpret & Analyse Insights

Use data to articulate prioritised current and the emerging customer wants, needs and drivers of satisfaction.

Produce programme dashboard that presents both big picture view and drills down to segment levels.

Synthesise and extract key recommendations (to feed into prop/sales/GTM design).

Review VOC findings with business stakeholders – agree and prioritise focus areas.

5. Design & Prioritise Solutions

Apply the insights to product, process or service development initiatives that solve pain points or implement suggested improvements.

Drive the implementation of changes initiatives using the PMO approach.

Refine approach for 2nd generation VOC rollout. Establish an ongoing operating rhythm for continuous improvement leveraging VOC insights.

Monitor results and effectiveness over time, using appropriate KPIs aligned to clear, measurable customer outcomes.

Meet Some of Our Voice of the Customer Experts

DWG is the UK’s most experienced digital transformation consultancy. A team of 50+ senior digital change experts, internationally experienced, meet some of them:

James Kershaw
Partner, Voice of the Customer

mark churnside
Mark Chirnside
Partner, Financial Services & Fintech
Gavin McLauchlan
Partner, B2B
Andrew Salmon
Andrew Salmon
Managing Partner
Leonard Vitarana
Leonard Vitarana
Partner, Project Management

Previous Voice of the Customer Success

Embedding a holistic, multi-channel VOC programme across a global division

Voice of the Customer MasterCard image

  • The business was operating across various platforms, with many clients still interacting with legacy systems.

  • Quality of experience varied with no central method for capturing and responding to customer ‘pain points’ pre, during or post-migration.

  • The interoperability between global and regional operating models was inconsistent and fractured in places.

  • The business lacked uniformity of approach when executing strategic projects.

  • There were no reliable customer insights to shape their continuous improvement agenda or feed into performance scorecards.

  • DWG was engaged to align business stakeholders, provide an ‘as is’ assessment, and design and launch the 1st generation of a VOC program across all regions.

  • Insight collection methods and channels were selected to ensure that outputs reflected both the customer’s experienced pain points and enhancement opportunities to help define future strategies relating to products, processes, and service.

  • Customer scope/segmentation and the rollout approach were designed to optimise the programme’s validity whilst focusing on generating reliable and actionable insights quickly, leveraging both solicited and unsolicited data.

  • Appropriate tools and delivery options were adopted for phase one to provide a standalone solution with low resource impact on existing business functions (globally and regionally).

  • Synthesised analysis, extracting key insights and recommendations at an overall and segmented levels.

  • Providing unassailable insights into customers’ needs, experiences and expectations.

  • Rapid response to identified customer concerns and high retention risks.

  • Enabling the business to start transforming into a more customer-centric enterprise, defining and prioritising divisional objectives around clear customer outcomes.

Leveraging customer insight to design all aspects of a new product launch

Voice of the Customer 118118 money

  • Since launching its Financial Services division, 118118 has quickly established itself as a ‘challenger brand’, offering customers products and services with differentiated features versus traditional banks and mainstream lenders.

  • The business was looking to expand its product range, focusing on an increasingly underserviced customer demographic.

  • The new product(s) needed to have substantial cut through and align to the core brand personality, appealing to existing customers whilst attracting new customers through an open market proposition.

  • Customer insight was vital in launching unique new product features to balance customer needs and behavioural trends with the desired business outcomes.

  • Our starting point was to tightly define target segments and desired market position, determining precise customer profiles.

  • A Voice of the Customer project was scoped and designed to generate insights that would drive all critical business decisions from product design, service operating model, pricing strategy, credit risk policy, channel strategy, customer marketing and communications strategy, and infrastructure/technology design and partner selection.

  • A range of candidate propositions was produced to test and validate customer responses.

  • Multiple customer cohorts were included in the programme to explore their financial needs and opportunities for brand salience.

  • Attitudes and behaviours were captured through channels and analysed to assess product appetite, the relative appeal of different features, potential triggers and barriers.

  • A new product was designed and successfully launched, leveraging clear customer insights and recommendations, exceeding initial sales targets.

  • The proposition features were built, targeted and communicated to appeal to specific needs, validated through the Voice of the Customer programme.

  • The customer lifecycle and portfolio strategy were developed around specific and measurable customer outcomes. This ensured that the VOC ‘proof points’ were carried through all aspects of the customer experience post-launch.

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