It can be difficult to measure the impact of VOC programs, because often they're interwoven with other initiatives, like product development. But there are myriad ways to track the benefits of feedback programs. Here are 13 ways; track at least three—after creating baseline measurements—and you're sure to see how VOC is paying off for your organization.
Revenue per customer: Determine your average annual revenue per customer, and establish whether it's different for different groups of customers. Then try to identify the precise amount of revenue attributable to a particular customer.
Share of wallet: Pinpoint a specific customer's product mix, and then, based on the number of products you sell versus what would be a fit for that customer, calculate the growth potential.
Willingness to pay more: Determine whether customers are willing pay more for your products, whether that translates to increased sticker price, increased fees, reduced discounts, or other options.
Lifetime value: Ascertain the lifetime value of specific customer in dollars, as well as how long customers typically stay with your organization. Track whether their profitability and value grow over the customer lifecycle.
Retention rate: What percent of customers leave your organization each year?
Referral rate: Settle on how to measure word-of-mouth promotion for your organization. For example, determine what a positive word-of-mouth recommendation is worth to you in dollars.
Referral effectiveness: Measure the success of how well word-of-mouth gets customers to switch to your company.
Negative referrals: Establish a way to measure negative word-of-mouth for your organization.
Reason for defection: Track customers' reasons for leaving. Determine whether there is a measure you can associate with each of those reasons.
Response time to feedback: Examine and track the typical response time (the time it takes for a customer to receive a response from a comment) for each mode you currently using to gather feedback (e.g. comment card, call log, handwritten letters, email, online submission form, etc.).
Customers saved due to feedback: Calculate the number of upset customers you are able to recover or save by responding positively to their complaints and concerns.
Survey response rate and dollar value realized: Examine the cost of each survey mode you currently use and determine whether you can decrease costs or increase effectiveness by using alternate modes.
Overall savings versus current processes used: If you currently use multiple modes and multiple vendors for gathering customer feedback, investigate whether using fewer tools or only one enterprise solution would reduce your VOC program costs.
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About the Author: Chris Cottle is vice president of marketing for Allegiance