Customer programs are crucial — they align business goals with customer experience. These programs use data to offer insights that help create effective processes and support business objectives. Besides that, these programs make it possible to understand how customer experience impacts business goals.
So, what helps us dive deep into customer experience? Journey mapping. Surprisingly (or not), journey mapping can also improve your Voice of Customer (VoC) program.
In this article, we'll explore this topic, drawing insights from a recent online event with Caterina Mishina, a Customer Experience Leader and founder of Growth Navigator Consultant Agency.
Contents
Before you proceed, here’s a fantastic recording of the event for you to watch either on its own or alongside reading this article:
Why do we love VoC programs? You already know the answer: they connect business goals with customer experience. When businesses understand what their customers experience, they can use this information to improve their operations and strategies.
How does it work? For example, an organization can streamline customer service processes, tailor marketing campaigns to meet customer needs better, and develop products that solve actual (and even the most burning!) customer problems.
Voice of Customer programs are incredibly valuable for both businesses and customers. However, they can be challenging to implement. These programs often require extensive customization and high-quality resources. That can make them seem expensive, time-consuming, and complicated. The complexity can sometimes discourage customer experience professionals from fully embracing or effectively executing these programs.
Our goal is to simplify a customer experience program. We encourage you to take meaningful steps, starting small and gradually building up. And don’t worry: we will provide an algorithm and a template to guide you. Whether you're creating your first, second, or third VoC program, these easy steps will help you succeed.
Below is a simple four-step algorithm to help you improve your customer experience program. It combines customer-related metrics, including the well-known net promoter score (NPS).
First, we have NPS, a good indicator of customer loyalty. Often, though not always, there's a strong link between NPS and financial metrics, making it particularly useful and easy for businesses to understand.
The next three steps are retention rate, churn rate, and customer feedback analysis. Each of these metrics is crucial and should not be overlooked. Retention rate helps us see how well we keep our customers, while churn rate shows how many customers leave. Customer feedback analysis gives insights into why customers are happy or unhappy.
Voice of Customer programs bridge business goals and customer experience. While NPS is valuable, it shouldn't be used alone because it doesn't explain why customers are loyal. Therefore, supporting NPS with other metrics is essential for a complete understanding.
It's also important to remember that correlation does not imply causation. You need to verify the correlation multiple times to fully understand its implications. Segment analysis is also crucial, as it helps identify the root causes of customer behavior.
While NPS is the foundation for a VoC program, it's just the starting point. By combining NPS with other metrics, we can gain deeper insights into customer loyalty and overall satisfaction.
“This multi-metric approach is essential for creating an effective customer experience strategy.”
Retention rate is a crucial financial metric often linked with NPS. It shows a business's overall health and sustainability. Keeping existing customers is generally more cost-effective than getting new ones. Loyal customers provide valuable feedback simply by using products and services. Satisfied customers are more likely to stay loyal and recommend the brand.
A high retention rate indicates a good product-market fit, meaning the product meets customers' needs. Including retention and churn rates in the algorithm helps ensure every customer is treated well; churn rates can significantly impact revenue. This comprehensive approach helps understand and improve customer loyalty and satisfaction.
It's also crucial to understand why customers leave a product. Identifying the reasons behind their departure, what alternatives they prefer, and what they need can provide valuable insights for growth and improvement. While reaching out to these customers can be more challenging than those who remain loyal, their feedback is precious. They can help identify gaps in the product and areas needing improvement.
Churn also directly affects metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV). Higher churn rates increase CAC and decrease CLV, making it essential to address the reasons behind customer turnover. By understanding these dynamics, businesses can better meet customer needs, reduce churn, and enhance overall performance.
Both retention and churn metrics are highly valued, and a retention-based and churn-informed strategy is recommended. This positive product development mindset focuses on growing retention while monitoring churn and has proven effective for many.
The final point is customer feedback analysis. Customer feedback is one of the most valuable aspects of customer experience work, and most organizations likely have tools and methods for analyzing it.
PRO tip: When you don’t have enough clients to use NPS, leverage the Customer Effort Score.
Remember, this is just an algorithm, not a complete template for a VoC program. The template includes four steps, incorporating this algorithm to create a comprehensive and actionable customer program. You'll see it below.
Here's a simple guide to building your Voice of Customer program in four steps.
Let's take a closer look at each.
Start by defining what you want to achieve, usually based on financial goals like retention, market share, new customers, or revenue. Figure out your business needs, your management aims for, and what you want to build and grow in your company.
Financial goals are great because they are measurable and give a clear view of all business areas. This clarity helps in allocating resources effectively.
Create a comprehensive customer journey map that aligns with your goals. It involves identifying key touchpoints and understanding customer interactions across these points.
Set up a process for regularly reviewing the data from your map. Use this data to gain insights and make smart decisions. To ensure a robust analysis process, emphasize the importance of having three key components: tools, a dashboard, and a responsible person. Missing just one of these elements can lead to failure. The right tools will help you collect and analyze data efficiently, a dashboard will provide a clear visual representation of your data for easy interpretation, and a responsible person will oversee the process, ensuring that insights are acted upon and that the system operates smoothly.
Ensure all teams are involved and understand their roles in the mapping process. Effective collaboration leads to better implementation and more meaningful results.
Following these steps, you can create a robust customer program that drives growth and aligns with your business objectives.
But before implementing the algorithm, it’s crucial to check if your company is ready and willing to grow. This is important because customer experience practices are all about growth. Effective CX practices are vital for any growth. Assessing your company's growth readiness helps determine the resources needed to reach your goals.
Here are some key points to consider during this exercise:
After setting a goal and understanding your objectives, you can move on to creating a journey map.
By following these tips, you can create an effective map that shows your customer's journey and provides valuable insights for improvements.
The main goal of creating such a map is to organize customer feedback, which often comes from various sources and can be overwhelming. A map is the best tool for making sense of this feedback.
Caterina suggests the mapping approach should be aligned with the "Triple A, Triple R Funnel" — a method from business analysis. This method covers six key steps in every business and customer journey:
This funnel can be applied to any business and customer process and provides a clear and organized customer journey.
Caterina’s map example includes several layers tailored to an online store.
It captures critical aspects of an online retail business without sensitive information. Here’s a breakdown of the map:
Each step connects to the others, providing a complete view of the customer journey. This approach helps organize feedback and pinpoint areas for improvement and growth.
Example:
All these stages are mapped out to see the entire customer journey. Sometimes, specific touchpoints are analyzed in detail, but often, they are viewed together for a complete overview.
Pain points and gain points: Based on customer feedback, these show negative and positive experiences. For example, a common pain point at the Revenue stage is a complicated checkout process. To improve, offering easy payment options can be a gain point.
Mapping out customer feedback with these pain and gain points helps decide what actions to take. For example, the process needs to be streamlined if customers have trouble at checkout.
All feedback sources and key metrics, such as churn rate, customer effort score, net promoter score, and retention rate, are included. These metrics help analyze and improve the customer journey.
Metrics like product-market fit or market share can be mapped to improve the acquisition stage. This shows how different elements work together. The journey map is an internal tool that visualizes the movement and development of products and services. It is mainly used by the internal team as it contains detailed information.
Voice of Customer programs and customer journey mapping are powerful tools that enhance your business’s customer experience strategy. VoC programs provide valuable insights into customer perceptions, while CJM helps organize these insights into actionable steps.
By aligning VoC programs with a structured CJM, you can optimize every aspect of the customer journey. The four-step approach—NPS, retention rate, churn rate, and customer feedback analysis—lays a strong foundation for understanding customer health and identifying improvement areas.
Integrating these methodologies helps streamline operations and provides a comprehensive view of customer experiences. This combined approach enables you to address pain points effectively and create targeted actions that drive growth and satisfaction. While this algorithm isn't a panacea, it serves as a starting point for interpreting customer feedback, which is the only meaningful thing. Remember, there is no single correct way to interpret customer feedback. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; the real failure is doing nothing with the feedback you receive. Act on it, learn from it, and continuously improve your processes.
About the speaker
Caterina Mishina is a Customer Experience Leader and Growth Navigator Consultant Agency founder.
As a VoC Fairy, she drives business outcomes by enhancing customer experience. Her secret power is in a workable combination of qualitative and quantitative CX methods.
She aligns customers' needs, business goals, and product growth into the strategy of success.
With over ten years of experience, she's developed successful products, cultivated customer loyalty in B2B, and coached C-suite leadership with an unwavering human-centric approach.