Signal VoC Blog

Companies know that understanding the ins and outs of their customer journey will prepare them to provide what customers need to succeed at the right time and place. But many CX teams know that understanding the customer journey represents a journey unto itself — customer journeys are infrequently linear, and there are inevitably questions, distractions, and obstacles that arise along the way. The plot increasingly thickens when you have multiple customer segments and multiple teams that shape the customer journey. 

With more companies than ever competing on customer experience, many companies are investing in dedicated CX teams. With so many different functions orbiting the customer experience, there’s some debate about what internal resources and expertise should become the launchpad for new CX functions. In Usersnap’s 2020 State of Customer Experience report, 60% of B2B respondents and 67% of B2C respondents said that the Support function has the greatest investment in CX. 

46% of Customer Success teams use health scores to forecast churn and renewals (CSM Practice). But health scores are only as good as what you put into them and the actions that they’re able to drive. We recently hosted Kristi Faltorusso, VP of Customer Success at ClientSuccess, and Founder of CS Real Simple, for a session to unpack what makes a high-performing health score. Kristi defines health scores as a metric-based scoring mechanism used to predict customer behaviors. Health scores represent “your organizational DNA. They describe what makes your customers unique in how they behave in ways that support your team’s ability to intervene appropriately.” Here are our top three takeaways from the session:

Understanding customer satisfaction is more important than ever — the CSAT (“Customer Satisfaction”) metric is a popular tool, as part of a balanced picture, that many organizations take to help them get there. 

Since 2003, many companies have relied on Net Promoter Score (“NPS”) for insight into how happy and loyal their customers are. However, with customer expectations rising and customer experience reigning as today's primary competitive differentiator, many CX leaders are debating the efficacy of the NPS metric in measuring customer relationship health. 

“The whole system is established toward making sure we win the game instead of being champions at the end of the season, and that’s where Support comes in. Support makes you the champion at the end of the season.” 

“I believe CX can be a department and be responsible for the plumbing and the wiring, but it also needs to be baked into every team.”

Organizations that seek to leverage Voice of Customer (“VoC”) for a better customer experience often face a paradox — striving for company-wide ownership can diminish accountability as teams continue working toward their individual KPIs. Still, without whole-company ownership, meaningful action is rarely taken. Our panelists, Zach Bouzan-Kaloustian, VP Member Experience at Wild Alaskan, Rossana Parrotta, Customer Success Executive at Cisco, and James Varughese, Senior CX Specialist at Intuit, offered valuable insight on taking individual ownership of the customer voice, inspiring cross-functional ownership, and tailoring your approach to VoC to meet you where you are. 

47% of CX leaders believe it’s only getting harder to please customers. One potential reason for this is that organizations don’t see the same version of the customer experience that their customers see. CX organizations are working harder than ever to build offerings and processes that reflect the actual customer experience rather than their assumptions. However, this is easier said than done.

We discussed this dynamic with a panel of Customer Experience and Success leaders to understand what it takes to build for the real customer experience. Our panel featured Sarah Bierenbaum, Founder of Sarah B Consulting, Chad Horenfeldt, Director of Customer Success at Kustomer, and Leslie Reyes, Founder of Road Warriors Consulting. Here are three key takeaways from the discussion:

“A new way of thinking first requires a fresh way of seeing or measuring the world around us.” 

An effective Voice of Customer strategy can have many moving parts. As a result, organizations with industry-leading CX often have an executive sponsor to ensure that VoC initiatives result in impactful action and don't stop at listening.

“Surprises are great for birthdays, but not when you’re running a SaaS business.”

"Great things in business are never done by one person; they are done by a team of people.”         - Steve Jobs

“I spent years hearing customers telling us exactly what we need to know, but that was overlooked because we didn’t have a process to capture it.”

Let me know if this sounds familiar. Your company has developed a new feature. It’s launch day and internal enthusiasm is high. Out goes the newsletter, the social media posts, and the feature is turned on. 

Last week we welcomed Kristi Faltorusso, VP of Customer Success at Intellishift, as our speaker for Signal VoC’s inaugural Member Spotlight event.

Customer experience professionals know the world of VoC is changing. Their roles have become less about mobilizing surveys and more about listening and acting on what customers are saying in their own words. And as these roles evolve, more organizations than ever are competing primarily on CX.