The Three Types of Feedback Data Essential for Effective VOC

You may have heard of the concept of ‘second-screening.’ It’s where someone might be scrolling their phone or using a tablet while also watching something on TV. Viewers could be paying attention to the dialogue, but, inevitably, the subtle cues, background details and unspoken emotions are likely missed.

Just as you might only appreciate Succession or Squid Game on a surface level if you’re simultaneously scrolling through Instagram, organizations only using a small proportion of available feedback to shape their CX strategies are missing key aspects of their customers’ journeys.

In order to get a more holistic view, companies need to listen to and analyze every available data source.

A robust voice of the customer (VOC) program thrives on a deep understanding of customer interactions. Soliciting direct feedback will offer a window into an interaction. However, without analyzing what else has contributed to that customer’s experience, it’s hard to get a full understanding of consumer behavior.

Where and How Companies Should Be Listening

Customer data collected from every touchpoint, in every format, is the key to a great VOC program. This behavioral data falls into two categories: structured and unstructured.

1. Structured data: This is information that is highly organized and easily searchable.
2. Unstructured data: This has no defined format, which means it’s not as straightforward to analyze.

Both types are crucial in a voice of the customer program—with the two combining quantifiable insights with rich qualitative context. The data is collected by organizations in three different feedback formats: direct, indirect and inferred.

What Is Direct Feedback?

Direct feedback is structured data from when a customer interacts directly with a company—such as responding to a voice of the customer survey or giving CSAT and NPS ratings.

There are plenty of avenues to share feedback: whether that’s a “how are we doing?” popping up in your email inbox, being asked directly in an IVA conversation, or in-person during a store visit. These surveys are an opportunity for customers to tell a brand exactly how they feel about an interaction, helping CX leaders understand a specific experience at a particular stage of a journey.

What Is Indirect Feedback?

This is unstructured data—customers discuss an experience, but the feedback isn’t solicited by the company. Indirect feedback happens on online review sites, social media comments and mentions, as well as via email—often from frustrated customers.

What Is Inferred Feedback?

Inferred feedback refers to insights gained from customer interactions across engagement channels without relying on solicited or unsolicited feedback. It’s the result of tracking customer behavior and sentiment, delivering context around survey responses or why someone acted in a particular way during or after an interaction.

Inferred feedback reveals preferences or trends without the need to seek a customer’s direct feedback.

You Need to Move Beyond the Survey

Taking actions on customer behavior requires confidence, which can only be achieved from continuous, reliable and complete data.

There’s only so much insight that can be drawn from direct feedback. Surveys remain a vital element of a modern VOC program, but the data obtained from them isn’t enough. To get the whole picture, organizations need to combine the structured data from surveys with the unstructured data coming via omnichannel interactions.

This is achieved by unifying data in a single place so it’s possible to get a holistic understanding of the customer journey and pinpoint any trends or recurring issues.

Uncovering Trends with Best-of-Breed Solutions

Let’s take the example of a bank.  A customer might interact with a financial institution for several reasons—money transfers, browsing services or applying for a mortgage, for instance. A wide variety of channels can help carry out these actions.

Your analytics might uncover a drop in CSAT or NPS ratings for customers applying for mortgages online, coupled with a spike in contact center volume. Using insights gathered from AI-powered transcription, digital, speech and text analytics, you can understand the context behind why a customer responded and acted the way they did.

Market-leading VOC solutions will provide insights into any recurring themes and link the feedback from structured and unstructured data to the website issue.

In this situation, going beyond the survey has taken the insight from “customers applying for mortgages aren’t happy” to “we have the context for the poor NPS scores and can fix the issue in real time”.

A website issue can impact your revenue. A poor experience can lead to customer churn, as well as higher contact center costs through increased volume. The ability to capture and unify structured and unstructured data gives you the tools to minimize the negative impact on revenue and CX.

What You Need for An Effective VOC Program:

1. Move Beyond the Survey: You need unstructured data to give context to the survey responses.
2. Connect Structured and Unstructured Data: Layer in additional feedback sources to give you the “why” behind consumer behavior.
3. Monitor CX Data and Act in Real Time: Don’t just capture the data. Ensure you analyze the trends and take swift, corrective action.
4. Leverage AI-Powered CX Automation: Avoid the need for manual fixes using automated actions to carry out the processes as much as possible.
5. Drive Automated Actions Across the Enterprise: Ensure every team and manager is focused on continuously elevating CX.

Discover how Verint VoC enables you to listen, analyze and act on feedback and deliver exceptional experiences for your customers.