36-voice-of-the-customer-toolkit

Voice of the customer:
Toolkit
What is covered in this course?
Introduction
Introduction Fundamentals of voice of the customer

(VOC)
- What is covered in this course?
- What is the purpose of this - What is VOC?
course? - Examples of VOC.
- The importance of VOC.
- Scenario.
What is covered in this course?
Introduction
VOC tools Close out
- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups. - Review of key learnings.

- Customer Segmentation. - Surveys. - Hints & tips.
- Interviews. - Kano Analysis. - Thank you.
- Point of use observations. - Critical to Quality Tree.
What is the purpose of this course?
Introduction
Introduction
- What is covered in this course?

- What is the purpose of this
course?
What is the purpose of this course?
Introduction
- It was compiled by an instructor who has worked in Business Improvement for many years.
- Key to many of the changes I have embedded in the companies I have worked for is understanding the voice of the customer.
- In this course, you will establish exactly what the voice of the customer is, how it can be established and the tools you can deploy in
order to establish it successfully.
- The course seeks to show you the real value adding nature of understanding your voice of the customer, and highlighting why it is
needed so crucially in project and business as usual work.
- We will explore the tools by establishing what they are, giving you a step by step guide of how to build them, then going through a
demonstration based on our scenario example to enable you to see how the tools are deployed in real life situations.
- At the end of this course, you will be able to establish effective voice of the customer activities, understand which tools to deploy at
the right time and how to educate others on this approach.
What is VOC?
Fundamentals of voice of the customer
Fundamentals of VOC
- What is VOC?
- Examples of VOC.
- Scenario.
What is VOC?
- The voice of the customer is literally what it says on the tin – it is the customer’s voice, captured.
- What this means is spending time to:
1) Listen to your customer.
2) Record what they have said.
3) Deliver based on their feedback.
- The voice of the customer is your opportunity to learn what your customer wants, what their changing needs are, how they
have been impacted by your products or what they may want next.
- It is an opportunity for customers and consumers to have their voice heard, impacting potential future product and service
development or the improvement of current offerings.
- The way in which you find, capture and address the voice of your customers can vary greatly.
What is VOC?
- Capturing the voice of the customer is a super critical step when running any project. The customer is the one, often, who
will be impacted by any changes or projects initiated by the organisation.
- There are many ways in which the voice of the - Regardless of the nature of data collection, the purposes behind
customer can be captured: each one of these are generally consistent:
• Direct engagement (surveys, interviews, focus groups). • To understand what your customers actually care about.
• Organic engagement (feedback on the interactions • To understand what your customers want to see out of your
between your company and theirs). products and services going forward.
• Sales performance (which products do customers like and • To understand why your customers are behaving in the way they are
dislike). when it comes to engagement with your organisation and your
• Referrals and retention. products / services.
• To set goals and priorities consistent with the needs of the
customer.
• To put customer satisfaction at the heart of your response.
What is VOC?
- A key line of questioning I pose to companies I work with all of the time is:
• How can you deliver a product you know the customer truly wants if
you haven’t taken their voice into consideration?
• How can you deliver products and services to satisfy your customer
needs when you don’t know what those needs are?
• How can you plan to improve or change your product offering if you
don’t know what or where the pull from the market is coming from?
- The aim of the voice of the customer exercise is to do one key thing: give you insight!
- Once you have conducted your VOC exercises, you have insight and information to help you make better decisions.
- Whether that is around what products or services to offer, how best to offer them, what problems your customers want solving
or what features they want included, you can now make better, more informed decisions based on the information provided.
- This increases the likelihood of better customer satisfaction.
What is VOC?
Distinction
- When talking about the “customer” in voice of the customer, we can take this two ways.
1) The customer is the person or company purchasing your products or services.

2) The stakeholder working with you on internal processes or matters.
Examples of VOC
Fundamentals of VOC
- What is VOC?
- Examples of VOC.
- Scenario.
Examples of VOC
- When it comes to understanding your voice of the customer, there a range of examples you can begin to explore.
- Some of these we cover off in the tools section of this course, but there are additional ones we can explore.
- Customers complaining about your products, services or

how they have been delivered is a piece of VOC.
- Even though we do not want to see complaints arising,
dissecting what is in the complaint is crucial.
- Rather than customers silently leaving your business,
making a noise enables you to make a change.
- A customer complaints: “The operators I spoke to on the
Website behaviour
phone could not answer my query adequately enough.”
- This complaint enables you to change your approach to - Understanding how customers are engaging with your
training, retrain those in need and identify the “who”. website is a critical piece of information today.
- This gives you insight into what pages they are visiting most,
which videos and sections they find the most useful.
-
Customer complaints It also enables you to see which products and pages have
the least interest or approaches have the least traction.
- By having this information, you can focus your efforts more
on those areas and approaches in favour.
- You can also remove certain approaches and products, or
improve the customer experience on the website.
Examples of VOC
- Seeing online reviews can educate you on how people see

your products, services and how you deploy them.
- There can be a tendency for people to leave reviews when
they have had an outstanding experience, but also when
their experience has been significantly below par.
- Knowing this, you can really focus on those products which
are receiving the best and worst attention, improving the
worst and expanding the traits of the best.
- You can also quantify online reviews to work out trends in
Word of mouth
the experience of different parts of your business.
- The traditional word of mouth way of getting new
customers is still very much alive today.
Online reviews - When speaking with your new clients, asking them “and
how did you hear about us?”
- This will enable you to see if your customers are
recommending you organically to others.
- When this is happening, this is a very good sign, and you
can focus on the why here.
- If it is not happening, there could be something lacking
from your services – delivering as expected, but not going
above and beyond what your customers would expect.
Examples of VOC
- Declining sales are the silent way for you to see if

something is wrong with your current offering.
- Customers may not directly complain about your products
or services, but they decide to vote with their feet.
- This could indicate your offering is no longer the best in the
market, isn’t satisfying changing needs, has deteriorated in
quality or has been delivered in a poor way.
- If faced with this VOC, more work is going to be needed to
understand the why here.
Rise in sales
- You know there is an issue, but what?
- A rise in sales is also a silent way for you to see if something
has changed with your products in recent times.
Decline in sales - Unlike with a decline, this can often be linked to something
you may be more aware of.
- You may have recently launched a new marketing campaign
and it has worked well. You may have launched a new
product line or amended your current offering.
- It could also indicate what you’re offering is now more in
demand today after a changing market.
- Whichever it is, rising sales indicates what you are doing is
working, and more of the same would work for now.
Examples of VOC
Additional options include:
- Outputs from customer surveys

- Outputs from interviews and focus groups
- Comments in emails to and from staff
- Live chat conversations
- Customer success team work
- Response to marketing campaigns
- Social media feedback
- The range of tools available (to be discussed later)
The importance of VOC
Fundamentals of VOC
- What is VOC?
- Examples of VOC.
- Scenario.
Why you should conduct VOC exercises
- Understanding your customers voice is critical to the success of your business.

- As mentioned before, how can you truly offer your customer products and services they want if you don’t actually know what it is
they want?
- Not only this, how do you know the way in which they want their products and services delivered? Through what medium?
Increasingly people want their products and services delivered in a tailor made way, and companies that do not offer this can
sometimes be held back by this restriction.
- I have worked with many clients – some who get this, and some who do not. Those that get it spend a lot of time and effort:
• Engaging with their customers on a regular basis.
• Conduct CSAT surveys and track the trends over the longer term.
• Conduct market research before launching new products or services.
• Learn from what their customers are telling them and use that insight to make better products, services and decisions.
- For me, the importance of conducting this exercise could not be more stark. This importance and the benefits include the following:
Knowledge and insight Understand which of your strategies are working (or not)
- Conducting this work enables you to make - To promote, launch and advertise your
better, more informed decisions based on products, you will use a range of strategies
fact. to see what works best.
- These decisions permeate not just products, - Your customers voice is a direct way of
but how they’re delivered, customer service, understanding this – even if what has
pricing etc. currently been done works.
- Could something be done still better?
Understand which of your services are best received Improve customer experience
- Sale performance alone does not guarantee - How your services are delivered to the
this. There may be demand for this product, customer is extremely important.
but does it have the highest rating? - This approach enables you to understand, to
- You can measure your ratings against others learn and to deploy approaches that change
in the market to understand what you’re the experience of your customers for the
doing right and what could be done better. better.
Help with new product / service development Fix that which is not currently working
- The VOC gives you great insight into not only - You can also get insight into what isn’t
your current customers, but future customers. working.
- This enables you to change or improve your - Whether that be process, customer service,
current offering, or launch entirely new lines product or service, if something is broken,
and approaches for the future. more often than not customer feedback will
- This enables you to keep up or get ahead of highlight this in some way.
the game of your competitors.
Understanding marketing effectiveness Maintain a loyal (and growing) customer base
- The impact of your marketing can also be seen - Knowing what your most loyal customers want
through the VOC. now and in the future is critical.
- Whether from increased sales, direct - They not only buy, but they promote through
feedback, comments on ads/posts etc. word of mouth.
- How your marketing strategies land can be - This can help secure sales today but also
relatively easily seen and learned from. secure sales in the longer term.
Scenario
Fundamentals of VOC
- What is VOC?
- Examples of VOC.
- Scenario.
Scenario
- For the purposes of this course I am going to set up a scenario that we will follow when looking at practical examples of how
to use the VOC tools.
- This flow will enable us to maintain consistency throughout and give us the opportunity to link tools in where needed.
Scenario
A customer contact department within a large, global insurance firm.
The department has been facing a number of problems recently including:
- Wasteful processes.
- Errors, issues and defects.
- Increased customer complaints.
- Increased staff turnover.
- SLAs and KPIs being missed.
- Accuracy reduction.
- The tools we are going to explore in this toolkit will be able to address such issues.
Introduction
VOC tools
VOC tools
- Types and sources of customer. - Focus groups.

- Customer Segmentation. - Surveys.
- Interviews. - Kano Analysis.
Introduction
VOC tools
- We are going to look at a range of voice of the customer tools that you can look to deploy when seeking to understand what
your customer wants, needs and is currently getting.
- This is not an exhaustive toolkit, and there will indeed be other ways to do this (as we touched upon earlier on).
- However, these are the most commonly used approaches and will guarantee you real success when it comes to this activity.
Types of customer & data
VOC tools
VOC tools
- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

VOC tools
Name: Types of customer & data

When to use the tool: When running a VOC project / initiative, you will want to use this approach as soon as you can.
Here you want to understand two things:
1) Who is our customer? What type of customer are they?
2) What data do we have? What data do we need?
Whilst not technically a tool, it is an approach that needs to be thought through.
Purpose of the tool: To give you the time and space to think through the approaches you need to take to get the data
you need and understand the type of customer you are handling.
Preferred outcome / effect: A clear understanding of what data sources exist and the type of customers you need to
approach for your projects.
Data to use: Any data that comes from interactions with the customers, whether that be organic communication
(customer contact points), planned communication (such as surveys) or data around sales of products.
VOC tools
Type of customer Information on customer
New customer These will be customers who have never purchased a product or service from you before. If you are a big business
offering a service, they could be a brand new client you have gone into a contract with.
Repeat customer These will be customers who have purchased the same or several products and services from you previously. They may
be re-entering contracts with you. They will have several experiences of your business to discuss.
Vocal customer These will be customers who are vocal for either good or bad reasons. They will be those who complain or compliment,
either through reviews, emails, customer contact centre calls or to Account Managers and Customer Success Teams.
Demographic traits Are you looking at just a specific age group (under 30s for example)? Are you looking at a specific geographical location?
Are you looking at customers with specific needs (dietary, health etc.)
Product performance data Customer contact points Research
How are the current products performing in Customer complaints Direct research – interviews, surveys, focus
terms of sales? Customer compliments groups, observations
What are the levels of returns / refunds? Volume in contact centres & theme of calls Indirect research – market trends
Customer referrals Colleague – customer interaction feedback
Lost contracts / gained contracts
Customer Segmentation
VOC tools
VOC tools

VOC tools
Name: Customer Segmentation

When to use the tool: When seeking to explore the VOC, you will want to use Customer Segmentation at the start of
your work. You are trying to understand who your customers are and break them down into segments of a population
– therefore you cannot leave this until later.
Purpose of the tool: To identify and focus on the subgroups of customers who generate the greatest value / return on
your products and services. If looking to improve one particular offering, knowing exactly who is purchasing this will
help ensure you actually improve this to a standard they will continue to want.
Preferred outcome / effect: A detailed understanding of who your customers are per offering and the demographic
make up of them (age, gender, families / individual, economic status, geographical location etc.)
Data to use: The demographics of your customers as detailed above.
VOC tools
How to use Customer Segmentation
1) Firstly, identify the product or service you are looking at.

2) Think through who are the customers who are purchasing or in receipt of that product or service.
3) Identify the segmentation characteristics that you think may influence the way in which individuals respond to
your products or services. This could be economic characteristics (such as profit, loyalty, company size), descriptive
characteristics (such as the customer’s physical location, demographics) or attitudinal (the price, the value and the
service given).
4) Develop profiles of the segments you will seek out for your projects. For example, are you looking at high volume
sales or low volume sales? Are you looking at customers / purchases in the north or in the south?
5) When reaching out to your customers to understand this further, make sure all segments are adequately
represented.
6) Once you have done all of this, you can then document the results. These can be done so either in a chart or
graphical form, depending on the purpose of the results.
VOC tools
- Our example here is looking at the mortgage market, and the interest various individual customers will have of mortgage products
available.
Customer Internal or external? Segments Priority
First time buyer High

Homeowner External Re-mortgaging High
Interest only mortgage High
Property in full ownership Low
Living in rental property Low
Renter External
Own a rental property High
- Our example here is looking at the insurance market, and the potential segments the insurance products could be divided up into
depending on the types of customer.
Product / Service Customers Potential segments
Top tier product

Buildings insurance Homeowner Mid tier product
Basic tier product
Homeowner Inner city residents
Contents insurance
Renter Suburban residents
Rural residents
Landlords insurance Landlord Landlords
Interviews
VOC tools
VOC tools

Interviews
VOC tools
Name: Interviews, face to face interviews or telephone interviews

When to use the tool: When running a project / VOC exercise, interviews can be used throughout:
- At the start to understand current experience, wants and needs.
- During the exercise to understand experience of what you are doing and progress.
- After the exercise to understand outcomes and the impact of any changes.
Purpose of the tool: To learn about the points of view and experiences of specific customers relating to specific
services or products.
Preferred outcome / effect: A well rounded picture of the experience of those customers interacting with specific
products or services.
Data to use: The information that comes out of the interviews will be the main source of data. To pre-empt what
needs to be asked and the purpose of the interviews, customer data around sales performance, complaints and
satisfaction can be utilised.
Interviews
VOC tools
How to conduct interviews
1) Ensure you are clear with yourself and those you are seeking to interview what the purpose of these interviews are – what is the
proposed outcome? What are you going to do with the collected data?
2) Prepare your questions. Work out how open or closed ended you want these to be. Do you want to give them the option of
choosing pre-set answers, or do you want to just let the conversation flow?
3) Decide whether or not the interviews will be face to face or via the telephone.
4) Decide how many people you want to be conducting the interviews, and how many people you want to interview (your sample
size).
5) To refine your questions, conduct a couple of practice interviews within your company. Test the approach.
6) Contact your chosen customers and arrange your interviews.
7) Let the customer know how you plan to collect the information from them (written, recording etc.) and where this information is
going to go, how confidential it is and what it will be used for.
8) Conduct the interviews.
9) Once complete, conduct your data analysis to understand what approaches you may need to take going forward to improve your
customer offerings.
10) As with any tool – learn from the experience. Make sure you learn what went right and what didn’t go so right and learn from
this.
Interviews
VOC tools
Hints and tips
- Try not to ask leading questions, make sure your questions are
straightforward and to the point. You do not want to get “bad data” by
making the interviewee feel as though they need to answer your
questions in the way you want.
- Ensure you follow up the interview(s) with feedback on where the data is
going and what is being done using the data. This will increase the chance
of them saying yes to future interviews.
- Try and have the same people conducting the interviews and the same
approaches adopted to avoid any differences impacting the answers you
get. The scenarios should match.
- Keep the interviewees focused on what the aim is. Often, they can go off
on a tangent. Remind them constantly of the purpose.
- If going for a qualitative response (which is the most common aim for
interviews) keep the questions open ended.
Interviews
VOC tools
Questions to ask
What word or phrase comes to mind when you think about our company / product?
What is your experience of communication with our company?
How does our company compare with the competition you have purchased from? Why did you switch that time?
How appealing would each of the follow potential new products or services be to you? Why?
What factors matter most to you when deciding which company to buy said products from?
What would you recommend we do to improve our service and product offerings, and how they’re delivered?
Have you seen or heard of our company anywhere on social media / adverts in the last 6 months?
- You could also ask questions prior about their demographics to tailor the questions appropriately.
Point of use observations
VOC tools
VOC tools

VOC tools
Name: Point of use observation

When to use the tool: You will want to take this approach at the start of any VOC exercise you are conducting. You will
want to use this to get base data to see how people are interacting with your products, services, colleagues and
processes to understand their experiences to provide you with data.
Purpose of the tool: To enable you to physically watch how your customer uses and interacts with your product or
service or how they interact with your company at the key points of contact.
Preferred outcome / effect: To understand in detail how the customer is interacting with your products and your
company at the main points of contact between the two. This gives you the information you need to ultimately
improve those experiences.
Data to use: The information that is generated from watching the customer during their interactions.
VOC tools
How to use point of use observations
1) Be clear from the outset what the purpose of this observation is. Is it to understand the customer journey?
Customer interactions with your service? Product? People etc. Be clear what the role of this tool will be within
your project and how the information is going to be used.
2) Decide when to observe, where to observe and how you will do this (i.e. in the customer’s office).
3) Develop an observation data recording form where you plan to collect all of your observations and data.
4) If you are going to the customer’s place of work, ensure you let them know when you are going to be there, for
how long, who and what you’ll be observing and what you will need.
5) For those who you want to go and do the observations (if a team or just you) make sure you train those people to
ensure you all follow the same techniques and procedures.
6) Conduct the observation as planned.
7) When complete, analyse your data and pull the findings into actionable insights that can lead to changes to how
your customers interact with your product, service or people.
8) Ensure you follow up with your customers to thank them for their participation and let them know the outcome of
your findings if this is appropriate.
VOC tools
Hints and tips
- Make sure not only your customer but the staff working within that
company know why you are there. People can get weary about strangers
coming in to watch – so be honest.
- Make sure you have targeted a specific interaction based on data. For an
intrusive method such as this one, you don’t want to just go and “see
what is going on”. It will need to be based on real life feedback (often
negative) to get you in to your customer.
- Ask for feedback from staff working at your customer. How do they see
your company? What concerns do they have? What has their experience
been like? The more data the better!
- Weigh up every experience or comment. Someone may say “oh yeah, this
happens all of the time with you guys”. I would look at the data! Often it is
the case that it happens rarely, but the person who made the comment
over egged the issue.
Focus groups
VOC tools
VOC tools

Focus groups
VOC tools
Name: Focus groups or customer workshops

When to use the tool: Focus groups will often be held at two stages:
- Once you understand there is a problem or issue and it needs addressing.
- To understand how your customers would receive new products you are working on.
Purpose of the tool: To get feedback from a variety of customers who have used specific products or services of yours.
The group format of this tool should help generate ideas which others can respond to, ideas they may not have
considered previously.
Preferred outcome / effect: A detailed understanding of how the customer feels about the current, proposed or new
offerings from the company. This information will enable you to go away, improve the product and deliver greater
customer satisfaction.
Data to use: The data generated from the focus group itself. You could also take in data around customer complaints
and feedback on certain products.
Focus groups
VOC tools
How to use focus groups
1) Identify the outcome you want to see from this focus group – what is the purpose of this activity?
2) Identify the target group you want to include in your focus group. Make sure they tick the boxes you want ticking
and will be able to discuss the products / services you want discussing.
3) Identify how many people you want to be in the focus group. The average ranges from 7 to 13. You need to take
into account time and expense.
4) Identify who you want to participate. Make sure you get a range of customers with a range of experiences and
opinions of your products.
5) Develop your key questions. These will act as a steering device within the focus group. You don’t just want people
to answer this question, but also go off topic and discuss other things. All is good data that you want to collect!
6) You can now hold your focus group. Ensure someone who has experience doing this leads the group – a facilitator.
Be sure to allow everyone the chance to speak, no one to dominate and all questions to be addressed.
7) Once the session is complete, write up all of the findings into actionable insights to be presented out.
8) You can now deliver the improvements needed to your service or product.
Focus groups
VOC tools
Hints and tips
- To increase participation, you could offer some form of cash, prize or

discount incentive.
- Ensure to have back ups for on the day. If you have 10 attendees
scheduled and 4 do not show, having some form of back up helps –
otherwise you may need to run 2 sessions at greater cost.
- Have some form of icebreaker at the start to make sure everyone feels
comfortable with one another.
- Make sure to state at the start of the session what the objectives are for
the session – what you want the outcome to be.
- Avoid any leading questions, questions with some form of bias. You want
honest feedback, not feedback they think you want to hear.
- Have someone scribing in the room. It can be yourself, but if you are
leading the session, you want your full attention on controlling the room.
Have a scribe OR ask if everyone is ok with the session being recorded.
Focus groups
VOC tools
Surveys
VOC tools
VOC tools

Surveys
VOC tools
Name: Survey
When to use the tool: If running a VOC initiative, use this tool during the early stages to ensure you know early on
what the customer wants, needs and what they are currently getting / experiencing. This will act as the data required
to use in the coming stages.
Purpose of the tool: To get quantitative data from across the spectrum of customers to understand their opinions,
reactions and needs when it comes to your products or services.
Preferred outcome / effect: A wealth of data covering all types of customer and question. The more data you have,
the better for your project stages to come.
Data to use: Data collected via the survey from your customers – their feedback.
Surveys
VOC tools
How to use surveys
1) Set out the objectives behind your survey – what is its aim?
2) Determine how many people you want to take part – what is your sample size?
3) Write up all of the questions you want to ask.
4) Develop your measurement scales. Are you going to ask them to rank something 1 – 5 (quantitative) or very good
to very bad (qualitative)?
5) Design the remainder of the survey.
6) Send out the survey to a handful of colleagues to test it – does it achieve what it has set out to achieve?
7) Send out your survey through whichever medium you decide (email, post, post phone call automated etc.)
8) Ensure you highlight how you plan to ensure anonymity and keep their information safe.
9) Set a timeframe for how long they have to respond.
10) Collect all of the results and analyse the findings. These findings will be used to further improve your offerings.
Surveys
VOC tools
Hints and tips
- Liaise with your marketing department early on in the process as they will
be the ones sending this survey out. Get your design and question criteria
defined early to give them time to work on this.
- Make sure you include a “not applicable” option for your questions. You
do not want people answering for services or products they don’t actually
use – this creates bad data.
- It is a good idea to use a range of question types –closed, multiple choice,
sliding scale etc. This keeps the survey fresh.
- If you are happy with qualitative answers, open questions can be used.
Aim for closed only if you want quantitative answers only.
- Don’t let the survey get too long. Have a 10 – 20 question range.
- You can use surveys before your focus group or interview sessions. This
will help you understand which areas need to be targeted for further
investigation during those sessions.
- You can use them after focus groups and interviews also to act as follow
ups to quantify patterns identified in the discussions.
Kano Analysis
VOC tools
VOC tools

Kano Analysis
VOC tools
Name: Kano Analysis

When to use the tool: This tool you can use at the start of your VOC work, once you have delivered your VOC work or
as a separate VOC tool to be kept LIVE and be updated when needed.
Purpose of the tool: To better understand what value your customers are placing on the key features of your products
or services. This can help you to ensure the products or services you are creating emphasise those parts the customer
actually wants and moves away from those parts the customer cares little about.
Preferred outcome / effect: A visual understanding of what the customer desires, expects and does not want to
enable you to deliver / avoid this.
Data to use: Customer satisfaction scores, customer feedback, customer survey or interview information, customer
complaints, sale volumes – any data generated by the customer.
Kano Analysis
VOC tools
How to use Kano Analysis
1) Identify the known or presumed customer needs and requirements.

2) Collect as much VOC data as possible from all channels.
3) For each requirement you identify, classify them as a threshold, performance and delighters.
4) Once you have classified these, you can now plot them on a Kano Analysis diagram, showing where each of the
product features would sit (the higher the product feature, the more desired it is).
5) Now that you have the visual aid, you can start to incorporate these requirements into your product or service
development efforts.
*If conducting this face to face with customers (and not through data), repeat the same steps but with point 2 being
to collect data directly from the customer and point 3 being to ask the customer for their opinion here.
Definitions
Threshold – These are the features your customer would expect – basic requirements. If these were missing
or not fulfilled, the customer would be extremely dissatisfied.
Performance – Ordinary requirements that can affect satisfaction by their degree (cost, speed, ease of use).
Delighters – Unexpected features or characteristics of your product or service that the customer did not
expect but has excited them greatly.
Kano Analysis
VOC tools
HIGH Customer Satisfaction
Gift for delays Performance
< 2 minute call

Knowledgeable agents
Instant pick up
Detailed answer given
Delighters
Product / process performance Product / process performance
below expectations above expectations
Polite service
Threshold
Handed to correct team

Query resolved
Answer the call
LOW Customer Satisfaction

Critical to Quality Tree
VOC tools
VOC tools

VOC tools
Name: Critical to Quality Tree or CTQ Tree

When to use the tool: Understanding what is critical to the quality of your products and services for your customer is
something you can do really at any time. You can do this to gain quick information to take decisions or continuously
over a period of time to keep abreast of what your customers want. This tool can capture an evolving picture.
Purpose of the tool: To move from the “vague state” comments of your customer about what they expect from your
service / product to actual specifics which can be measured against.
Preferred outcome / effect: The tool is there to help strengthen your ability to meet customer expectations and,
where possible, exceed them.
Data to use: To start the CTQ you will want customer data. This could come from surveys, interviews, complaints,
direct feedback etc. to establish their overall need. You will then want to use this data and data from any contract
obligations or agreements you have made with your customers to establish your CTQs.
VOC tools
How to use Critical to Quality Trees
1) Gather together all data relevant to the specific product or service you are looking at. If the service is the contact
centre, identify all data, conversations and agreements related to that service.
2) Identify relevant statements that have been made about your company or service to be investigated. It could be
something positive – “I am happy with the quick answering of calls” – something negative – “I find the service
quite rude” – or something neutral – “The service was delivered as expected”.
3) Once you have identified these, think about what would drive them. What are the key drivers to ensure these do
or do not happen? What are the key drivers of a good service, for example. Try and identify at least 3, and make
sure at this point not to quantify these.
4) Now you know the drivers, establish how to ensure you meet these expectations through your CTQ’s. Here you
want to quantify what quality looks like for your customer. We can refer to these as SLAs. For example, if you want
calls to be answered quickly, you could state that 95% of all calls must be answered under 10 seconds. This is your
critical to quality measurement.
5) Measure your performance against these metrics going forward.
Please note: Good customer requirements should be specific, easily measured, related directly to a product or
service and describe what the need is, not how this need will be met.
VOC tools
Need Drivers CTQs

99% of answers correct
Knowledgeable reps 95% of questions answered without research
Research information returned in 4 minutes
Good
customer Friendly reps 100% of customers greeted by name
service 95% of customers never interrupted
Time on hold < 3 minutes

Short wait
Transfer of call < 3 minutes
General Specific
Hard to measure Easy to measure
Review of key learnings
Close out
Close out
- Review of key learnings.

- Hints & tips.
- Thank you.
Close out
- The voice of the customer is your opportunity to learn what your

customer wants, what their changing needs are, how they have
been impacted by your products or what they may want next.
• Direct engagement (surveys, interviews, focus groups).

• Organic engagement (feedback on the interactions
between your company and theirs).
• Sales performance (which products do customers like and
dislike).
• Referrals and retention.
- When talking about the “customer” in voice of the

customer, we can take this two ways.
1) The customer is the person or company purchasing your

products or services.
2) The stakeholder working with you on internal processes or
matters.
Close out
- Examples of the voice of the customer include complaints, website

behaviours, declining or rising sales, online reviews and word of
mouth (to name a few).
- The VOC is there to give you insight, help you understand which
strategies are working, help with future product / service
development, improve current offerings, improve customer service
etc. (to name a few).
- In order to gather your VOC, there are a range of tools available

including Customer Segmentation, Interviews, Point of use
observations, focus groups, surveys, Kano Analysis, Critical to Quality
Tree and types and sources of the customer (to name a few).
Hints & tips
Close out
Close out

- Hints & tips.
- Thank you.
Hints & tips
Close out
- Before conducting your VOC, make sure you are crystal clear on the why here – why you are conducting your VOC,
outcome needs to be. Only when you are clear on the purpose can you choose the right approach.
- Use some of the tools collaboratively. For example, you can use a quantitative survey ahead of a qualitative interview
to help give you data ahead of the interview and steer the conversation.
- Find a good facilitator to use regularly. This can be someone in the business or someone external, but it helps you
with consistency and having a similar approach each and every time.
- Don’t conduct your tools or build your approaches in silo. You don’t know how much knowledge of voice of the
customer activities exists in the business, the best practices and the lessons learned. Use this to your advantage.
- Where possible, reward participants and customers for their participation. This is not just for focus groups but
building good relationships with your customers who can be repeat participants is a great outcome.
- Have a regular VOC exercise. Whichever tool this takes form in, keeping on the pulse of your customers and
understanding their evolving wants and needs will put you ahead of the game.
Thank you
Close out
Close out

- Hints & tips.
- Thank you.
Voice of the customer:
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Voice of the customer:

Introduction Fundamentals of voice of the customer

VOC tools Close out

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups. - Review of key learnings.

- What is covered in this course?

1) The customer is the person or company purchasing your products or services.

- Customers complaining about your products, services or

- Seeing online reviews can educate you on how people see

- Declining sales are the silent way for you to see if

Additional options include:

- Outputs from customer surveys

Why you should conduct VOC exercises

- Understanding your customers voice is critical to the success of your business.

Understanding marketing effectiveness Maintain a loyal (and growing) customer base

- Types and sources of customer. - Focus groups.

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

Name: Types of customer & data

Type of customer Information on customer

Product performance data Customer contact points Research

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

Name: Customer Segmentation

How to use Customer Segmentation

1) Firstly, identify the product or service you are looking at.

First time buyer High

Top tier product

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

Name: Interviews, face to face interviews or telephone interviews

How to conduct interviews

Hints and tips

What is your experience of communication with our company?

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

Name: Point of use observation

How to use point of use observations

Hints and tips

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

Name: Focus groups or customer workshops

How to use focus groups

Hints and tips

- To increase participation, you could offer some form of cash, prize or

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

How to use surveys

Hints and tips

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

Name: Kano Analysis

How to use Kano Analysis

1) Identify the known or presumed customer needs and requirements.

HIGH Customer Satisfaction

Gift for delays Performance

< 2 minute call

Handed to correct team

Answer the call

LOW Customer Satisfaction

- Types of customer & data. - Focus groups.

Name: Critical to Quality Tree or CTQ Tree

How to use Critical to Quality Trees

Need Drivers CTQs

Time on hold < 3 minutes

- Review of key learnings.

- The voice of the customer is your opportunity to learn what your