How To Conduct a Voice of the Customer Analysis

Running a small business is tough. You’re juggling a million things, from marketing, sales and product development to customer service. I bet sometimes it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

But amidst all the chaos, there’s one crucial element that often gets overlooked: Truly understanding your customers. That’s where Voice of the Customer (VoC) analysis comes in.

VoC analysis isn’t a complicated exercise. It’s a straightforward process that helps you tap into what your customers are thinking and feeling about your business. By actively listening to buyers, you gain invaluable insights to improve your products, services, and overall customer experience.

This guide will walk you through a simple, step-by-step process for conducting your own VoC analysis, even if you’re short on time and resources. Get ready to hear what your customers are saying – and use that knowledge to grow your business.

Step 1: Set Clear Objectives for Your VoC Analysis

Before you jump into collecting customer feedback, let’s talk about why you’re doing this in the first place. Setting clear objectives gives your voice of the customer analysis direction and purpose.

Here’s how you’ll go about it:

Define Your Specific Goals

You’ll start with a little bit of introspection. What do you want to achieve?

The common goals for most small online businesses include:

Boosting customer satisfaction scores
Keeping customers coming back (bye bye, churn!)
Increasing how much your average customer spends with you over time

These are all great starting points, but make your goals SMART too:

S – Specific. Instead of “improve customer satisfaction,” try “increase our Net Promoter Score by 15 points.”
M – Measurable. You need numbers, therefore “reduce customer churn” becomes “decrease monthly customer churn rate from 5% to 3%.”
A – Achievable. A 50% increase in customer lifetime value might be a stretch, but 20% could be just right.
R – Relevant. Make sure your VoC goals align with your overall business objectives. If you’re aiming for rapid growth, focusing on upselling to existing customers might not be the best fit.
T – Time-bound. Give yourself a deadline. “Improve customer feedback collection within the next quarter” puts a fire under your feet.

The kicker here is that your VoC objectives need to play nice with your broader business goals. If your company is all about expanding into new markets, your VoC analysis should focus on understanding potential customers in those areas.

When you know what you’re aiming for, you’ll be amazed at how much more effective your customer feedback collection and VoC data analysis become. So take a moment to jot down your SMART objectives. What do you want your voice of the customer analysis to achieve?

Identify Key Customer Touchpoints for Your VoC Analysis

You need to pinpoint where you’ll gather your customer insights. You’ll focus on customer touchpoints, which are the moments where buyers interact with your business. Each one can provide some feedback.

Instead of mapping out a complete customer journey (we have other great resources for that!), let’s focus on identifying the most relevant touchpoints for your VoC analysis, based on your specific objectives.

Pre-purchase. This is where potential customers first encounter your brand. Focus on touchpoints like:

Website experience. Is your website easy to navigate? Is the information clear and concise?
Marketing materials. Are your ads and other marketing messages resonating with your target audience?
Social media interactions. How are potential customers engaging with your brand online? What are they saying?

Purchase. This is the moment of truth as money changes hands. Analyze these touchpoints:

Checkout process. Is the checkout process smooth and easy to use?
Payment options. Do you offer a variety of convenient payment methods?
Confirmation emails. Are your confirmation emails helpful?

Post-purchase. This is where you build loyalty. Pay close attention to:

Product/service usage. How are customers using your product or service? Are they encountering any problems?
Customer support interactions. How effective and efficient is your customer support?
Follow-up communications. Are you providing helpful resources or follow-up support after the sale?

While you’re at it, remember to prioritize the touchpoints most likely to influence your chosen goal. This way you’re not wasting time and resources on less important areas.

Step 2: Collect VoC Data

Alright, time to get into your customers’ heads! You won’t be needing fancy tools or big budgets—just three straightforward methods to supercharge your voice of the customer analysis.

Customer Surveys

Surveys are a fantastic way to directly ask customers about their experiences. They offer a structured approach to gathering feedback, as they allow you to target specific areas of interest.

For your VoC analysis, two main survey types stand out:

Periodic email surveys. These are sent to your entire customer base or some of your customer segments, to gather broader feedback on specific aspects of your business. These allow you to collect more diverse perspectives and identify trends over time.
Post-interaction surveys. These are sent right after a customer interaction. They capture immediate feedback while the experience is fresh in the customer’s mind.

When crafting your VoC survey, keep these tips in mind:

Keep it short. Aim for 5-10 questions maximum to ensure high completion rates.
Mix question types. Combine closed-ended and open-ended questions for comprehensive VoC data.
Focus on one aspect. Each survey should target a specific area of your business for deeper insights.

Essential VoC Survey Questions

Now, let’s focus on the heart of your survey: the questions. Here’s how to create surveys that yield valuable VoC data:

Start with the Net Promoter Score (NPS) question. “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service?” This gives you a quick pulse on overall customer satisfaction.
Follow up with the ‘Why?’ question. “What’s the primary reason for your score?” This open-ended question provides rich and qualitative data for your VoC analysis.
Ask about specific touchpoints. “Rate your experience with our checkout process on a scale of 1-5.” Use a 1-5 scale for easy quantification.
Inquire about product/service usage. “Which feature do you find most valuable?” This helps identify your product’s strengths and areas for improvement.
Address pain points. “What’s one thing we could do to enhance your experience?” This question often reveals unexpected insights that are crucial for VoC.

Google forms' interface for VoC analysis survey creation

We did start off by saying you wouldn’t need fancy tools. A few inexpensive tools you could use for your surveys include Google Forms, SurveyMonkey and Typeform.

Social media listening allows you to tap into real-time conversations about your brand, products, and industry across various social platforms. By systematically monitoring and analyzing these discussions, you gain invaluable insights that inform your business decisions and improve customer experiences.

Monitoring Brand Mentions and Product Discussions

What are people saying about your brand and products online? This is where social listening shines. So start by searching for your brand name, product names, and relevant keywords on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even Reddit.

You’ll need to look for both direct mentions and indirect conversations—posts that don’t explicitly name your brand, but discuss topics related to your industry or products.

To achieve this, you don’t need expensive software to get started. Leverage free tools such as:

Platform-native search functions. Each social media platform has its own search function. Use these to directly search for your brand and related keywords.
Google Alerts. Set up Google Alerts to receive email notifications whenever your brand or keywords are mentioned online. This keeps you informed about new conversations and feedback.

Engaging with Customers

Social media listening isn’t just about observing; it’s about engaging. Responding to customer comments and questions demonstrates that you’re listening and value their feedback. This engagement also allows you to gather additional insights directly from the source.

Analyzing both positive and negative feedback allows for a balanced and comprehensive understanding of customer perception. Positive comments highlight what’s working well and can inspire new ideas. Negative feedback, on the other hand, reveals areas that need improvement.

Be kind to your business, and treat both positive and negative feedback as opportunities to learn and grow.

Support Ticket Analysis

When analyzed systematically, support tickets can provide key insights for your voice of the customer analysis.

To derive meaningful insights from support tickets, you can:

Establish clear categories. Gather them into relevant groups such as product functionality issues and user experience feedback. This categorization lays the foundation.
Identify recurring patterns. Look for common themes within these categories. Are customers consistently reporting difficulties with a particular feature? Is there recurring praise for a specific aspect of your customer service?
Quantify inquiries. Track the frequency of different types of inquiries. If a significant percentage of tickets relate to a single issue, it warrants immediate attention.

How should you effectively organize customer tickets? We’d suggest:

Consistent tagging. Develop a standardized set of tags for quick categorization. For example, use tags like #BillingInquiry and #TechnicalIssue to easily sort and filter tickets. This system allows for rapid identification of common issues and trends.
Priority assignment. Implement a priority system to identify urgent trends and allocate resources effectively. By assigning priority levels to tickets, you can quickly focus on critical issues that require immediate attention.
Customer segmentation. Grouping tickets by customer type or subscription level can help you recognize segment-specific patterns. This approach allows you to understand the unique needs and challenges of different customer groups, enabling more targeted solutions and improvements.
Resolution time tracking. Monitoring issue resolution times is crucial for identifying areas of complexity or inefficiency in your support process. By tracking and analyzing these metrics, you can pinpoint bottlenecks and optimize your support workflow.

Customer support software can significantly streamline these efforts. Groove, our help desk software, offers features that make implementing these methods effortless:

Unified inbox. Groove centralizes all customer conversations from various channels (email, chat and social media) in one place, making it easier to track and analyze interactions.
Automated tagging. Groove can automatically apply tags based on keywords in the tickets, saving time and ensuring consistency.
Custom fields. Create fields for categories, priorities, and customer segments for easy sorting and filtering.
Smart views. Set up customized views that automatically group tickets based on your specified criteria.

Groove's features that boost your customer support team's efficiency

By leveraging Groove’s technology and the strategies above, you can transform your support ticket system into a structured feedback mechanism. Start your journey today by signing up to our free 7-day Groove trial!

Step 3: Analyze VoC Data

This is where your voice of the customer analysis truly comes to life, transforming raw data into insights that drive your business forward. Let’s get a better look at how to organize and analyze your voice of the customer data.

Organize Feedback into Categories

Start by creating a simple categorization system. Let’s go through this process using a hypothetical SaaS company that offers project management software.

Product/Service features. Feedback related to functionality, performance, and specific features. Example: “The mobile app is slow and crashes frequently.”
Customer support experience. Feedback on responsiveness, helpfulness, and ease of contacting support. Example: “I waited on hold for 30 minutes and still didn’t get my question answered.”
Website/App usability. Feedback on navigation, design, and overall user experience. Example: “The website is difficult to navigate, and I couldn’t find what I was looking for.”
Pricing and value perception. Feedback on pricing fairness, perceived value, and overall cost-benefit analysis. Example: “The price is too high compared to competitors’ offerings.”
Delivery or implementation process. Feedback on the speed, efficiency, and overall experience of receiving your product or service. Example: “The delivery was delayed by a week, and I received no notification.”

You’ll likely notice subcategories emerging. That’s awesome, because they can provide even more granular insights. Just keep in mind that your categories should be tailored to your specific business type.

Now that you’ve categorized your feedback, it’s time to organize it in a way that facilitates analysis. You don’t need complex tools for this. A simple spreadsheet with appropriate columns can work wonders.

Identify Common Themes and Patterns

Once organized, look for recurring issues or praise across different data sources. This involves:

Frequently mentioned keywords/phrases. Take note of words or phrases repeatedly appearing in negative or positive feedback.
Emotional patterns. Analyze the customer sentiment expressed in feedback. Is it mostly positive, negative, or neutral? This will provide insights into overall customer satisfaction.
Discrepancies between expectations and experiences. Identify cases where customer expectations don’t align with their actual experiences. For example, a customer expecting fast shipping might be frustrated by delays.

Step 4: Take Action (Implementing VoC Insights)

Finally! You get to transform customer feedback into tangible improvements for your business. Let’s see how you can ensure that your efforts have the maximum impact on customer satisfaction and business growth.

Create a Prioritized Action Plan

To make the most of your VoC insights, you need a structured approach. So let’s create a prioritized action plan.

Start by listing the key issues identified in your voice of the customer analysis. For better prioritization, consider using an impact vs. effort matrix:

High impact, high effort. These should be your top priorities that result in significant changes while requiring substantial resources. A good example is overhauling your website to improve usability.
High impact, low effort. These are your “quick wins”. They are changes that deliver significant impact with minimal effort. This could be updating your FAQs to address common customer questions.
Low impact, high effort. These are improvements that may not have an immediate impact but could provide a competitive edge in the long run. For example, developing a new product feature requested by customers.
Low impact, low effort. These can be tackled last as they have no tangible value.

For each priority, define clear, actionable steps. Be specific and ensure each action is measurable. For instance:

Priority: Improve Gantt chart load time.
Action: Optimize the Gantt chart algorithm to reduce load time by 50% for projects with over 100 tasks.

If you’re working with a team, assign each action item to a specific person or department. This creates accountability among your agents, and ensures that nothing falls through the cracks.

Give each action item a deadline too, but be realistic. Consider the complexity of the task, the possible risks, and the resources available.

Implement Quick Wins for Immediate Impact

Some issues you identify through VoC insights may be addressed quickly for immediate results. These are your “quick wins” – improvements that can be implemented rapidly with minimal resources, but still have a noticeable impact on customer satisfaction.

Quick wins are crucial because they:

Show customers you’re listening and taking action
Build momentum for your VoC program
Provide immediate value to both customers and your business
Boost team morale by demonstrating tangible progress

Let’s explore some examples of quick wins for small online businesses:

Update FAQ pages. Address frequently asked questions to reduce support tickets and improve customer self-service.
Improve pricing clarity. Make your pricing information easy to understand and accessible.
Streamline checkout process. Simplify your checkout process to reduce cart abandonment.
Enhance email templates. Improve email templates for clarity, helpfulness, and professionalism.

Implementing Quick Wins Efficiently

To maximize the impact of your quick wins:

Use existing tools. Leverage your current platforms. For instance, most e-commerce platforms allow easy updates to FAQ pages and email templates.
Test before full implementation. For website changes, use A/B testing tools to compare the new version with the old. For email template updates, send the new version to a small segment of your list first.
Monitor impact. Set up tracking for relevant metrics. Use tools like Google Analytics to monitor user behavior changes, and collect immediate feedback through short post-interaction surveys

Develop Long-Term Strategies for Ongoing Improvement

The true power of voice of the customer analysis lies in addressing complex issues that require sustained effort. Addressing these challenges is crucial for maintaining a competitive advantage, building lasting customer loyalty, and driving innovation in your products or services.

Here’s how to go about creating long-term improvement strategies:

Identify recurring themes. Start by diving deep into your VoC data. Look for issues that come up repeatedly across different feedback channels and customer segments.
Set long-term goals. Once you’ve identified these themes, set clear and measurable goals that align with them. Be ambitious but realistic.
Break down projects into phases. Large projects can be daunting. Breaking them into manageable phases helps maintain momentum and allows for adjustments along the way.
Establish checkpoints. Regular assessments are crucial to ensure you’re on the right track and allow for course corrections.

Also, understand that long-term changes can be unsettling for customers if not communicated properly. Therefore, keep them in the loop through:

Regular updates. Use newsletters, emails, or in-app notifications to share progress and explain how customer feedback is shaping improvements. In addition, be upfront about timelines and potential delays.
Using multiple channels. Leverage your different communication channels to relay information about planned changes to your customers.
Customer involvement. Consider beta testing groups, periodic surveys, and webinars to actively involve customers in the process.
Closing the loop. When implementing a significant change based on customer feedback, inform those who initially raised the issue and solicit their thoughts on the solution. This demonstrates that their voices are truly being heard.

Your Customers Are Talking. Are You Ready to Listen?

We’ve journeyed through the fundamentals of voice of the customer analysis, and now you’re armed with the tools to turn customer whispers into business roars. Remember, VoC isn’t a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing conversation that can revolutionize your business.

Feeling overwhelmed? Start small. A simple survey or a deep dive into your support tickets can yield surprising insights. As you see the impact, you’ll naturally want to do more.

Now, are you ready to amplify those customer voices? Groove can be your VoC megaphone. It gathers all your customer feedback in one place, helping you spot trends and turn insights into action.

Your customers are speaking and it’s time to tune in and thrive! Try Groove free for 7 days and start your VoC revolution today.