CX Is More Than Voice of Customer: Employees, Business and Process Need a Say, Too
Is your company paying enough attention to customer experience (CX)?
Many American businesses aren't, and customers have noticed. According to Forrester’s US CX Index 2022, the average CX index score (a measure of CX quality) across industries dropped in 2022 for the first time since 2017.
CX is the key brand differentiator for many industries, replacing price and product. It also has a direct, positive relationship with revenue. According to Forrester, a 1-point improvement in a large multichannel bank’s CX Index score can lead to an incremental $123 million in revenue. For a direct bank such as Chime , it can lead to an incremental $92 million in revenue. With such a massive impact on customer loyalty and revenue, poor CX presents a major problem to organizations wanting to get ahead.
To improve CX, organizations have to listen to customers’ preferences and needs . Most businesses do this by gathering Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback via surveys. VoC is a good starting point but is not sufficient to significantly enhance CX. Listening to three other voices—process, business and employee—gives the 360-degree view of customer experience and highlights areas to improve.
Voice of the Customer: What Customers Say
To understand what happens along the customer journey —from researching a product/service to purchasing, using and managing it—you need to listen. VoC refers to collecting, analyzing and distributing customer feedback to improve a product, solution or service. VoC focuses on customer needs, expectations, preferences and complaints. Many companies rely primarily on VoC surveys and social listening to reveal what customers are thinking, what their intentions are and how they react to different experiences.
In theory, VoC surveys help businesses understand and meet consumer needs and expectations and improve products and services. In reality, VoC data can be misleading. VoC surveys are subject to response bias—people tend to respond inaccurately or falsely to survey questions, whether deliberately or accidentally. Therefore, customer preferences expressed in surveys may not truly reflect their opinions or experiences. According to David Ogilvy, considered the father of advertising, “Consumers don’t think what they feel. They don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.” And that is if they say anything at all.