Voice of Customer Definition (VoC)

“Voice of Customer provides a detailed understanding of the customer’s requirements, a common language for the team going forward in the product development process, key input for the setting of appropriate design specifications for the new product or service, and a highly useful springboard for product innovation.” As defined by Abbie Griffin and John R. Hauser in a 1993 MIT Marketing Science paper, titled “The Voice of Customer.” 

VoC is a process used by organizations to capture and collect customer requirements/feedback through different sources.  Social media, online forums, customer care tickets, websites, etc. are important sources of information. This data is collected to further analyze and take actions based on the expectations of the customers.

In today’s era, customers are highly demanding than ever before. VoC is evolving as a measure to keep up with customer expectations. Companies have realized that listening to customers and rolling out actions based on the VoC is the first essential step towards Customer satisfaction. 

Voice of the Customer plays a critical role in driving company-wide efforts to deliver value and happiness to customers. 

Voice of Customer Advantages

VoC have proved to help organizations to retain and serve customers better.

Here are some advantages of performing VoC: 

1. Better decision making:

VoC provides better information about customers and their demands. Brands will be in a better position to make customer-centric decisions using VoC.

2. Improves Customer service:

With the help of real customer feedback, it is easier to augment product offerings and marketing strategies. When companies are making changes and improvements based on realistic expectations of the customers, it improves customer service. 

3. Encourages Innovation:

Companies are listening to the Voice of customers. This gives them access to customer expectations. Brands observe several trends and future requirements. This promotes a company to develop products that are inline with upcoming trends.  

4. Identifies brand crisis:

Brands can clearly know what customers feel and think about your brand with VoC data. Many a times, VoC gives an indication about the unhappiness of the customers thereby identifying the upcoming crisis. 

Voice of Customer Example

Frontier Airlines believes in delivering a great customer experience, but did not have access to customer opinions and expectations. They rolled out a VoC program wherein Frontier Airlines leveraged a digital Voice of Customer program to learn more about their website.

With the help of the VoC data, they quickly resolved undetected site navigation issues, and also enabled more than 10,000 users to self-serve.  With all this Frontier achieved a significant reduction in call center costs.