Customer experience (CX) research has been seeing dramatic evolution in the last decade which has, in turn, changed CX strategy.
In recent years customer satisfaction research has been turned upside down by the rapid evolution of the digital customer experience. The historical norm of siloed customer satisfaction survey projects reported on a monthly or quarterly basis has evolved into real-time, omnichannel data collection. The scope of customer satisfaction surveys has expanded as well, spanning the entire customer journey from acquisition to long-term client retention and value growth.
Further, there is a new demand to integrate all employees into CX reporting in order to motivate them to focus on customer satisfaction. Every employee in the company has an opportunity to enhance the customer experience. As a result, CX vendors are delivering multi-level reporting that integrates analytics spanning survey, social data, operational data, etc.
The goal today is not to simply report on a customer satisfaction metric, it is to make customer satisfaction an internal component to company strategy and employee motivation.
Better Qualitative Data from Voice-Driven IVRs
The premiere survey methodology for capturing voice driven data is interactive voice response (IVR) surveys. These surveys offer a flexible methodology, especially for mobile consumer since it enables both voice and keystroke-driven input.
Statistics show that IVR surveys tend to provide the highest response rates for post contact center transactional survey methodologies. They also offer the ability to gain insight immediately after a consumer interaction with a call center. What this means is that a broad demographic population can provide survey data response that reflects a more accurate representation of the consumer’s experience with rich quantitative and qualitative data.
More importantly, IVR surveys have the unique ability to capture qualitative voice responses through open ended questions. Voice driven open-ended response have a higher response rate and greater data, providing actionable attitudinal and ideation insights to understand the “why” of consumer CX measurement. This ability to capture consumer voice is particularity important when considering the dramatic decline in frequency and quantity of open-ended data associated with web, mobile, and text surveys.
Using Voice-Driven IVRs to Enhance CX
Of course, poorly executed IVR surveys have a negative effect on CX. Consider the customer who has just completed a call center interaction. Immediately after the call, either while the customer is still on the line or as a customer call-back, an IVR survey asks about their experience using a rating of one to five. This may provide transactional data that is easy to codify and chart, but it tells you very little about the customer’s true experience. And rather than promoting brand loyalty, it can leave customers can be left feeling that their true opinion doesn’t matter.
Open-end IVR surveys allow the customer to express himself or herself. They can express an opinion in their own words, with their own tone and inflection. How they respond to a question can be more insightful than what they actually say. Also, giving them a chance to truly voice an opinion can contribute to a positive CX.
When you incorporate real-time speech-to-text transcription and analytics, open-ended survey questions can be a powerful tool. Not only can text transcriptions be deconstructed as data, real-time analysis can be used to escalate a problem call or to trigger activities to enhance CX even further,
Interactive voice response research is not only revealing when it comes to assessing CX, but it also shapes the customer experience. Integrating IVR survey data collection into customer call center interaction is a key component to making the Voice of the Customer actionable.