In the final installment of our 12 trends in Voice of the Customer for 2012 we discuss the grow of social and how organisations will begin make their customer experience efforts part of their company strategy while empowering people throughout the organisation to use customer insight effectively.

Making it fit with the people in the organisation

Over the past number of years the methods of data collection and analysis have begun to reach a level of maturity. The focus will begin to move to how the people throughout the organisation use the information generated by voice of the customer programs and how they interact with the customers themselves to make the solution fit.

Becoming part of Company Strategy

Many companies such as GlaxoSmithKline have begun to use customer satisfaction data as the basis for their employee’s remuneration packages.This trend will continue with customer satisfaction eventually getting profit parity within organisations and strategic decisions being made based on customer insight provided by a Voice of the Customer program.

Making Sense of Social

Social media has grown as a customer feedback channel within Voice of the customer systems. The trend in 2012 will be for companies to do more than just react to feedback given through social media. Being proactive will become the focus to ensure the deeper issues within the company are resolved. Part of this will be linking customer’s social media profiles to their profiles within the system in order to gain a deeper insight into their feedback.

The Next Installment in our series of 12 Trends in Voice of the Customer for 2012 looks at the crunching large amounts of data and examining customer preferences to make the customer experience part of the brand:

Making customer insight part of the brand experience

Customer feedback is increasingly being used in company strategy and has become a rich source of insight. As collecting feedback becomes more frequent, companies will look to integrate feedback gathering into the brand experience. The methods of collection will be matched to the brand with integration into the total experience in mind.

Data Rich Environments

With the increase in available channels for customer feedback, a huge amount of data is being gathered from customers. Channels such as social media create a large amount of useful data, but there is a necessity to analyse this data in order to gain insight. An increase in the complexity and speed of analysis will allow companies to learn more about their customers.

The right channel for the right customer at the right time

Customers will offer feedback on different areas of service based on when they are asked for feedback. By using event based surveys and taking into account the customer’s preference, the maximum amount of useful feedback can be gathered from each customer.