A 4-step approach to developing your utilities' voice of the customer (VoC) program

In a previous Energy & Utilities newsletter article, we discussed how utilities could utilize Voice of the Customer (VoC) Programs to listen to their customers and take action by altering business decisions based on customer feedback.  Organizations often believe that they have a strong VoC program simply because they collect customer feedback, but they are only scratching the surface. A truly strong VoC program is not one that only captures customer feedback, but a holistic program that listens to customers, analyzes and organizes the feedback you receive, communicates that feedback to relevant staff members, and then turns insights into action to improve key business processes. A strong VoC program can bring transformational change to your organization by enabling customer insights to be turned into actionable improvements. The program should evolve over time to adapt to your current customer base and business model. In this article, we’ll talk about a 4-step approach that you can use to define and develop a strong VoC program for your organization.

Our 4-Step Approach

West Monroe utilizes a 4-step approach to developing and defining the capabilities of a next-generation VoC Program: Listen, Analyze, Report, and Act (shown and defined below). These 4-steps describe the process and strategy to developing your VoC program to gather data-driven actionable insights out of customer feedback. At a high level, this may seem like common sense, but when looking into their own VoC program many organizations find that they are lacking in, or entirely missing, one or more of these steps. There are many tools that you could use to help your organization review and enhance your capabilities in each of these four areas.   Stay tuned for our white paper that dives into each of the four areas and further highlights how to establish a successful VoC program. 

Stay tuned for our white paper that dives into each of the four areas and further highlights how to establish a successful VoC program.

If you have any questions about VoC programs or want to learn more about how they can be used at your utility, view our recently recorded webinar that we jointly hosted with Kansas City Water Services, “Utilizing Voice of the Customer Insights to Improve Customer Experiences and Build Engagement”.