A Voice of the Customer (VoC) program is critical for any organization. As with anything you can over-engineer and over complicate setting one up. Everyone mentions how important it is for them to listen to their customers, advocate for them and provide them with a fantastic experience.
There are just so many ways to go about building out this type of program. My suggestion would be to start small. Start collecting feedback and start listening to your customers, to your accounts, or whomever is interacting with your product or service.
There are countless ways to collect feedback, but at the bare minimum listen to what people are saying and doing and how they are interacting with you.
Then consider a collection method, and start gathering some data together for this.
Understand what you have and where you are starting from, and then work to improve upon the situation.
Build a culture around Customer Feedback
Work to build out a culture within your organization that cares and listens to customer feedback. Ensure it is something that is actually acted upon. Make sure people at the organization are targeted and measured on this. That will help ensure it is actually rolled out. If you target people on this, and build it into your company’s culture, it becomes part of the DNA within your organization.
While it is important on a company level, it’s really important to roll this out to your team. Your CSMs must care about what your accounts are telling them. Ensure you gather the feedback in a feasible way and you make sure the product team receives it. Do your best to ensure as a leader that everyone in the org knows you are getting it to different departments cross-functionally. That will ensure your team knows you’re listening to them while they listen to the customers.
If you have a product/engineering team that is unable to execute against this feedback for any reason (no time, no resources, bureaucracy, founders or leaders that won’t listen or don’t care for feedback) make sure it’s known with your team and others that you got that feedback to everyone. This is important for your CSMs to know how you “went to bat” for them.
In addition, it’s important to never stop this and never stop advocating for the customers. This is not a process that should ever stop regardless of how big you get as a company. Things will change over time, but if you get too big and stop listening to your customers, you’ll just be looked at like the cable company or some other utility that people have to suffer through working with.
As always, here is what Chat GPT had to say:
Building a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program is essential for a B2B SaaS company to gather actionable insights, understand customer needs, and drive continuous improvement. Here’s a strategic approach to building an effective VoC program:
- Define Objectives and Goals:
- Clearly define the objectives and goals of the VoC program. Determine what insights you want to gather and how you plan to use them to enhance the customer experience and drive business growth.
- Identify Key Stakeholders:
- Identify key stakeholders within your organization who will be involved in the VoC program, including executives, product managers, customer success teams, and marketing professionals.
- Select Appropriate Channels:
- Determine the most appropriate channels for collecting customer feedback. This may include surveys, interviews, focus groups, social media monitoring, customer forums, and direct interactions with customer success managers.
- Develop Feedback Collection Methods:
- Design feedback collection methods that are easy for customers to use and align with their preferences. Ensure that surveys are concise, relevant, and targeted to specific areas of interest.
- Create a Feedback Collection Schedule:
- Establish a regular schedule for collecting customer feedback to ensure consistency and timeliness. This may include ongoing surveys, periodic check-ins, or event-triggered feedback requests.
- Implement Feedback Analysis Tools:
- Utilize feedback analysis tools and platforms to aggregate and analyze customer feedback efficiently. These tools can help identify trends, sentiment, and areas for improvement.
- Act on Customer Feedback:
- Develop processes for systematically reviewing and prioritizing customer feedback.
- Implement action plans to address customer concerns, resolve issues, and capitalize on opportunities for improvement.
- Close the Feedback Loop:
- Communicate with customers to let them know their feedback has been heard and action has been taken.
- Provide updates on the progress of initiatives resulting from customer feedback to demonstrate your commitment to their satisfaction.
- Promote a Customer-Centric Culture:
- Foster a culture of customer-centricity across the organization. Encourage all employees to prioritize customer feedback and incorporate it into their decision-making processes.
- Measure Program Effectiveness:
- Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of the VoC program.
- Track metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, retention rates, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge the impact of customer feedback initiatives.
- Continuously Iterate and Improve:
- Regularly review and assess the VoC program to identify areas for improvement.
- Solicit feedback from internal stakeholders and customers to gather insights on how the program can be enhanced.
- Stay Agile and Adaptive:
- Be prepared to adapt the VoC program in response to changes in customer needs, market trends, or business priorities.
- Stay agile and proactive in addressing emerging issues and opportunities identified through customer feedback.
By following these steps, you can build a robust Voice of the Customer program that empowers your B2B SaaS company to gain valuable insights, drive customer-centric decision-making, and ultimately achieve greater success in the market.
Robert Statsky 