“Real Time” Access to Voice of the Customer Insights Can Strengthen the Customer Relationship

The best way to maximize “voice of the customer” results is through a branded study. One challenge we often see with our clients is that it can take too long to produce actionable results for their organization. One way we help our clients overcome this hurdle is by getting the information into their hands as close to the time the respondent provides it as possible. 

In order to get “real time” results to those who can act on the customer issues quickly, the following approaches we have developed have proven successful (both for online and telephone methodologies): 

• Upon completion of an online survey, an email is triggered immediately to the survey sponsor highlighting the specific data points that will aid in an actionable response (e.g., satisfaction scores; technical issues experienced; frustrations; open ended feedback to help improve client performance). This particular approach is most useful when results are analyzed at a more micro or user level (e.g., customer service, account level management, customer satisfaction). 
• Another approach we use during online data collection is we provide our clients an interim review of all the online survey results, providing a snapshot of the data. This is more useful when analyzing the data at a macro or customer base level. 

Telephone surveys create a unique situation because of the reliance on interviewers to interact with customers (whereas with an online methodology, there is no human interaction with the customer). While monitoring the call enables the sponsor to listen in on what their customers are saying, this can prove to be more difficult (and inefficient) because of the down time experienced while connecting the call and/or getting the right person on the phone. We provide our clients with the option to record and post each call to an online portal (in near real time), enabling the sponsor to log in and listen at their convenience.

The benefit of the above mentioned approaches is the ability to access information as close to the time the customer delivers it as possible so as to act in a proactive rather than reactive fashion; ultimately affording the sponsor of the study an opportunity to strengthen the customer relationship.