MarketTools Blog

A Voice of the Customer (VOC) program is obviously critical to running a successful business. We’ve all seen statistics showing how retaining customers through customer loyalty is much more effective than converting new customers. As such, many service companies have methods in place to capture customer feedback  and track customer experiences.

However, as a market research professional, I’d like to point out some key distinctions that can be overlooked when capturing and interpreting customer feedback, because the end users of feedback data might be surprised at the kind of insights they could be missing out on.

Often when I’m working on global customer satisfaction surveys, I come across a common concern from business leaders outside of North America.  These leaders tell me they have seen their customer satisfaction scores compare unfavorably to scores from North America, even as they do all the right things to build up customer satisfaction and loyalty.  Year-over-year, they see their scores improve, but the North America scores go even higher.  They are concerned that management sees this gap and concludes that they are doing something wrong, and sometimes this concern even leads them to be resistant to the whole survey process.

And they’re right to be concerned.