{"id":561,"date":"2023-01-18T12:29:18","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T12:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta74.thewebsitepreview.com\/wavicle\/dev\/?p=561"},"modified":"2025-11-17T04:55:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T04:55:58","slug":"the-future-of-voice-of-customer-5-trends-to-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta74.thewebsitepreview.com\/wavicle\/dev\/blog\/the-future-of-voice-of-customer-5-trends-to-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Voice of Customer: 5 Trends to Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether you\u2019re grabbing dinner with friends, staying at a luxury hotel, or purchasing a cup of coffee on the go, customer service always matters. After all, <\/span>91% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase<\/span><\/a> after a positive customer service experience. The stakes are high for companies to offer quality customer experiences \u2013 about 61% of customers said they would <\/span>switch to a new brand after just one bad experience<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s important that consumer-facing businesses know how their customers feel about their products or services. Thirty years ago, we relied on phone calls, mystery shoppers, and email surveys, hoping that our databases were current, and that people would respond. It was a spotty view at best.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As technology has evolved, we have many new ways to hear from and interact with our customers. As a result, it has become a constant endeavor to keep up with the deluge of customer feedback and gather it into useful formats and tools for analysis and action.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What we now call Voice of Customer (VoC) \u2013 the process of gathering feedback on customers\u2019 expectations, preferences, and experiences \u2013 has advanced to a point that we not only can know more about customer experiences with our brands, but we can predict what they want and how they feel about us \u2013 even when they don\u2019t outright tell us.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The evolution of VoC continues with new data sources and technologies constantly emerging to give us new and valuable insights. Here are some of the trends we\u2019re keeping our eyes on in the year ahead.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trend #1: Voice and text will increase quantity and quality of customer feedback\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Many companies are realizing that long surveys with a litany of questions and canned answers (from \u2018Extremely Happy\u2019 to \u2018Extremely Unhappy\u2019) result in a poor customer experience themselves!\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, many companies are focusing on simplifying the process of inviting customers to provide feedback. This means letting customers provide feedback about whatever they want, however they want. For example, Amazon simplifies the process to include an overall star rating, a title, an optional photo, and most importantly \u2013 a written review.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For customers who are all-thumbs when it comes to typing reviews, voice feedback technology is growing in popularity. For example, Edge of Texas Steakhouse uses\u00a0a third-party technology to engage customers through\u00a0 links or QR codes across all their marketing channels, which allows them to provide feedback easily, any time, any place.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The ability to provide audio feedback in-app or via a device like Amazon\u2019s Alexa has the potential to allow brands to increase the percentage of purchases for which they obtain feedback and improve the quality of the feedback. That\u2019s because it’s based on what is important to the customer (not a series of standard questions on topics they may or may not care about).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trend #2: Natural language processing will enable organizations to analyze a larger percentage of feedback more thoroughly<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

T<\/span>he increase in open-ended written and voice feedback underscores the importance of natural language processing (NLP)-based text analytics in VoC solutions. With NLP, computers can understand and interpret human language in its written and verbal forms. This includes feedback from social media, chat bots, and voice texts, and can dramatically increase the amount of customer feedback organizations are capable of analyzing.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although many packaged VoC solutions have been using text analytics for some time, the reality is that the abilities of many tools to analyze textual feedback is very primitive.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless of whether it is a visit to a restaurant, an online purchase, a travel experience, or a purchase from a brick-and-mortar retailer, customers typically provide feedback on multiple aspects of their purchase experience. Our experience shows that the average customer providing open-ended feedback includes feedback on 3-4 different aspects of the interaction.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, it is important for your analytics tool to be able to do the following:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n