Voice of the Customer (VoC) programmes are intended to capture the opinions and preferences of all customers, analyse those insights, and use them to create meaningful changes in customer experience (CX). Having a VoC programme in place has become increasingly more popular and essential, especially as more and more businesses (nearly 72% to be precise) continue to place CX as their top priority. So how do you know which type of VoC software is right for your business?
In this blog, we will take a look at the four different types of VoC software and help you decide which is best for your business depending on your goals.
Why is VoC Software so important?
All throughout the online customer journey, there are various Moments of Truth that define how your visitors perceive your company. These are the critical moments in which your business should listen to the Voice of the Customer and the best way to do this is through VoC software.
Moments of Truth, however, are different from business to business. These moments all depend on which touchpoints are important to the business. For example, ecommerce companies put their focus on their websites and mobile apps, whereas companies that have a physical store or frequent face-to-face contact with customers place to their focus on non-digital touchpoints.
Note: the touchpoint(s) you intend to focus on have a large impact on which type of VoC software you should choose – whether that touchpoint is digital or non-digital.
Things to consider:
- How do you want to collect your feedback?
- How do you want to report it?
- How do you plan on ‘closing the loop’?
For this overview, we have defined four types of VoC software, including:
- Enterprise VoC software
- SMB VoC tools
- Website VoC tools
- Traditional research
Enterprise VoC software
Enterprise VoC software all guarantee one thing and that is a 360-degree view of the customer. With most of these types of tools, feedback is collected across multiple channels including email, SMS, web, in-store, social media, notes from contact centre agents and Interactive Voice Response (IVR). However, in addition to VoC software, many of these tools also offer employee engagement solutions, market research solutions and data mining.
Source: Clarabridge
As far as implementation goes, these are often more complex than other types of VoC software where you can just start with a 14-day SaaS trial and test out the software for a few weeks.
Popular tools that fall under this category include Medallia, Clarabridge, and InMoment.
SMB VoC software
And alternative to Enterprise VoC software is Small-Medium Business VoC software, (or SMB VoC software). While these two types of VoC software are very similar, SMB is (as you might’ve guessed) much smaller scale and far less complex. SMB VoC tools also tend to focus more on feedback collection than Enterprise tools. Feedback is often collected using an email invite to a web survey (often referred to as ‘email to web’). Some of these tools are integrable with CRM tools (e.g. SalesForce) which enable the user to invite customers directly from CRM.
Source: Get Feedback
Due to their simplicity in terms of usage, SMB VoC tools are typically self-service, which in turn also makes them much more cost-efficient. However, it is more difficult to report on complex datasets and a large user base. For example, a large contact centre that works with feedback and must ‘close the loop’ with its customers.
Some well-known softwares in this category are Qualtrics, GetFeedback and Honestly.
Website VoC software
Another type of software in VoC space is website VoC software. Tools in this category focus on a very important customer touchpoint, the website. Again these are very similar to SMB VoC software, however website VoC software primarily focuses on collecting website feedback only. This is very different from sending survey invites by email to measure Customer Satisfaction (Csat) or Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Source: Kampyle
This type of feedback is used to optimise online funnels and various pages on the website as well as improve user experience (rather than the overall customer experience). This is done by monitoring behaviour on the website such as click paths and mouse movement. Why is your visitor leaving the website? Why isn’t he achieving his online goal? These are the kinds of insights you can extract using these tools.
Some examples of website VoC software include Kampyle, Qualaroo and OpinionLab.
Traditional surveys
Last but certainly not least are traditional surveys, which are used to collect feedback on your website or mobile app. Surveys typically appear as either a feedback or as an emailed invitation. The best surveys are nowadays much shorter in terms of the list of questions included, as long lists aren’t necessarily something many visitors want to participate in while ordering online.
Source: Survey Monkey
There are a lot of different survey VoC softwares out there including SurveyMonkey, Alchemer, PollDaddy and Typeform.
So where would a feedback tool like Mopinion fit in?
Mopinion is specialised in collecting and analysing feedback data in real-time. While we are mainly focused on digital touchpoints such as websites and mobile apps, our software can also capture feedback from traditional touchpoints – e.g. call centres and physical stores. In terms of collection, data is always collected digitally – e.g. using email invites or in-store surveys on tablets.
Mopinion serves both Enterprises and SMBs who use a digital-first approach, meaning most of their products and services are offered online.
The right VoC software for you
It all depends on what your business wants to achieve and how far along your in terms of VoC maturity, however, as you can see there various options to choose from. You’ll also want to keep the following in mind: your objectives in listening to the VoC, the size of your company (are you an enterprise or SMB), and let’s not forget technical limitations (e.g. IT restrictions and limitations when it comes to subjects like privacy, customer data, CRM integrations, data storage/hosting, etc).
Looking for a more extensive list of VoC software? In a previous blog, I compared 28 different Voice of the Customer tools that will help you boost your VoC programme. Check it out.
Ready to see Mopinion in action?
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.
