HOW TO DRIVE

CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY WITH
VOC AND AUTOMATION
EBOOK

INSIDE

The state of VOC in today’s commercial landscape

Why customer-centricity and personalization start with data
How to automate at scale without losing sight of brand values

DISCLAIMER: The information in this piece does not constitute as legal advice and so should not be regarded as such.
Foreword
Customer insights are one of the most effective and
established methods for determining the success of the
customer experience strategy and function. Whether
they are gathered pro-actively or reactively, only
customers can truly tell an organization how successful
its CX strategy is.
Last year, CX Network hosted CXN Live: Voice of the
Customer APAC 2022, during which customer experience
experts from Mastercard, Citibank, Vodafone and
Alibaba shared their insights on voice of the customer
(VOC) programs and how brands should apply
customer insights.
How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation
Contents
2
Reflecting on the event, this ebook features Foreword
insights from those CX leaders, as well as Globe page 2
Telecom, AIA Singapore, Mastercard, Citibank and
Alida. The ebook assesses the ways that brands
capture customer insights, both actively and
The state of VOC
passively, and how tools and technologies like artificial
page 3
intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data
analytics can help to automate VOC processes and
improve digital experiences.
How to 2.0 your customer centricity with VOC
This ebook also examines how customer insights can be page 5
applied to drive personalization at scale and how to do
so without surrendering brand values.
Automating in line with brand values
page 7
Conclusion
page 9
CX Network Calendar 2023
page 10
The state of VOC
Engaging customers in VOC programs can be
challenging. There are many ways customers
communicate their thoughts about their experience with
a brand and businesses need to be available to listen to
all insights at every customer touchpoint.
VOC insights can be garnered two ways, either actively
or passively. Active feedback entails a brand directly
soliciting feedback from customers, for example, by
asking about their experience after a purchase. This
method allows for feedback to be acquired at any time
and enables brands to gain insight into how customers
feel about specific issues or features. This method can be
particularly useful when brands are looking to understand
how a new application or initiative has been received by
customers, as they can get straight to the core of an issue
and make any improvements with speed.
There are several methods for actively gathering customer
feedback, the most common of which is through customer
surveys. Surveys are used regularly to determine VOC
metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer
Satisfaction Score (CSAT), however, they require that
brands know the right questions to ask.
Active feedback can also be gathered through other
methods, such as customer interviews or focus groups,
which essentially take surveys a step further and allow
brands to dig deeper into customer insights.
How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation
3
An example of customer surveys in action
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, telecoms Globe Collaborate, to better understand
companies played an essential role in helping customer sentiments and demands. Globe
people to learn, work and socialize during Telecom launched a survey for the Globe
lockdowns. In the Philippines, Globe Telecom Collaborate members, which uncovered useful
runs the country’s largest mobile network and an customer insights that offered actionable feedback
extensive fixed-line and broadband network for for key stakeholders across brand, content,
88 million customers. communications and leadership teams. The survey
has since become a quarterly occurrence.
To ensure its connectivity services were meeting
customer needs during lockdowns, however, the Globe Telecom’s customer survey strategy has
business needed to develop an understanding of informed a variety of tactical and strategic
how its customers’ needs were changing. executions, enabling new offers, product or service
prioritization, new optimized pricing structures
Globe Telecom turned to its insights community, set and the reworking of customer communication,
up in 2014 in partnership with Alida and dubbed branding and theming.
“You have to be able to track or map the entire topography of the customer’s life
span as a customer. From entry, through all of their interactions and how those
interactions impact the experience, and the potential of a repeat experience.”
Siva Thiagarajah
Director of B2B governance and strategy
Mastercard
The state of VOC
Passive methods for attaining customer insights are
initiated by the customer, making these insights some
of the most valuable due to the customer sharing
specific feedback. To gather these insights brands need
to be available on all touchpoints where customers
will share their feedback, to ensure they do not miss
out on crucial insights and ultimately leave customers
feeling frustrated. Common passive feedback methods
include live chat which can be automated in the form
of chatbots, contact centers, social media listening and
online reviews.
Gathering feedback in this way presents a major
challenge, as brands need to be alert in listening to
customers throughout their journey and across all
touchpoints, according to Siva Thiagarajah, director of
B2B governance and strategy at Mastercard.
Thiagarajah says: “You have to be able to track or map
the entire topography of the customer’s life span as a
customer. From entry, through all of their interactions and
how those interactions impact the experience, and the
potential of a repeat experience.”
How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation
“[We can only measure the customer experience]
by looking at the customer journey horizontally and
throughout all touch points in the organization rather
than vertically when there is a payment issue or a
dispute,” he continues.
CX practitioners will need every tool at their disposal to
analyze this customer data and action it in a way that
not only satisfies customers but makes sense for the
brand. With this in mind, many are looking to
digital tools with analytical capabilities, as is the case
at Mastercard.
Thiagarajah says: “Traditionally we use active and
passive surveys but we can also look into voice
analytics and data analytics, which look at the way
the words are used and structured in conversation [with
the customer].”
Using AI, ML and data analytics to
accelerate digital CX
AI, ML and data analytics are often intertwined when
it comes to boosting digital customer experiences, as
brands need AI and ML working together to get the most
out of the VOC they collect.
Jaslyin Qiyu, head of client marketing, channels
and content at Citibank, says that if brands want to
apply data analytics to understand their customers,
4
they need apply the right technology alongside
customer data. Both AI and ML have a key role to
play in the automation of digital CX and their
analytical and predictive capabilities allow for data
to be applied more intelligently to optimize the
customer experience.
According to Qiyu: “ML seeks out the data and creates
an algorithm, which is the AI that features a logic
[element]. Then your applications can automate the
delivery of that logic and use that in giving the right
offer, selecting the right messaging, creating the right
customer experience and so on.”
Qiyu notes, however, that the quality of data is
important when looking to apply these tools, expressing
the adage “garbage in, garbage out” in reference to the
impact of poor data quality.
Mastercard’s Thiagarajah adds: “The challenge is not
about getting data, but [getting] useful data. [Data] is
everywhere these days from customer interactions and
NPS surveys, to emails and customer chat. We have a lot
of information and with the data we need to know what
we have and where we want to get to, so we can figure
out our automation [strategy].”
The next section of this ebook looks at how brands
and organizations can drive customer-centricity by
leveraging automation in their VOC programs.
How to 2.0 your customer centricity with VOC
To become truly customer-centric brands need to
understand their customers on an individual level.
Research from 2022 shows 66 percent of consumers
expect companies to understand their unique needs
and expectations and 52 percent expect all offers to
be personalized. These data points demonstrate how
important it is to adopt a customer-centric mindset
and deliver personalized experiences that satisfy
customers’ demands.
According to Citibank’s Qiyu, delivering personalized
experiences begins with the data.
She says: “Data can provide insights on what customers
are buying and when, and the promotions that entice them
to buy the most. You can look at what competitors are
doing, too. On the other hand, data can provide marketing
with insights on the messaging of their promotions,
highlighting the promotions customers react positively to
and the channels they are more responsive on.”
With large customer bases however, collecting and
applying the right customer data at scale is extremely
challenging without carrying out the work to automate
personalization in the customer experience. Applying
customer data to large customer bases to personalize
experiences is challenging because of the scale and
manually tailoring each experience for every customer
is simply not feasible. Automation allows brands to scale
How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation
“Data can provide insights on
what customers are buying and
when, and the promotions that
entice them to buy the most.”
Jaslyin Qiyu
Head of client marketing, channels and content
Citibank
How data analytics can boost customer experience
Insurance provider AIA Group decided to tap into
customer voice data to support its customers’
health and financial goals. The objective was
to gain a deeper understanding of the evolving
needs, preferences and motivations of its
customers. AIA realized that simply analyzing
internal customer data was not enough and
recognized the need for a scalable and
sustainable solution that allowed it to ask the
right questions at the right time.
Using the Alida platform, the business built the
AIA360 Customer Community, a focus group that
allows for targeted and ad-hoc surveys, focus
5
groups and in-depth interviews with its members.
Through analysis of the insights generated by the
community, AIA has been able to develop optimized
customer marketing campaigns by turning to its
members to test out product messaging, offers and
designs for its customers.
By tapping into its customer community, AIA
became more agile in uncovering customer
insights used in the formulation and development
of products, services and digital experiences. On
average, the time taken to deliver actionable
insights was cut by a third and the company’s NPS
improved by seven points.
How to 2.0 your customer centricity with VOC
as it removes the need for humans in some elements
of personalization such as if a brand automatically
distributed recommendations based on customers’
purchase history.
The role of automation when
personalizing at scale
One of the most effective ways to improve VOC
programs and deliver personalized experiences at
scale is to automate. It is simply not possible to scale
continuously if customer insights need to be gathered,
analyzed and applied manually as the data sets
will inevitably become too large to handle in a cost-
effective manner.
The first step in this automation journey for any
brand should be to determine what is most important
to automate and, according to Mastercard’s
Thiagarajah, your customers can provide you with
this information.
Thiagarajah explained: “When there is a customer
need or an organizational need to improve at scale,
that is when we should invest in technology to
automate. [Brands can deploy] market research to
see whether it is valuable to automate a certain
process or go one step further, be customer-centric
and send out a poll to customers to ask what they
would like to see improved.”
How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation
6
From here brands can determine the areas of the important, please leave a message or call back’, before
customer experience with the highest potential to add the call cuts off.”
value if automated.
Customers demand the convenience that automation
Thiagarajah offered an example of automated CX that is offers but it is important to remember that they still
particularly common in the APAC region, which is the use wish to be treated as a human being, and only another
of QR codes to order food. Before this the process was human is truly capable of this.
entirely manual and imperfect, with service staff bringing
menus to customers which had to be updated regularly “When there is a customer need or
and could be damaged or dirty when the customer
an organizational need to improve at
receives them.
scale, that is when we should invest in
QR codes that lead to a virtual menu are an example technology to automate.”
of a relatively simple automation that entirely removes Siva Thiagarajah
the need for human involvement in a process and allows Director of B2B governance and strategy
customers to self-serve. A human will still be needed to Mastercard
bring the customer their food, but an entire task has
been removed from the staff workload, allowing them to
focus on keeping customers happy.
This further highlights the fact that some tasks cannot be
automated and Thiagarajah recommends maintaining
the human touch in such cases.
He says: “I am an advocate for automation but also
for ensuring that automation does not lose the human
touch when we work with our customers. For example,
an organization having lost the human touch is if a
customer calls them and the first thing that they hear
is ‘we are experiencing a high call volume, your call is
Automating in line with brand values
We have seen how automation offers convenience
and ease for brands looking to drive personalization
and roll out CX process improvements at scale. When
undertaking an automation journey, however, brands
need to ensure they do not lose sight of who they are.
Customers are, of course, more likely to engage with
brands that they consider to be customer-centric as
opposed to product-centric. When messaging and
promotions are automated at scale, however, brands
can often lose sight of what makes them customer-
centric. With this in mind, brands and organizations need
to give extra thought to exactly what they automate
and how they automate it.
How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation
Mastercard’s Thiagarajah offered five key tips businesses
should consider when developing a plan for automation:
Automate to complement your functions, not
to replace them. Brands should streamline and
1 balance human actions with AI and automation
and avoid losing that human touch.
Focus on quality over cost savings. When
2 quality is the focus, businesses begin to benefit
in customer acquisition through word of mouth.
A superior customer experience does more for
retention than promotions. The most important
3
interaction in any organization is when a
customer wants to talk to you.
Customers want ease, both in decision-
making and purchasing. This can be
4 achieved by making lives easier for customers,
such as by simplifying interactive voice
response (IVR) systems.
At the end of the day, it is the experience,
not the transaction that counts. We can
measure this experience by first looking at
5
the customer journey horizontally across
multiple touchpoints in the organization,
instead of vertically.
7
How businesses drive
automation with their brands and
customers in mind
David Hicks, facilitator of the CX Network Masterclass
and president of Tribe CX, says the customer and brand
must remain front of mind when delivering automation
projects in CX.
“You can use technologies like ChatGPT to completely
digitalize and automate your front end,” says Hicks.
“You could conceivably take all your service operations
out and automate them. Using some of these new
technologies you could do that relatively quickly.”
Hicks notes, however, that no matter how effective
automation is there will always be a need for humans in
CX.
“You have some parts of the service experience where
if you want to have the greatest number of people pass
seamlessly through your operation, it actually makes
more sense to include a human person,” he remarks.
“Brands often need physical branches as there are some
personas – and it is not just older generations – who want
to go into a store and actually sit down with a service rep
who can reassure them all is in order. You could not have
that conversation with an automated interface.”
Automating in line with brand values 8

For low-cost service or product providers however, “Brands often need physical branches as there are some personas – and it is
full automation can work Hicks says. This is because
not just older generations – who want to go into a store and actually sit down
automation will further allow brands or organizations to
reduce costs, which bolsters the primary selling point.
with a service rep who can reassure them all is in order. You could not have that
conversation with an automated interface.”
Hicks notes: “It is possible to automate everything and David Hicks
if you are a low-cost provider, you would automate as President, Tribe CX
much as possible. If you are a retailer, however, and the
only way people can interact with you is through an
automated digital interface then questions will arise
over whether or not you are delivering on your brand
ambition. You have to think about how it all sits together
and deliver that expensive, human element that makes
the most sense.”

According to Hicks, while such an approach is

expensive, strategic automation can help to free up the
funds needed.

“The key is to automate in the right places then

reallocate the financial benefit of automating,” Hicks
adds. “That means the money saved by automating
one channel can then cover the cost of adding a human
touch point at another part in the customer journey.”

It is important to strike a balance between the efficiency

and cost savings of automation and the need for more
human CX in your customer base. If businesses plan
effectively, cost savings from automation can drive the
investment in human CX.

How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation

Conclusion 9

Customer insights are one of the few ways brands can

determine how effective their experience is, but being
alert enough to capture all important customer insights
can be tricky. Automation is a powerful tool and brands
can deploy AI, ML and data analytics to capture and
66%
analyze customer insights holistically and at scale. expect companies 52%
to understand their expect all offers to
Brands need to identify high-value areas for automation unique needs be personalized
that offer convenience and ease in customer experiences and expectations
and free up organizational resources and staff.
When automating at scale businesses need to
ensure they do not lose sight of who they or their
customers are. Source: Salesforce 2022

This means organizations must take care to ensure

automation aligns with the values their brand has been
built on. This can be done by automating to complement
business functions rather than replacing them and
ensuring that automations are launched with the goal of
making lives easier for customers.

As cited on page five, 66 percent of consumers

expect companies to understand their unique
needs and expectations and 52 percent expect
all offers to be personalized, there is no longer any
excuse for delivering impersonal, cookie-cutter CX. The
customers of today know what they want and are well
aware that many businesses will do whatever it takes to
give it to them.

How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation

CX Network Calendar 2023 10

Focus Topic: Focus Topic: Focus Topic: Focus Topic:

JAN FEB MAR APR
Automation in APAC Digital CX Enhancing ROI Omnichannel

ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT

CXN Live: Predictive CX 2023
RESEARCH REPORT
CX Automation in APAC
How to Master Chatbots
CXN Live: Voice of the Customer 2023 CXN Live: Customer Self Service 2023 CXN Live: Customer
RESEARCH REPORT CXN Live: CX APAC Online 2023 Communications Management 2023
Digital CX RESEARCH REPORT RESEARCH REPORT
Calculating ROI in CX Omnichannel
EXPERT INSIGHTS EBOOK
Citizen Experience US and EMEA -
digitalizing public services
Citizen Experience APAC - smart cities
WEBINAR
Managing your distributed workforce in 2023

Focus Topic: Focus Topic: Focus Topic: Focus Topic:

MAY JUN JUL AUG
Global state of CX Retail Data, analytics and insights Automation

ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT

CXN Live: Customer Contact
Week Digital ANZ 2023
CXN Live: CX EMEA 2023
RESEARCH REPORT
Global State of CX Report
Telecoms
CXN Live: CX Automation 2023 CXN Live: Contact Centers 2023 CXN Live: CX Financial Services 2023
RESEARCH REPORT RESEARCH REPORT CXN Live: Omnichannel CX 2023
CX in Retail Customer Insights & Data Analytics US RESEARCH REPORT
WEBINAR and EMEA CX Automation Global
Building digital citizen experiences Customer Insights & Data Analytics APAC
EXPERT INSIGHTS EBOOK
Personalising CX in APAC

Focus Topic: Focus Topic: Focus Topic: Focus Topic:

SEPT OCT NOV DEC
AI in CX Contact centers Journey mapping Trends for 2024

ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT ONLINE EVENT

CXN Live: Customer Insights & Data
Analytics 2023
CXN Live: Voice of Customer APAC 2023
RESEARCH REPORT
AI in CX
Digital CX Trends APAC
EXPERT INSIGHTS EBOOK
Financial Services
WEBINAR
The end of cookies – the big changes
coming to data in 2024
CXN: CX North America 2023 CXN Live: Digital CX 2023 CXN Live: The future of CX
RESEARCH REPORT CXN Live: Future Contact Center RESEARCH REPORT
Contact centers Trends & Technology APAC 2023 Top CX Trends for 2024
RESEARCH REPORT WEBINAR
Customer Journey Mapping Inclusive UX
EXPERT INSIGHTS EBOOK
User Experience

How to drive customer-centricity with VOC and automation