Capture your customer’s voice …

Capture your customer’s voice …

There are a number of different angles on how to leverage the voice of the customer to get better competitive positioning whether you build it into inbound marketing , outbound marketing, the product management process, customer support, or a different team’s process. Some of these take the general customer service approach and utilize tools for general customer support. Of course, the feedback cuts across the organization beyond just serving the immediate needs of the customer. So, it just depends on the most important goals of the feedback and what you are going to do with it.

Historically, customer interviews have been done directly or indirectly through focus groups, face to face meetings, phone surveys, email surveys or a combination. This is the proactive approach to obtaining the voice of the custom.

Surveys (Face to Face, Phone, Email, Online, etc…)

These are oldies, but the most beneficial. Whether this is through focus groups or indirect surveys, this will get you the answers you are looking for through structure and the ability to ask the questions that customers might not be proactively answering through other means. This helps you get at the root issue.

* Vovici (advanced and costly)
* Survey Monkey (simple and cheap)

Customer Service Portal and Case Tracking

Most companies have some sort of system and tools in place to manage customer service whether it is dealing with product, service, or other issues. While these systems can tell a lot, this does not tap into those who are the silent customers that might not be actively working on their problems, and often these inquiries are the very happy customers or very displeased customers.

* Kayako (extensive functionality)
* Salesforce (limited functionality but easy to incorporate into your customer management process)
* RightNow
* Attensity

Brand Monitoring & Social Media Monitoring

This is a passive means of aggregating feedback from those engaged with the company. This may come from social media sites where the company has proactively created a presence or may even be discussed without a proactive presence. Certain social media sites are extending their platforms to offer analytics around their solution, but this is often done through these sites opening up through their API and letting other companies build analytics to hook into their networks. Going with a third party versus through the site (if possible and within budget) is typically better because you get more exposure to more buzz around your company rather than trying to aggregate all of the information from the individual sites yourself.

* iGoogle/Google Alerts
* Facebook ( and tools related)
* Twitter (and tools related)
* FriendFeed
* SocialMention, Serph, or Keotag
* Filtrbox

Customer Feedback Tools

This is a great way to give customers the ability to interact with your team and the community. However, you should have a clear sense of what you want posted and the level of transparency you want. Some portals allow visibility to everyone where as others allow feedback that only the company can access. Below are some of the more interesting, newer tools that are getting traction.

* Kampyle
* Getsatisfaction
* Bazaarvoice

Product Development /Idea Management/Innovation Management

While all of these are by no means the same tool, many of them interface with customers with the purpose of improving the product. These can be internal tools or used externally to manage product development ideas to ensure that companies are incorporating the true needs and wants of the customers, prospects, and lost customers. These may have proactive campaigns or ongoing passive portals.

* VersionOne
* Accept Software
* Brightidea
* Spigit
* Idea exchange (Salesforce)
* Imaginetik

Each of these angles is very different and there are a lot of nuances. These are only a sample of tools, but there are many more out there. Regardless of the tool you end up using, the more important components are understanding your key goals that you want to accomplish, are you able to measure and track these goals, and which tools will support your needs. Enough said on this today…