Many Voice of the Customer programs fail to deliver business results. One reason for this is that companies often measure outdated metrics, such as customer satisfaction. Bloomberg Business Week and others have reported that as many as 60% of customers describe themselves as “satisfied” right before leaving a company, meaning that customer satisfaction is not a driver of loyalty.
Archive for the ‘Market Research’ Category
Voice of the Customer Programs: 3 Hallmarks for Success
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011Closed Loop Feedback: How to Let Customers Know You’re Listening
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
Voice of the Customer programs shouldn’t leave customers hanging. Too often, companies gather feedback without sharing research results, with a predictable outcome: survey participants feel less inclined to participate in future surveys. This isn’t just a market research problem. Sure, the available respondent pool shrinks as consumers become frustrated with cliffhanger research. But even more importantly from a business perspective is the effect lack of follow-up has on customer engagement. Poor feedback management sends customers the message that you are willing to use them to get ahead—that you are less concerned with their time and effort than you are with meeting your research quotas.
Voice of the Customer (VOC) Results: What to expect from your VOC program
Monday, August 15th, 2011A Voice of the Customer (VoC) program can be a powerful tool for your businesses—assuming you choose one that provides you with the information we list in this article. By way of providing a basic definition, a Voice of the Customer program gathers customer feedback and provides a system for feedback management across an organization. Different Voice of the Customer programs may measure customer satisfaction, retention, or recommendation rates, but we suggest that companies should measure and track customer engagement. PeopleMetrics’ research shows that customer engagement is the metric most closely tied to overall business success.
Silent but Deadly: How to learn from Quietly Disgruntled Customers
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
There’s a certain type of customer lurking in every company’s sales records. This customer is influential on your future business. She’s mindful enough to pay attention to her purchasing experience, and articulate enough to pass on any dissatisfaction to her friends and family. However, she doesn’t provide feedback to you when she experiences a problem; she just walks away.
How to Measure Customer Satisfaction: Our Best Practices for Determining Customer Love
Monday, February 14th, 2011
The question of how to measure customer satisfaction is surprisingly complex. It’s easy to become lost in the dizzying array of approaches–should you measure customer loyalty, customer retention, or emotional attachment? Once you’ve settled on a metric, how will you quantify it based on customer feedback? Here at PeopleMetrics, we’re fanatical about such questions. We help the world’s leading brands improve their customers’ experience by measuring and fostering Customer Engagement. In previous blog posts, we’ve explained why Customer Engagement is the best metric to follow in today’s experience economy. This post explains just how we measure Customer Engagement, and how that approach compares to other popular research techniques.