Most marketers know that listening to their customers is important. But in a challenging economic environment, many are working with diminishing budgets and smaller teams. It can be a struggle - and many don’t know where to start.

This guide makes it simple. By focusing on async video as the collection method, and featuring advice from experts in the field, it’ll help overstretched marketers get started with Voice of Customer (VoC) research.

Get closer to your customers, understand how to attract more, and still have time for everything else on your to-do list. 

“Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those not focused on the customer.”
‍Deloitte research

What is the ‘voice of customer?’

Voice of Customer (VoC) programs collect, analyze and share customer feedback so that customers' wants, needs and expectations can be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed.

Put simply, if a business wants to understand and meet the needs of their customer, tuning into the voice of their customer is the best place to start.

Programs will vary from business to business. Early stage companies might collate feedback from customer calls into shared documents. More established programs might use a more sophisticated mix of sentiment analysis, customer effort scores, net promoter scores, customer satisfaction surveys and more. 

Whatever the method, VoC research is all about gauging the satisfaction of your customers and understanding what matters to them.

Once captured, VoC can be used to improve a company's products, services and customer experience, or to sharpen sales and marketing strategies. It can also help identify customer advocates, who can help create a buzz around your brand.

“Customer-centric companies grow 9x faster year-on-year. However only 36% of organizations are truly customer centric.”
‍The State of Customer Centricity: CX Partners and Google

“The key component to being a good merchant is to truly understand the customer and to keep the customer at the center of all business decisions. This means that customer insights are invaluable to the success and growth of your business. If you ignore what the customer is telling you and blindly follow what you think is best, you will undoubtedly take a wrong turn. The customer's opinion should be the north star guiding your business forward” Hillary Cullum, Founder of HSC Advisors

Why is it a priority right now?

In an increasingly competitive landscape, where it costs more to acquire a customer than retain one, VoC and customer-centricity have become burning issues for businesses.

“To thrive, enterprises must harness and apply data and analytics at every opportunity to differentiate their products and customer experiences. Events of the past few years have only made the critical nature of customer analytics more apparent.” 
Forrester Study on Customer Insights

To get beyond the buzz term, we asked VP of Customer Marketing & Advocacy, and self confessed ‘Customer Success Fanatic’, Ari Hoffman why it’s a priority for businesses right now.

Before you dive in, establish clear goals and objectives for your VoC program. Take the time to align these objectives with your broader marketing and business goals. Are you looking to improve customer satisfaction, enhance product features, or identify new opportunities for growth? By setting specific targets, you'll be able to measure the effectiveness of your VoC efforts and ensure they align with your overall strategy.

Here are three more optional steps you can take to set your VoC program up for success:

1. Get buy-in from leadership and teams across your organization. An impactful VoC program is collaborative, so get them on board early by helping them understand the value of customer voice and how it can drive positive change. Sharing success stories from other companies can work wonders.
2. Before embarking on new collection efforts, take stock of any existing VoC feedback you may already have. This could include survey results, social media comments, customer reviews, or calls with your support team. Consider how you’ll combine these insights with your new data. 
3. Assess additional channels and resources. Do you have the time and budget to explore capturing VoC in additional channels? While async video interviews are effective, there may be complementary ways to gain more insights. For instance, social media monitoring can help you gauge customer sentiment in real-time, while user testing can provide direct feedback on website usability.

For a balanced overview of VoC, you’ll want to speak to a diverse set of customers, across your different buying personas. Happy and unhappy, old and new. 

Happy customers

can help a business understand what is working well and provide powerful and persuasive testimonials.

Unhappy customers

can help businesses address the issues that lead to negative customer experiences, preventing future churn and increasing customer loyalty.

New customers

can share how they discovered a business and what attracted them to it.

Old customers

can provide feedback on their long-term satisfaction and loyalty.

Leslie Barrett, Senior Director of Customer Marketing and Evangelism at Sendoso and author of ‘Unlock Growth with Account Based Customer Marketing’, agrees there’s a lot of value in casting your net wide.

“Gathering all customer voices provides a holistic view of the customer journey.”
‍Leslie Barrett, Sendoso

Identify your touchpoints

At this point in the process, it's important for marketing, customer success and sales to come together to methodically audit the customer touchpoints and identify:

1. Where customer voice is already being shared and should be tracked and analyzed.
2. Where there’s an opportunity to capture deeper and more diverse viewpoints for a more complete picture of the customer voice.

Kevin Lau is Sr. Director of Global Customer Engagement at F5 and a thought leader in customer advocacy. He advises overstretched marketers to start in communities where they are already having conversations with their customers.

Some other opportunities to track and capture VoC include:

Tips

Go broad

While not all of these touchpoints might be relevant for you, the more you can identify, the more you can scale your request and the more comprehensive VoC snapshot you’ll create.

“Strike while the iron’s hot”

Jeff Ernst is Founder and CEO of SlapFive, a Customer Marketing Software platform for driving Customer-Led Growth. He advises marketers to think about ‘magical moments’ in the customer experience, where timely feedback can be captured.

Create a continuous loop

Blake Bartlett is a Partner at OpenView and coined the term 'Product-Led Growth' in 2016. Below, he shares how best-in-class PLG companies capture the voice of their customers.

It’s time to think about the questions you'll ask your customers to unearth VoC. Here are some best practice tips to keep in mind when formulating questions of your own, plus some tried and tested templates you can use to help speed up the process.

How to ask great questions:

• Ask open-ended questions that’ll give your customers free range to share their experience. Consider them carefully, test and refine.
• Be clear you’re open to all kinds of feedback. Feedback doesn’t need to be 100% positive to be helpful. It’s important to know where you can improve.
• Make some questions optional. Responders may get put off sharing their valuable insights for certain questions, if they feel forced to answer others they’d rather skip. Unless they’re essential, mark any tricky or niche questions as optional. It’ll help your customers or clients move through faster and feel like a less daunting request.
• Don’t overload them with questions, particularly if you don’t plan to incentivize. Reduce friction and show respect for your customers’ time by asking a few high-impact questions.
• Don’t leave a stone unturned. Asking “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us” at the end of your interview ensures your customer has shared everything on their mind, and can result in unexpected insights.

“Because your organization’s growth and success ultimately rely on customers achieving their purposes, start by understanding what matters most to them — in the world, in their lives, and in the specific context of what you provide.”Gene Cornfield, Harvard Business Review

Template library

The questions you ask your customers will align with the insights you’re trying to gain - and should ladder up to your main business objections. For example preventing churn, or increasing product adoption.

As thought starters, here are some of the questions our customers have had success with in the Vouch platform. There are also some suggestions from leading marketers and the questions they ask to get closer to their customers.

Devin Reed’s template

Devin Reed is Director of Content and Thought Leadership at Clari. He also helps thousands of marketers improve their content strategies in his newsletter The Content Strategy Reeder. These are the questions he has used to infiltrate his market and get inside his customers' heads.

1. What motivates you more than money?
2. What do you fear?
3. What pisses you off more than getting cut off on the freeway?
4. What beliefs do you hold that don’t make sense to anyone else? (the weirder the better)
5. What seasonal changes affect your business?
6. What does a successful day look like?
7. What current trends are affecting your business and/or livelihood?
8. How have you been burned in the past?
9. Who do you aspire to be?
10. What are the exact words and language they use to describe all the questions above?

Katelyn Bourgoin’s template

Katelyn Bourgoin is a founder, marketer and author of the ‘Why We Buy’ newsletter. Nicknamed ‘The Customer Whisperer’, Katelyn uses her content to encourage companies to get to know their buyers on a deeper level. These are three of her favorite customer interview questions.

1. When you bought this product, what did you think it would do for you? How did you think it would make your life better?
2. OK, let's take a step back. What were you using before you started using our product and what made you start looking for something new?
3. Once you figured out that you needed to make a change, how did you go about looking for a new solution? Walk me through your buying journey in as much detail as possible.

James Doman-Pipe’s template

James Doman-Pipe is a Product Marketer and the author of the Building Momentum newsletter. Here are three questions he thinks every business should be asking their customers. 

1. How would you describe our product and the results you get from it to another business like yours?
2. What made you choose our product over any other option?
3. What do you wish our product could do that it can't do today?

Let Vouch AI generate personalized questions.

If you’re still in need of inspiration, use Vouch’s AI-powered question generator. Simply enter a prompt, and it’ll generate a list of questions ready for your customers to answer.

The more responses you get, the more diverse, insightful and impactful your VoC program becomes. Here are five tips to nail your request and encourage your customers to share.

1. Frame your request

Jeff Ernst, Founder and CEO of SlapFive, advises marketers to reframe their VoC request as an opportunity for your customer to feel smart, successful and heard.

“If you want your customers to share their voice, you have to totally rethink what you're asking them to share.”
‍Jeff Ernst, SlapFive

2. Be human

One of the biggest benefits of asynchronous video interviews is scale. With everyone responding in their own time, without the need for you to be there, you can capture more insights in half the time. 

But if you’re worried about losing that personal touch, there are ways to personalize your customer voice request, and make it feel more human. 

• Timing is everything. Try not to ask questions that are irrelevant to their stage in the customer lifecycle. i.e. in-depth questions when they’ve only just signed up for a trial. That’s why it’s so important to choose the right customer touchpoint.
• Put yourself in the frame. A video request from you or someone in your team, even if it doesn’t address customers individually, is a great way to make the request more personal and human.
• Say thank you. Acknowledge your customer’s time and effort, and remind them of the impact of their contribution.

To ensure your request is trusted from the start, it helps to make it instantly recognizable. If you’re sending your request through Vouch, there are personalization options, including adding your photo, logos and colors. Check out the Vouch Starter Plan for more on how to do this.

3. Share a heads up

Giving your customer a heads up before you send them a feedback request primes them with some context and helps boost your response rates.

Small businesses, with small customer bases, might like to take a targeted 1:1 approach. While companies with more customers will need to find a more scalable approach. Either way, the message should let them know:

• Why you’re asking for feedback
• How important it is to your business
• How they can participate (reassuring them it’ll be quick and easy)

The customizable template below can be personalized for 1:1 emails, shared in your marketing channels, or within community spaces. 

Subject: We'd love to hear from you - can you share your thoughts via video?

Hi [customer name],

At [company name], we're always looking for ways to improve. That's why we're reaching out to you today. We'd love to hear about your experience with our brand.

We're conducting async video interviews with our customers to get a deeper understanding of their needs and preferences. We'd be thrilled if you’d be willing to share your expertise and answer a few questions about your experiences with our brand via video.

Don't worry, you don't need any special equipment or software to participate. You can use your smartphone or computer to record a short video of yourself answering the questions, and we'll take care of the rest.

Here are the questions we'd love for you to answer:

[Insert questions here]

Please feel free to share as much detail as you'd like. We’re using a video platform called Vouch which allows you to make notes, record as many times as you need, and choose your best take.

Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us, and we appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts.

To submit your video responses, simply click this link. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.

Thank you so much for your time and your feedback.

Best regards,

[Your name]

[Company name]

Copy

Copied!

4. Make it simple for them

Not everyone feels comfortable in front of the camera. Be mindful of this by creating a clear and easy recording experience that minimizes friction, and be upfront about how the videos will be shared.

Vouch has focused on a user-friendly recording experience:

• There’s no need to download or sign up for anything, customers just click the link and record
• Tips for great lighting and framing are shared automatically
• Customers can make on-screen notes
• Customers can shoot unlimited takes (selecting and submitting their favorite at the end)
• It’s easy to schedule reminders

5. And make it easy for you

If you’re already overstretched, monitoring customer activity and manually reaching out for feedback may be beyond your current capabilities. 

Integrations can help lighten the load. Rather than creating a new VoC collection process, you can simply add it to the workflow and tools you already use and have requests sent automatically.

Vouch integrates with the most popular marketing tools. In HubSpot for example, a CTA button can be dropped directly into an email, which links straight to a Vouch recorder with your questions preloaded. Once recorded, the videos and transcriptions are automatically added to your HubSpot customer profile, ready for analysis and sharing. 

A quick note if you’re planning to share clips externally…

Some VoC clips can make dynamite customer stories and testimonials. If you hope to be able to repurpose the content, then set a more specific brief.

• Share filming guidelines. Poor lighting or audio can ruin a video, so ask your clients and customers to film in bright natural lighting, with minimal background noise to mitigate this risk.
• Set a time limit. Sure, you can always edit your video testimonials to hone in on the more insightful moments, but setting a limit up front can also help keep your respondents sharp and on point.
• Set the ratio. Think about the final destination of the video testimonial and ask your customers to film in portrait or landscape mode accordingly. 
• Ask for permission upfront. Set T&Cs that cover external sharing of the clips and flag it in your request comms. 

If you’re using Vouch, you can control all of these settings in the campaign set up.

Once you’ve successfully captured VoC, it’s time to turn those insights into a competitive advantage.

Step 1: Analyze

As you start to analyze your VoC data, you’ll begin to understand your customers’ key issues, concerns, and frustrations.

Find patterns and uncover trends

At a glance, VoC data can look disparate and confusing, but the more it’s analyzed, the more you’ll be able to tease out trends. 

Medallia, Qualtrics and open AI tools can help you to analyze large volumes of customer feedback and uncover valuable patterns efficiently. Or if you’re tracking multiple feedback channels, platforms like Lumoa can also help you analyze surveys, phone calls, chat conversions, or online reviews - essentially giving you a bird’s eye view of what your customers are saying.

If you’re collecting VoC with Vouch, use the AI powered search function to identify all of the clips in your video library that mention ‘customer service’ or ‘pricing’, for example, to identify these themes more efficiently. Then organize your insights into categories of the topics mentioned most often. In Vouch you can use the library tagging feature, or combine clips into Playlists. 

“My top tip for customers new to VoC analysis is to categorize your feedback.”
Leslie Barrett, Sendoso

Dive deeper with text analytics

Vouch will automatically transcribe every video it collects. You could use these transcriptions to dive deeper and use text analytics to unlock even more granular insights. Text analytics tools like MonkeyLearn allow you to analyze customer feedback, uncovering specific keywords and phrases that highlight recurring themes or issues. 

By understanding the language used by your customers, you can refine your messaging, improve product features, and address pain points with precision.

Step 2: Strategize

Customers are a marketer's best source of inspiration. Use the insights you collect in your VoC program to tighten your marketing strategy.

Refine your positioning

You might have asked your customers for explicit feedback on your positioning, but even if you didn’t, there’s a lot you can learn from your customers that’ll help shape your brand positioning. The way your customer sees your business will always be different from the way you see your business, so these insights are incredibly valuable.

Your positioning should be based on the most sought after and ‘stickiest’ parts of your product. The things that your customers think sets you apart. So pay close attention to the way they frame the problem you’re trying to solve and how they define your USPs. They might even alert you to new use cases, segments or industries to include in your positioning statement. 

Sharpen competitor analysis

Your VoC program can work wonders in keeping you ahead of the competition. After all, there’s no one better placed to share insights on the competitive landscape than a customer that just did their due diligence. Listen closely for new businesses that should be on your radar, and why your customer ultimately chose you, so you can clearly understand your competitive advantage. 

If you ask for feedback at the end of the customer lifecycle, you’ll also be able to identify where your product is falling short and the competitor that is able to fill that gap.

Make your voice their voice

One of the reasons video is so great for capturing VoC feedback is because you can capture their authentic voice. This will help you understand the words you need to be using to communicate to others like them. 

Allow people to see themselves in the words on your website, the problem statements you set, and in your brand itself. Audit and improve your current comms by aligning them closer to customer voice. 

“I take their description, use it verbatim and test it on the home page”
Jess Cook, LASSO

Align your content strategy

The more you know about your customers, the better chance you have at creating content that is relevant and highly effective at attracting and retaining customers.

Alleviate pain

Start by identifying their pain points. Perhaps there’s a common confusion around a particular feature in your product, or even part of their everyday life? Create content that makes them feel seen, understood, solves their pain point and makes life easier for them. 

Pull the trigger 

Next, identify their ‘aha’ moments. When you understand exactly what triggered their buying decision, you can double down on it in your top of funnel content to drive the same trigger moment for prospects.

Educate on your offering

VoC feedback can also help you identify knowledge gaps about your particular product or service. Are numerous customers asking for something you actually already offer? Then that’s a sure sign you need to do a better job of circulating content about that product or feature. 

Preempt their needs

A deeper understanding of your customer’s journey can also help you serve the perfect piece of content at the perfect time. For example if you know that your customers struggle with a particular part of the onboarding process, trigger an automated share of a ‘how to’ guide or demo video at that particular moment to help them on their way. 

Step 3: Share

Internally

VoC data is most powerful when shared and you give your entire business the opportunity to build empathy with your customers and make improvements.

Getting your entire org on board can be a daunting task. Thankfully, encouraging teammates to consume your hard-earned insights is easier when they’re engaging and emotive video clips, rather than dull graphs or wordy transcriptions.

“VoC findings should be shared everywhere that you can think of!”
‍Leslie Barrett, Sendoso

Here are three options for sharing video insights collected with Vouch, depending on how much time you have.

• Level 1 - “I’ve got zero time”
  Enable the Slack integration. The whole team will be notified each time a new customer video is submitted. Everyone can watch in their own time. Perfect for small teams just starting their VoC journey.
• Level 2 “I have some time”
  Use Vouch’s search and tagging function to organize and analyze your clips. Present your learnings back to the team via an internal Vouch video and create a Playlist of the most important clips.
• Level 3 “I’m determined to get the most value”
  Create an enablement process. Meet with each team to share the most relevant clips to them. Testimonials that could help the sales team close deals faster and feedback that the product team should incorporate into their roadmap. Invite those teams to collaborate in your Vouch library so everyone has easy access to the clips, can watch them any time and help identify any knowledge gaps. To measure the impact your VoC program is having, you could even set up a Vouch campaign for internal feedback and collect your team’s thoughts.

Kevin Lau, Sr. Director of Global Customer Engagement at F5, advises automating the sharing of customer voice internally.

“The more you can make it self-service the better’’
‍Kevin Lau, F5

Externally

Some VoC snippets can make great external social proof points. If you have permission, they can make for compelling stories to share throughout your marketing channels to build trust and credibility.

Once you’ve edited your clip and tweaked your translations in Vouch, you could:

1. Use clips as social proof on your website. Embed them in your blog or landing pages, or copy quotes to display.
2. Grab audio snippets and use them in a podcast.
3. Use the automatically-generated transcript to create a blog post or case study.
4. Share as short form video on social media. For a speedy shortcut, use one of the templates Vouch has designed for anyone to use in Canva. Simply drag and drop your clip, then share to social media.

Step 4: Keep the conversation going

The goal of collecting feedback is to improve your products/ services/ processes continuously, so feedback should be an ongoing dialogue, not a one-time event.

Continue to engage with your customers even after you have collected feedback. Keep them updated on any changes you have made based on their feedback and continue to seek their input on future product or service enhancements. This not only demonstrates that their feedback is valued but also fosters a sense of partnership between your business and your customers.