Voice of the Customer or Customer Attitudes – Take a New Approach, says Nexidia

Jonathan Wax, VP, EMEA at Nexidia outlines five ways to use Interaction Analytics to reveal customer attitudes and turn up the volume on Voice of the Customer surveys

The term “Voice of the Customer” has been used in contact centres for many years and in many different ways. In reality Voice of the Customer is a market research technique often used at the outset of a new product launch or service offering to understand customer requirements to then be fed back into product or service development.

Another more relevant way to look at how customers feel about a company’s products and services is to take a closer look at customer attitudes with sentiment detection. Many organisations continue to use the tried and tested methods of qualitative and quantitative research, customer surveys and forum groups for Voice of the Customer projects. However, modern interaction analytics technology provides the means to measure certain speech components to unmask customers’ underlying attitudes during calls into a contact centre.

For voice calls there are three main ways to establish sentiment:
• A customer’s emotional state – gauged by voice tone, pitch, volume and speed: often referred to as “emotion detection”
• Cross talk – where a caller interrupts frequently and the agent and caller talk over one another: typically suggesting negative sentiment
• Laughter – when either a caller and/or an agent laugh this usually indicates positive sentiment.

Using full interaction analytics provides great insight and enables targeted performance and quality measures to be implemented. Therefore, having made the decision to use this type of analytics here are 5 top tips how to make the process simple yet effective:

1) Introduce the Human Factor – get leaders listening to call snippets on key customer issues. Build narrative to bring data to life and to form the basis for decision making for an improved customer experience

2) Competitive Analysis – identify when and how frequently customers mention alternative products or services and what level of sentiment they attach to competitors – positive, negative or neutral

3) Dissatisfaction – analyse “call buckets” for complaints, emotional mismatch or key terms/drivers associated with complaints. For example for billing calls if phrases such as “office hours” or “closed” seem to drive negative sentiment scores high; discovering how a billing department that is only available from 9-5 affects the experience of customers with payment issues enables an organisation to take the necessary steps to address this situation.

4) Drivers of Loyalty – create “call buckets” for advocates and detractors. Compare profile results. Listen further and deep-dive to determine root causes. Satisfied customers buy more, give good recommendations and refer their friends these “advocates” should be encouraged and looked after. Detractors also talk but in a negative way. A determined effort is needed to turn them around, especially in today’s world of social media when one simple post can do untold damage to corporate reputation.

5) Real-time Interventions – in order to turn detractors around, dissatisfied customers need to be quickly identified and customer complaints dealt with in a timely and effective manner. Confirmation is required that both sides regard the situation as dealt with and the issue is closed to prevent further complaints.

Taking a new approach to “Voice of the Customer” projects and gauging customer sentiment can have game changing results. However, they don’t come from just buying the latest technology. At Nexidia we believe analytics isn’t something you buy – it’s something you do. By thinking differently and following these 5 tips organisations will quickly understand what their customers think, why they are contacting them and most importantly how to improve service and the bottom line.

For further information visit www.nexidia.com

ENDS

About Nexidia

Nexidia provides customer interaction analytics solutions with patented technologies and breakthrough applications that enable companies to drive business transformation by capturing, making sense of, and using the full range of communications they have with customers. As the traditional voice of the customer expands from the contact center to include surveys, email, chats, and social media sites, Nexidia provides software and service expertise to help companies synthesize this data into both a tactical tool for operational improvements and a catalyst for strategic business transformation. For more information, please visit NEXIDIA

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